Find out about the farmyard animals at Brooklands Zoo.
Diet: Sheep are herbivores that eat a variety of grasses, plants, pellets, legumes and some small amounts of vegetables.
Home: The sheep on display at Brooklands Zoo are on loan from Avonstour Island which is a 50 acre farm nestled in the hills of Taranaki. They are a breed that developed in the wild.
History: At the back of the old Avonstour Island farm they had a large gorge that formed the boundary. At this time they had a lot of rare and heritage sheep breeds rotating around the property in which annually they lost a few of each breed into the large gorge area where they survived and bred for well over ten years. The breeds were made up of Pitt Island, Arapawa Island, Gotland, Damara, Wiltshire Horn, Dorset Horn, Mohaka and Herbert sheep. They continued to breed and multiplied in the wild. Years later, when a pine forest was harvested, they mustered approximately 22 of these sheep and have since bred them for a further 15 years. This breed is registered with the Rare Breeds Conservation Society of New Zealand.
Diet: Chicken pellets, vegetables and small bugs such as worms.
Home: Domestic chickens live all over the world!
The chicken is one of the most common and wide spread domestic animals, with a population of more than 24 billion. They were domesticated around 8,000 years ago. There are more chickens in the world than any other bird, with more than 150 different varieties of domestic chickens.
The rooster is a male chicken and crows all day round. Chickens’ life expectancy is between five and eleven years, with the world’s oldest chicken living until 16 years of age. They have four to five toes on each foot and have a heart beat of up to 315 beats per minute. The largest chicken egg ever laid weighed 450g and an egg was once found that contained nine yolks.
Diet: Crawling insects, seeds, rodents, fruit and vegetation.
Home: Africa
The guineafowl population is unknown worldwide as their numbers are too high. In the wild they inhabit grasslands, forest and bush areas. They prefer to run rather than fly and roost in trees.
They are a social animal with a life span of up to 15 years, and are monogamous. They are often used and raised on farms to control parasites on farm stock.
Our guineafowl are pearl grey and lavender in colour. They can lay up to 20 eggs at a time and the young are called keets. They are also both monomorphic and monochromatic – both sexes look and act alike, although a male’s wattle is much larger a female’s.
Diet: Omnivorous. Their wild diet includes vegetation, bark, roots and small mammals and birds. At Brooklands Zoo they are fed grass and browse daily as well as vegetables, pellets, fruit and a small amount of protein. Unlike other pig breeds, they require less protein and can live very well off pasture.
Home: Discovered in New Zealand but now farmed worldwide - how the Kune Kune was introduced to New Zealand is unknown however they have a strong association with Māori. Kune Kune translated means ‘round and fat’. They can have tassels (or piri piri) which hang under their lower jaws which are very soft and fleshy. There is no such thing as a miniature pig - while Kune Kune are smaller than other breeds, the miniature refers to the height at which they stand at the shoulder which doesn’t mean they can’t weigh well over 100kg. Did you know? In the 1970’s there were less than 50 Kune Kune left. A concentrated breeding program brought this breed back from the brink of extinction. Brooklands Zoo’s Kune Kune pigs are on loan from Avonstour Island.
