Lovebird baby's

My lovey's are parents. 3 eggs hatched in the past days. I'm so exited. And I found small beans on the yard next to my house which they feast on. When I put it in the cage the male (Sunny) runs to it and starts eating and calls the female (Cher). That's the only time she leaves the cage besides to have a quick bath or to [emoji90].

Have a nice day all

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how cute.
If you don't have one already I would recommend investing in a scale that measures grams.

You need to keep a close eye on there weight as they develop.

texsize said:

how cute.
If you don't have one already I would recommend investing in a scale that measures grams.

You need to keep a close eye on there weight as they develop.

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I already have such a scale. But I'm afraid to handle the baby's. They're so small and fragile

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After there eyes open is when you should start handling them. Until then, if the parents are taking proper care of the little ones it's probably best to leave them alone.

If you don't start handling them soon after the eyes open it makes them harder to tame.

The baby's are growing fast. One did not make it. Found it dead a few days ago. It had a full crop so I don't know what happened

There is no way I can handle them. The mother is very, very protective. She cover's them are bites me if I come to close. So I guess I have to wait until they are weaned.

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winston.stuger said:

The baby's are growing fast. One did not make it. Found it dead a few days ago. It had a full crop so I don't know what happened

There is no way I can handle them. The mother is very, very protective. She cover's them are bites me if I come to close. So I guess I have to wait until they are weaned.

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You handle them when the parents leave the nest to eat and then you pick them up. If mom refuses to move you can gently push momma bird out of the way with your hand to get to the babies. They may bite but it is more important to make sure babies are gaining weight and are healthy.

Yeah, you cannot wait to handle the babies until they are weaned, or you will have 2 non-tame, unfriendly birds. The should be handled every single day for at least 15-20 minutes, twice a day at the least. You need to start doing this right away, because it is going to become impossible to handle them if you wait much longer.

Either wait until mom leaves the nest box to drink and then put something in front of the nest box hole to block her from coming back in, or just suck it up and push her out of the way. That's what you have to do, otherwise you'll not have friendly babies.

EllenD said:

Yeah, you cannot wait to handle the babies until they are weaned, or you will have 2 non-tame, unfriendly birds. The should be handled every single day for at least 15-20 minutes, twice a day at the least. You need to start doing this right away, because it is going to become impossible to handle them if you wait much longer.

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Thanks for the tip. I started handling them yesterday. It's a tough job to get the mom out of the way. I feel the chicks are a bit scared (they shiver at first) but after a few minutes they calm down. I also try to feed them a little bit with welled pellets.

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Here some pictures of my lovebirds with their chickens. The mother is the grey one. Father is a orangehead. The chickens are blue with a grey head. The one on the photo has a blue skin. The other one has a grey head and a greyish blue body.

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awwwww adorable! I want a lovey again, I miss my boomer. She was blue like that.

A little update. The baby's are doing great. They are 5 weeks now. Me and my wife handle them every day and I think they will be very tame [emoji16]. Now I need a way to find out their gender so I can buy a mate for them. I don't think there's a "birddoctor" over here in Suriname.

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Is there a reason you want to keep breeding and breeding these birds?

There is no need to buy them a 'mate', why not keep them as just pets? They can still live a happy life without breeding and raising young. Gender can be determined with a DNA test sent off to a lab to be sure.

I don't want to keep breeding, but since I have lots of space, I'm going to build an aviary for them. And maybe I'll breed some more with them, but not much. And I'm not breeding and breeding... This is my first time [emoji3]
There is no lab over here to test their gender. The postal service here is not very reliable and our local currency is worthless outside our country [emoji848]. So paying for a test in another country is no option for me

itzjbean said:

Is there a reason you want to keep breeding and breeding these birds?

There is no need to buy them a 'mate', why not keep them as just pets? They can still live a happy life without breeding and raising young. Gender can be determined with a DNA test sent off to a lab to be sure.

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winston.stuger said:

I don't want to keep breeding, but since I have lots of space, I'm going to build an aviary for them. And maybe I'll breed some more with them, but not much. And I'm not breeding and breeding... This is my first time [emoji3]

itzjbean said:

Is there a reason you want to keep breeding and breeding these birds?

There is no need to buy them a 'mate', why not keep them as just pets? They can still live a happy life without breeding and raising young. Gender can be determined with a DNA test sent off to a lab to be sure.

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I hope you reconsider breeding them -- just because this time nothing happened where you needed to step in and intervene, doesn't mean it will be like that every time. Many times breeding birds (especially community breeding) will end in heartbreak if you don't know what to do in an emergency. I hope you have the proper equipment on hand -- brooder, hand-feeding formula, syringes, gram scale, thermometer, etc. -- in case anything should happen.

