And as is the procedure, a breeding procedure with cassowaries, the males do all of the incubation, 100%, and all of the care of the chick. The females role in raising cassowaries is only to lay a fertilized egg. And then after she lays a clutch, the male puts them together and incubates them. So we knew that much, from K.C. Lin, the bird curator at San Diego had never raised cassowaries. Nobody on the mainland or Europe had successfully raised cassowaries ever, primarily because of this aggression. So we set up an elaborate scheme to have four of us, two keepers and my supervising keeper and I would gradually put a bird that we assumed to be a male in with the one that we knew was a female, because it laid regularly. We waited until she laid the first egg, so we knew that based on her past history, that she would lay every other day in the clutch of perhaps three eggs. Then once she laid that first egg, we were ready.
