So today is the day, the day the first egg hatched. It's the fun part and the hard part all at once.
First, a little background. White-bellied caiques start breeding at 3-5 years of age. Mine are four and half and this is their third clutch so they are younger breeders. WBC's are also known for laying 4 eggs but usually only raising 2 babies, even in the wild. Some pairs will feed all their babies but many will only feed the older two. I learned this the hard way the first time around. I was prepared to handfeed but I was not prepared for the parents to reject the two younger babies when they had already been feeding the older two. Long story short, I ended up with two beautiful babies but lost the two who were not only not fed by the parents but also not brooded by them by the time I figured out what was going on it was two late for the younger two
Moving on to year two. Four babies again, this time the parents did great with the first two. I pulled the oldest for handfeeding right before the third hatched. The parents did great with babies #2 and #3. I then pulled the second baby for handfeeding and the parents provided super abundantly for baby #3 and adequately for #4. At about 6 days old I pulled the last two babies and handfed them.
I won't even get into the issues that I had with brooding them (they were taken care of in time, before any ill effects). In the end we had four perfect caique babies. Yay!
Now for year three, Peaches and Turbo laid their eggs and took excellent care of them. Today the first fat little chickie has hatched.
See the little one right there by her foot.
Turbo is keeping an eye on things from outside the box.
I'll be checking latter to make sure they are feeding the new baby but I expect that they will. Most likely it will be feeding the first baby by Saturday at the latest. Busy, busy, busy!
It always scares me just a little to be responsible for these little lives.
Adventure awaits