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BF Amazon eggs due to hatch on 9th June, not sure on quantity!

Elchippo

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Andy
Hi, Thank you, I have joined to try and get help with our situation as we have 2 lovely blue fronted amazons Ava (5) & Roco (4) at least one egg has been laid and going by the dates they are due to hatch on the 9th June, we have the birds over 2 years now but this sort of thing is really new to us and would be very grateful for any help with the situation as to what we would need on standby, what food and things etc etc. Big thank you in anticipation. But hoping the that the parents can manage!
 

melissasparrots

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Make sure you have hand-feeding formula and a brooder put together so that you know it maintains heat. A freshly hatched amazon chick may need a brooder to maintain heat at around 96-97 degrees. Just in case you need it. You never know with first time parents.
Otherwise, I fed my yellow napes huge heaping amounts of food. Unlimited amounts of whatever they wanted. Mine tended to want what they want when feeding their babies. Meaning, if they wanted cooked corn, and I didn't have cooked corn, but offered all sorts of other healthy options, they would still not feed their babies very well. When it comes to parent birds feeding chicks, its best not to judge their choices too much. Just give them what they will feed assuming the chicks can digest it. Mine also tended to like sprouted seeds. I get sprouts from chinaprairie.com and sprout them at home. Do NOT get sprouts from the grocery store as they tend to be full of bacteria. If you want to sprout, read up on it. You don't prepare them like you would for a human. I also gave some pellets and regular seed as well. Also cooked sweet potato or cooked squash and the usual assortment of other fresh veggies. I also cooked until soft brown rice, quinoa and beans. Sometimes I had different foods in different bowls. I also did A LOT of thawed mixed frozen veggies. The top two favorite things mine liked to feed their chicks were thawed sweet corn, and sprouted seeds. I sprinkled a little bit of Nekton vitamins on the soft food just because I was worried about all the corn they were giving to their chicks and didn't want the babies to get calcium deficient. Note, not giving corn, caused the parents to just not feed babies very well. So, pretending I knew better than them and attempted to restrict their food to what I thought they should eat, would have resulted in stunted chicks. The babies turned out to be normal sized healthy birds. I pulled all of mine for hand-feeding somewhere between 10 and 28 days or so. Which may have made a difference if they had any marginal nutritional deficiencies. Most of the time, I used Kaytee Exact regular formula with good results.
 

Elchippo

Moving in
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Andy
Hi Melissa, thank you for the reply, if I can just fill you in with a bit more info on our position! Our birds Ava & Roco live in the conservatory and have been together now for almost 2 years. Since the hormonal period started a few weeks ago, the birds have changed and Ava since she started laying eggs Well.. she has this thing that she wants to attack me everytime I show my face, and the problem we have is because due to lack of experience we positioned the nesting box last year beside the cages, and the box is nearest to the door. But at times on the odd occasion I have been lucky enough and she has stayed in! I need access every morning / evening to sort out food and drink and have started using the wheeled free standing perch which has dishes for water / food, and I use a extendable pole with hook to pull out and push into position loaded with all the different dishes of goodies that they like, which seems to work better and the birds don't get worked up as much!! Just a shame that during this time we can't interac It's going to become another worry as we move forward with the situation if the eggs hatch (not sure of the number as it was after the first egg that Ava became so protective), but at the end of the day we only want whats best for them. We have managed to spout some seeds and will attach a photo as we now look to grow some more. We have even kept a copy of the seed type so we know what the plant looks like all different seed taken from their mix! Thank you for your comments and would really appreciate any further help as you may think of it.
Kind Regards
Andy
 

melissasparrots

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So you have no way of knowing if a baby hatches? If that is the case, I would give a modest increase in variety of food for the first couple of days after the predicted hatch date. Focus on the cooked and sprouted grains and beans and the higher starch veggies for calories and for being easy to digest. The parent's don't really get ravenous for more and more food until the babies are older. In the mean time, maybe you can have a partner distract the birds while one of you goes to make a quick check to see if there is in fact a baby in there. Don't try to check babies until the parents are out of the nest and can't immediately charge back in and trample babies and eggs. Having a temporary block in front of the box entrance is good to prevent any chance of parents charging in and injuring chicks. I used a 2x6 board to slide between the cage bars closest to the entrance. A quick bit of cardboard or a hand towel you can stuff in the entrance and remove in a second would also work. I'd wait at least a few days (maybe a week) to give a second egg a chance to hatch or not. A quick way to assess the situation if you can't handle the chick but maybe have a second for a quick peak is to have your phone on camera mode with flash before even going in. Open the box, do a quick visual and snap a picture. Then get out. You can notice a lot from a picture that you can enlarge later. Also, pay attention to what seems to be the parent's favorite foods and make sure you give A LOT of that while maintaining a good variety of everything else too. I suppose you could also just put some bowls on the floor. If they do hatch a chick, you'll eventually have a decision to make. If the parents act aggressive or fearful of you, the chick will learn to act the same toward you. It will make taming later harder. Also, things can go wrong at any point during parent raising. There is value in just going hands off and letting the parents do their job. But, it isn't always in the best interest of the future of the chick in terms of quality of life if it doesn't tame well. With a little research, the safer bet would be to pull the chick for hand-feeding. However, if you think you might want to allow the parents to breed again, then letting them have the first one to learn from would be good. It is also fun watching parents raise babies. But parent raised babies are harder to sell into a good pet home. I'd try to get in there every week to 10 days up until the chick fledges just to ideally check its weight, check inside the beak to make sure no yeast is growing, basically give the baby or babies a quick once over to make sure nothing is wrong.
 
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