Messy feeder? Cockatiel hen extremely messy after feeding chicks.

[srtiels]

Mom and baby might have a yeast infection, from the descriptions on your website. The vet is closed now for the day so I can't call until tomorrow morning.
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OK...do you have a Whole Foods or GNC health food store near you? If so you can get CAPRYL, which is caprylic acid in capsule form. This is EXCELLENT against yeast. 1/2 capsule can be sprinkled on any food the parents will eat. Also while there see if they have Pau d'Arco...in herbal extract. Shake real well and put 10 drops in the parents drinking water (change out 2-3 times a day) This also helps real well with yeast and a small amount of anitbiotic properties.

As to the seed....don't worry about if there is sunflower seed in it. it is the type of sunflower seed that can be a problem. What you want is the seeds that have a stripe on them The small solid black seeds contain more fats and oil and are not as good/healthful. And if you can't find a good cockatiel mix you can also buy plain parakeet seed. The reason why I am encouraging plain seed over vitamin fortified is that pellets are vitamin fortified and if you give pellets you do not want other sources that are fortified with vitamins because it can cause a build up in the body and a toxicity.

 

[abeille]

Mom and baby might have a yeast infection, from the descriptions on your website. The vet is closed now for the day so I can't call until tomorrow morning.
---------------------------------------------------

OK...do you have a Whole Foods or GNC health food store near you? If so you can get CAPRYL, which is caprylic acid in capsule form. This is EXCELLENT against yeast. 1/2 capsule can be sprinkled on any food the parents will eat. Also while there see if they have Pau d'Arco...in herbal extract. Shake real well and put 10 drops in the parents drinking water (change out 2-3 times a day) This also helps real well with yeast and a small amount of anitbiotic properties.

As to the seed....don't worry about if there is sunflower seed in it. it is the type of sunflower seed that can be a problem. What you want is the seeds that have a stripe on them The small solid black seeds contain more fats and oil and are not as good/healthful. And if you can't find a good cockatiel mix you can also buy plain parakeet seed. The reason why I am encouraging plain seed over vitamin fortified is that pellets are vitamin fortified and if you give pellets you do not want other sources that are fortified with vitamins because it can cause a build up in the body and a toxicity.

No mucus today when I checked on Nybble. Mom didn't smell bad either.
Just to be on the safe side, I brought in mouth swabs and poop samples into the vet. Everything came back normal. (Maybe I'm just paranoid.)

Nybble now weighs 26 grams, although I put the official count today at 25. (I try to weigh at the same time each day. Today that wasn't going to work out. I weighed her in early at 24 grams... and weighed her, again, in late, at 26.) +5 grams from yesterday. She doesn't look like your eight-day baby in the chart, though. She looks more like day 6- no real feathers yet and her eyes are just slitted today. Is this because she had such a slow start, that is she behind your babies? Could it have something to do with hatching small or bad genetics? (I don't know the parents' history.)

BitTorrent, at three days, weighed in at 5 (early weight), which was only +1 from yesterday. Very active and loud, but very tiny. I didn't weigh her a second time because she was being fed.

As far as the messy feeder, the babies had much less on them today, although Mom still managed to get it on her face and wings. (Better than the photos I shared earlier in the thread.) I can only hope that things continue to get better and Mom gains more skill at feeding. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction!