A large flock of cockatoos have chewed their way through lights cabling at a Melbourne horse racing track, forcing organisers to switch planned evening races to daylight hours.

Around 2,000 of the birds had settled at the Moonee Valley Racecourse over the past week and damaged cabling connecting up to half of the track's 60 light towers, the Moonee Valley Racing Club said on its website yesterday.

"An audit of this damage shows that while the lighting is still operational, the wiring is now exposed and any moisture into the high voltage cables could cause the lights to fail," the racing club said.

With rain forecast for today, race organisers had been forced to reschedule the night races, which will offer prize money of A$560,000 ($493,000), for a twilight meeting.

Falcons had been "engaged" by the racing club to clear out the unwanted tenants and ensure the next night meeting could go ahead as planned.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.