Can I start hand feeding AFTER fledglings are grown into chicks?

[Jan]

Truthfully, the babies are best to be left with their parents for up to 2-3 weeks of age. Really, you should not co=parent ... it only confuses the babies' parents and they do not like you messing with their chicks. Most parent birds take their baby raising seriously and intruders are not welcomed.

Hand feeding a chick(s) from hatch should really only be done if parents do not take care of the chick or should there be something wrong with the chick.

Many or most parent birds are pretty vicious and will turn evil towards you and they even go as far as to hurt their babies if you intrude in trying to remove their babies. If you can not keep a regular feeding schedule then babies suffer from that. New hatchlings especially are critical to be fed about every two hours almost around the clock. Proper heating and temp are even super important to maintain as well as temp of their formula.

I bred parrots for 23 years and I took it serious and missed out on many things in my life to do it.

 

[Bokkapooh]

Im very aware what coparenting is. It doesnt work for most species of birds. Parrotlets are not birds you can coparent. Many poi. Some conures. And most of the larger species of birds.

And even if you did coparent, that doesnt mean they'll want to be handfed by you or anyone else other than the parent birds.

 

[Bokkapooh]

Dag nabbit, ok I used to breed many species of parrots for over 15yrs. Believe me when I say that parrotlets were my most difficult species to work with. The parents are evil monsters that will do their best to kill you if you try and touch their babies. There is no such thing as co-parenting with parrotlets. Every pair of them was the same.Honest to God, Girl scout's honor.Parrotlet chicks should be removed at 12-14 days. If you wait longer it will be a battle to get them to eat via hand feeding. They must be fed every 2hours for about a week then every 3-hours then every 4 hours. They must be gently handled several times a day to socialize them. After they have fledged and weaned they must still be handled often or they revert back to tiny vampires. They were my least favorite and most difficult babies to raise.
Please think this through as tiny babies are so fragile. You will need 1cc syringes with a rubber needle catheter to feed them. Their eggs are as big as tic tacs and the little babies are about the size of a humble bee. They are easy to aspirate and so very fragile.

About time someone speaks with sense.

Thankyou Judy.

 

[CharliePickles]

Do you guys if there's any parrots that you can co-parent? Maybe cockatiels or conures?

 

[melissasparrots]

If I remove the clutch from the parents after the fledglings grow out of their stage and partition them to house them individually, can I start hand feeding them then? What would be the risk factors? Would it harm the parents? Would the chicks refuse formula? Will there be any point to it at all? (like the birds won't be "tame" and will grow up to be as if they were raised by their parents)

Many times they will be A LOT harder to get them to accept hand-feeding after they are 3 weeks old. In fact, by 3 weeks, some babies will require some very slow hand-feeding and patience for a few days before they figure it out. Parrotlets usually don't fledge until they are about 4 weeks old and I keep mine on every 4-6 hour hand-feedings until they are pretty well done. They generally only have about a week or even a few days where they only eat 2-3 times a day. By the time they get to only hand-feeding every 8 hours, they are pretty well weaned and feeding is just a formality to really make sure they are ready to be done. I would not do it myself.

Also, I would not breed birds unless you are willing to step in and feed from day one if necessary. 2 of my 3 pairs were great parents right from the start. The third pair did not feed their first clutch and all the babies died. Their second clutch, I stepped in and fed the babies in the nest a few times a day for the first few days and the parents eventually figured out how to feed. Hand-feeding day one parrotlets is no fun but I would have had another batch of dead babies without trying. Interfering though resulted in the mom scrambling around in the nest a little bit and ruining some of the other fertile eggs. So, I save some and gave the parents time to learn to feed themselves, but also had some die because I interfered. I really try to keep my nose out of their box and not interfere until I have to . The best time in my experience to pull parrotlets is about 10-14 days old. I pull them in groups of two so they have a snuggle buddy. They need to be hand-fed about every 3.5-5 hours at that age. At that age, they learn to hand-feed very easily and almost all chicks turn out to be pet quality. If you wait until 3 weeks, its more stressful on them, they learn to feed slower and a small percent of chicks no matter what you do will not want to be pets. Also, when I pull babies, I take them fully away from the parents. I don't partition the cage or even have them in the same room. Out of sight is out of mind. It makes the transition easier for the parent.s

 

[melissasparrots]

Well, there wouldn't be much risk involved. If they won't take to the formula, I'd just place them back in with the parents. I just want to know if anyone on this forum have actually tried this method and whether it works or not.

