Wildlife veterinary and operations manager Dr Lisa Argilla said the chicks required hospital treatment for different issues, but were being hand-reared together so they could each grow up with a feathered friend.
‘‘It’s really cool watching their behaviour,’’ Dr Argilla said.
‘‘They do perform some, what we would say are normal, kākāpō behaviours, apart from the fact that they are tolerant of humans — which is not the end of the world.’’
The kākāpō did not yet have formal names, but were referred to as Evohe A2 and Tia A3, reflecting their clutch, egg and mothers’ names.
Evohe A2, a 78-day-old male, failed to thrive in the wild — ‘‘he was really, really runty’’ — and had shown the most progress in human care.
Tia A3, at 67 days old, already weighed more than her older roommate.
‘‘[It’s] not ideal to hand rear kākāpō by themselves because then you run the risk of quite a lot of imprinting ... the last thing we want is a pet parrot.’’
The hospital typically hand-reared a few chicks each season, although this year ‘‘the mums are just doing such a good job’’, requiring less intervention, Dr Argilla said.
Hand-rearing was ‘‘quite a laborious process’’ and newly hatched chicks could require up to eight feeds a day.
The two chicks were being weaned off three-times-daily tube feeds and encouraged to eat leaves and berries.
‘‘We’re confident that once they go back to the island, they’re not going to need human intervention,’’ Dr Argilla said.
‘‘It is a bit of that training to be wild, essentially.’’
Once the birds were ready, they would probably be transported to one of the protected offshore islands with a kākāpō population, first acclimatising in a large pen before being released into the wild, Dr Argilla said.
Kākāpō breed once every two to four years, when rimu trees mast.
Mating activity began at the start of this year, the first breeding season in four years.
Ahead of this season, the population sat at 236, including 83 breeding-age females.