Everything you mentioned I have. So that is covered. And since I have all the time in the world and I live around the equator, temperature and humidity is the same as what they need in the wild. But I hear your comments and took good notice of them. Thanks [emoji106]

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winston.stuger said:

Everything you mentioned I have. So that is covered. And since I have all the time in the world and I live around the equator, temperature and humidity is the same as what they need in the wild. But I hear your comments and took good notice of them. Thanks [emoji106]

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Not for babies it's not, the parents are laying on the babies in the wild for weeks, until their feather come in! That's why you must have a proper Brooder, doesn't matter where you live. We just had a gentleman in the Middle East almost lose a baby Alexandrine because he thought the same thing, and the baby developed a horrible yeast infection in it's crop because he was not keeping him warm enough.

EllenD said:

winston.stuger said:

Everything you mentioned I have. So that is covered. And since I have all the time in the world and I live around the equator, temperature and humidity is the same as what they need in the wild. But I hear your comments and took good notice of them. Thanks [emoji106]

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Not for babies it's not, the parents are laying on the babies in the wild for weeks, until their feather come in! That's why you must have a proper Brooder, doesn't matter where you live. We just had a gentleman in the Middle East almost lose a baby Alexandrine because he thought the same thing, and the baby developed a horrible yeast infection in it's crop because he was not keeping him warm enough.

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Thanks for the advice. I never said I was gonna breed more. Just mentioned I want a mate for the young ones. Just don't want them to be siblings just in case. I now have 4 birds. I think I want about 10 of them in an aviary.

I am watching the behavior of the mother very carefully. She is starting to get yealous when the baby's are being fed by the father. And they are mating again. So I'm looking for a good time to remove the breeding block or to replace the eggs.

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I must say that the blue baby is soo gorgeous!

Breeding block? i'm not familiar with that term after breeding for 20 years, lol...ought oh..

If you have them together and there is any type of nest box/small, dark box or place that they can get to, or any type of nesting material/bedding available to them, even in the bottom of the cage, then they will mate if they are a male and a female and they are already bonded, especially if they've already bred.

In order to stop them, which you should because they just had a clutch, and that's not a good practice for anyone, not even seasoned breeders, to practice, the hen needs a rest and a very nutritious, varied diet that includes lots of calcium supplementation, fortified pellets and seed mix, and lots and lots and lots of fresh veggies ASAP. So if I were you I would take every precaution to stop them from mating again right now.

Remove all nest boxes, all bedding/nesting material, the "breeding block", whatever that means, lol, and then you need to put them on a "Natural Light Schedule" immediately, starting today. You can search that term here in the forum to get the specifics, but basically you need to keep their cage in a spot where they can see the sunrise and the sunset through the window every day, and they need to be uncovered at sunrise and covered at sunset. This will calm their hormones.

As far as the eggs go, if she has already again started laying them, then you need to get the plastic eggs and replace them immediately!!! She can't be laying continuously like that, not back to back, it's going to end badly for her. If she laying in a nest box then wait until she leaves it to get a drink, pull the real eggs and replace them with the fake eggs, and then put the eggs in the freezer overnight immediately, then pitch them. If she is laying them in the bottom of the cage, just keep the plastic eggs inside of your hand, reach in with that hand, grab a real egg and then drop the fake one. She won't realize they aren't the real ones if you do it that way. So from that point on, every real egg she lays needs to be replaced with a fake egg immediately and then the real egg frozen immediately and thrown out in 24 hours. She'll most likely lay a small sized clutch at this point, but if you get them on the Natural Light Schedule and remove the nest box/bedding material right now and just put the fake eggs on the bottom of the cage with no nesting material available, this will be her only choice as to where to lay them, which is totally not ideal. This will do 2 things: It will discourage her from wanting to lay egg/mate because there is no safe place to do so, and once she lays on the fake eggs for 3 weeks and none hatch she will get bored and abandon them. Once she stops sitting on the fake eggs then you can remove them.

All of these actions should stop the mating/egg laying pretty quickly. But please be sure that you are giving that hen a ton of fresh veggies, and if you only feed a seed mix you need to start transitioning to a high-quality, fortified pellet immediately, as she's going to start suffering from malnutrition otherwise, YOU CANNOT BREED HENS AND ALLOW THEM TO LAY EGG CLUTCHES WHILE ONLY FEEDING THEM A BAGGED SEED MIX. I don't know if that's what you feed them, but I believe you said you don't feed veggies, so I'm just making sure. Make sure you have both a mineral block and a cuttlebone available at all times to her. You can even get an avian calcium supplement to sprinkle on her food, better yet a powdered Avian multivitamin, such as the Quiko brand powdered Avian Multivitamin that you can buy at any Petco store (they also sell the Quiko Avian Probiotic powder too at any Petco, both are surprisingly highly recommended by CAV's for parrots that are not on the best diets, are transitioning to a good diet, or for breeding/laying hens)...

By the way, they are very beautiful Love Birds...What species of Love Bird are they? Fischer? I couldn't tell. I looked for a hand-raised, hand-tamed baby Love Bird a few years ago, I wanted a blue/black Fischer or one just like the ones you have, I absolutely love the blue/black colored Love Birds...Unfortunately I couldn't find ANY near me, not hand-raised or parent-raised. Lots and lots and lots of Peach-Faced and whatever the other ones are, the masked ones which I also like, but no blue/black ones...