Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 11:37 pm Post subject: new chicks dead
I posted about my worries about the nest boxes being too dry and now my first nest full of eggs started hatching, three hatched and all died. I am left with what seems like two pipping eggs- I took them out- and no hope.
I am just sickened by it. The hen raised 13 babies two years ago with another hen, she was wonderful and now since we have had drought she has left her babies to die.. I cannot understand.
I tried last time to add water to the nest no luck. What else can I do, btw this is my cockatiel.
(and what do I do with the eggs? any hope of raising them?)
If the eggs hatched I dont believe the amount of moisture in the nest box would have been an issue. It appears the incubation process was successful and so the question would be why has the hen abandoned the young chicks. Parent birds (in the wild) usually only leave chicks due to predatory threats or lack of food source. The parent birds rely on having enough food to feed themselves and the chicks. When our birds have young chicks we double the amount of green food and sprouted seed to ensure their is a plentiful supply available to the parents.
The majority of articles I have read in regard to the drought situation state that most animals simply wont breed if the conditions are not conducive so something has obviously tweaked your birds into breeding mode and I think the problem may be more to do with the personality of the birds themselves. We have pairs of Kakariki that will raise a clutch of 5-6 young without bany dramas and then in the very next nest find they have killed one or two of the chicks. There is no hard and fast rules as to why birds do this but it does happen with most species of bird from time to time. That is why breeders often hand rear their birds to reduce the chances of something going wrong.
We have raised young Kakariki from the egg and this can be done with the use of an eye dropper. A brooder would be handy but if you dont have one then using a desk lamp above the open nest box will do the job. There are some very good hand rearing foods available on the market and the birds will need to be fed at 2 hourly intervals. The short answer is yes the remaining birds can be saved if you are prepared to do the hand rearing.
Thanks again for such a quick reply. I think there may be something I can do at least. Remember I told you about the female Superb that had the swollen eye? She seemed to have gotten better so I decided to pair her up with one of my bachelor males and place them in one of my aviary runs. One of my aviarys is a 6x6 mtr cage divided into 5 runs.- I let the cock pick her out by placing her cage nearby. After I caught him I decided not to put him with her- I am still undecided if I have given her enough time to recuperate. - then I decided to place him in a run next to Bubbles with a single female superb that was on her own with cockatiels- Bubbles is the cockatiel I am talking about that let the babies die. That was yesterday when I heard the first babies noise.
I thought I had better place a barrier between the two cages so I placed a galvinised sheet beside the boxes on the shelf where the boxes sit. The birds can still sit up high but cannot sit next to Bubbles' box. This may have disturbed her enough to give her a reason to stop- I am going to move her to my other aviary that only holds one other pair of cockatiels now and see if this helps anything.
I still have the two eggs tho, I have a heating pad near them, any ideas for keeping things right?- I do not think I will have any luck. thanks again
Once you have moved Bubbles place the eggs back in the box and watch her closely. She may in fact return and sit on them if the earlier problem has been rectified. We have also found in the past that placing new birds either in or adjacent to birds with eggs/chicks can create total chaos. This is something we learnt by experience and now avoid at all costs.
The remaining eggs should be placed in an incubator. As they approach the pipping stage the humidity needs to be increased and this can be difficult with out the use of an incubator. Perhaps you can put the heat pad inside some type of container and also put a container with water in it inside the same container In other words build a small incubator. This may work in the short term. I think the hen may take up looking after the eggs once she has been moved.
you know when you are getting desperate when you forget why you had them in the cage they are in now. Bubbles and her mate and another female are whitefaces. wonder what the chances are they will stay 'true' to each other? the other cockatiels are normal pieds.
Thinking about my last post I think you would be better off moving the Superbs and leaving Bubbles and her mates in their original environment. Perhaps move the Superbs in with the pieds for the short term.
Once birds adjust to their new neighbours things usually settle down and the breeding doesn't become an issue. Just a thought.
That may be a better idea, even if I move them over to a couple of runs beyond. I can not put the superbs in the larger aviary- I have too many boys to girls. I've had to try to work out that problem for a long ime.They stopped breeding with the drought as well. I wanted to adjust their surroundings for quite some time but as things happened here I just took my two females away (one female died and the boys started to gang up on the females left) so it was easier to just let the boys stay in the large aviary and bring most of the cocktiels to the runs as well.
just for clarity- the large open aviary has 3 normal pied cockatiels and 3 superbs,and the6x6 has 6 cocktiels give or take one in each run, and two superb pairs in two if the runs. I have been trying to sell most of my boy cocktiels but really haven't tried very hard- I like my birds.. even with all of this fuss
Kaka-riki refered to food supply....Kakariki will eat a far greater quantiy of fresh veggies/fruit/proten than they will seed.
We feed fresh chopped 2x, sometimes 3x a day during nesting.
We feed all our parrots at least 2x a day as norm.
3kg of chopped veggies will last 4 to 5 feeds for 20 to 25 kakariki...plus fruit and protein.
With very little waste.
To illustrate further, a flight of 20 kakariki if fed if feed enough veggies etc, will only go thru about 1 liter of seed...in just over a week.
We had a similar problem with adjancent flights some yrs ago, a large peice of ply removing line of sight to the nesting box from the next flight solved the problem. We didnt have them abandoning the nest but identified a stress between the flights and put the sheld in place before further problems arose. _________________ My Spelling is Not Incorrect...It's 'Creative'
Thanks you have given me some valuable advice- I have lots of wood from my husbands work so there will be no complaint of cost there! yeh! and guess what. I put together a version of an incubator. a small fish aquarium of my son's with a lid. then I laid the heating pad in the bottom and I built a stage with a plastic lid and paper towel until the fish aquarium thermometer read ~36 c. and I put a small plastic dish in it with a new sponge saturated with water in one end. The eggs are both peeping loudly at me today. OMG now what, I never got them past the first few days myself when I rescued them. If they hatch what should they have for their first meal and how do I feed. I have hand reared before, I have probiotic and my handrearing mix on hand. OMG-- what do you think about bringing Bubbles in to my back bedroom where I have this set up? She is hand reared and very human capable? I wonder if she heard them and had the quiet of the room she would listen to babies there? I am crazy I guess.
Dear Karen, I posted again after this, the baby died, my lamp fell and the baby got hot and died. I was devastated, I also posted a diary- do not know if Kak-ariki put it up. I am going to get an incubator/brooder as a result.
Sorry for the loss of the baby Kathy.
That's what happens when you don't log on for awhile - you read the threads in the wrong order and look like an idiot!
You're ok, Karen. I am enlisting my son to help me put together that incubator. He promised if I found the parts he would do it as long as he didn't have to make the box. Have any resources???
We dont have incubators...all avariry raised, sometmes us foster parents.
I have seen 2 home made incubators that seemed to work well
1/the use of a cat/dog electric blanket in the bottom and covered with a thin sheet of ply
2/ A small fish tank in the box with a fish tank heater. _________________ My Spelling is Not Incorrect...It's 'Creative'
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the other cockatiels are normal pieds.
even with all of this fuss