Once you take them out of the nest, some parents won't take them back. Or if they do take them back, they might feed them and then bite off their toes or wings. Some parents will take them back, but don't count on it.

 

[parrotluv]

I breed several species as well and I have never even considered coparenting most pairs are in protective mode and if you intervene in their nestbox you are then considered a predator and will either attack you or attack the babies once you put them back. You have had a comment from some one experienced with parrotlets and advised that this species will not tolerate this. So either find someone in your area that handfeds or leave them with the parents to raise.

 

[melissasparrots]

Do you guys if there's any parrots that you can co-parent? Maybe cockatiels or conures?

Cockatiels maybe. You don't even need to hand-feed the chicks at all. Get a pair that you have a good relationship with. Many cockatiels will breed even when they are treated as pets. I still say, stay out of their nest box as much as possible for the first 10 days at least and let the parents learn to be parents. When I was a little kid, I used to start handling babies a couple times a day for just a couple minutes when they started getting feathers. Increasing the amount of time handled as the babies got more feathers. I tried not to make a pest of myself so the parents still had time and freedom to be parents. But would hold them for up to 10-15 minutes at a time. When they fledged the nest box on their own, I'd start just opening the cage door as though to give the parents time to fly around and the babies sometimes came out with them.

Cockatiels are fairly known for handling that kind of treatment well. The chicks consistently turned out just as tame as hand-feds but without that dewy eyed innocent hand-fed baby look. I could tell the difference, but most buyers could not. I'd have people come over interested in babies but not wanting a parent raised chick. I would just tell them the truth, I have some that are parent raised, some that are hand-fed. I'll tell you which is which after you've decided which baby you like more. After they fell in love with their new bird and made their choice, I'd let them know if they chose a hand-fed or parent raised chick. Please note, other species are NOT this easy. Trying to do this with other species would be a quick path to poor parenting and dead babies. Quite possibly blood shed of both your's and the chicks and possibly the less aggressive parent as the more aggressive parent takes out their frustrations. In fact, each pair are individuals so you can't count on all cockatiel pairs letting you do this. My cockatiel pair were pets for many years before they decided to breed. And, I was about 12 years old. Children have a certain intuition about them at times that can crank out some pretty decent tame birds where adults would struggle. Do know, the more you interfere regardless of species, the higher the percentage of dead in shell chicks you will have. Quite simply, parent birds that have to worry about people messing around with their stuff, are not as good of parents as they should be.

 

[melissasparrots]

Also wanted to point out that just letting parrotlets parent raise entirely can be tricky. I let my pair do this with my most recent batch of just two babies. Its been decades since I let birds parent raise and those were the cockatiels I had as a child I mentioned above. The parrotlets did fine until shortly after the babies fledged. It was interesting to watch the division of labor shift and the male parent take over parenting duties more and more. However, he became possessive of the chicks. I noticed about 10 days before the chicks were weaned that the mother started missing feathers from her head and had some bruising on her beak indicating a fight had happened. She also took a nasty bite to her leg and was even favoring it for a while. The male also started to look a little ruffled toward the end. I pulled the chicks not entirely certain they were fully weaned but needing to restore peace to the pair so someone doesn't get killed, I noticed even the babies had little scabs on their feet and a little chipping around their beak. Nothing that can't heal on its own, but I'm now fully convinced that the best way to do parrotlets is the old traditional method of pulling the chicks at about 10-14 days old. Needless to say the parent raised babies are entirely wild. They have a panic attack every time I mess around with their food bowls. I'm going to have to do some desensitizing with them if I want them to be calm breeders later.