Shifting stories about a chick's death cost this zookeeper her job, Authority rules
Employment Relations Authority member Eleanor Robinson ruled on 4 August 2026 that a Hamilton Zoo keeper's shifting accounts of a chick's death justified her dismissal.
The zookeeper, who cared for the zoo's birds and reptiles from 2019, volunteered with colleagues in March 2021 to hand-rear a batch of guinea fowl chicks as a training exercise. She asked to take charge of the project on a day when her team leader and other senior staff were rostered off.
That morning she brought the chicks' incubator into the zoo and later reported that she had plugged it in and switched it on straight away. By mid-morning one chick was dead and five others were in distress, after the incubator's temperature climbed to nearly 50 degrees Celsius, well above the required 35 degrees.
She initially told her team leader the incubator's thermostat had simply been knocked. Her colleague, the team's second-in-charge, later told the team leader she had actually said the incubator was not switched on until well into the morning. When the team leader raised the discrepancy with other staff, they backed the colleague's account. The zookeeper did not correct her own version until directly confronted five days later, telling him it "wasn't necessarily just me."
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