Baby Cockatiel. Need help with answers!

[MikeyTN]

This is a 8 day old chick, eye lids already split open and already opened his eyes! This picture was one of my chicks.

 

[MikeyTN]

This is a Lutino Chick newly hatched.

This is a Whitefaced Chick newly hatched.

 

[Kiran]

Just had the fright of my life! Last fed the baby at 3:30am and now woke up at 9am and when I checked on him, he looked like he had one foot in the grave! He was motionless and seemed in trouble. Some of the last feed was stuck in the crop.

I got him out and finally I noticed some tissue paper stuck on the rear! I ran into the kitchen and got warm water and cotton and quickly wiped the tissue strip off his rear and BAM - he fired all cylinders and actually started as would a Harley Davidson. lol

He's resting now and looks better than when I first saw him today. Just shows you the importance of a good dump! lol

 

[MikeyTN]

LOL.....I'm glad you caught it in time cause a baby would stress to the grave if that wasn't taken care of..... Torpedo away!!!

 

[Kiran]

Yep! he's certainly top o' the world atm. Just can't get enough feed. I'm following your advice and limiting his feed but it's just too cute when he's asking for more. Shows me that he's ok.

I mixed some fresh coconut water in his feed for the electrolytes. Next feed I'll add the mashed egg yolk and cottage cheese.

 

[crimson]

he'll love the egg and cottage cheese, it's super good for him, and he'll love the taste

 

[Wdlodge]

This is all really exciting, hope the baby makes it. Love reading about the progress.

 

[Wdlodge]

Boy MikeyTN, from newly hatched to 8 days, they grow so fast. What a difference.

 

[Kiran]

Boy MikeyTN, from newly hatched to 8 days, they grow so fast. What a difference.

No kidding! My chicks' over 8 days now and he looks like an oversized newborn. I'm barely seeing any growth, if at all. He's being fed, the food is being consumed and he is the same size. His feet haven't grown a mm since last week. :22:

Probably had to do with being malnourished by his parents refusing to feed him and being hungry first 3-4 days before I got to him. My plate is fuller than a salad plate in a unlimited buffet. :20:

I just fed him mashed cottage cheese and egg yolk mixed with the cereal formula. Lets see how it goes.

 

[MikeyTN]

Being malnourished would cause a stunt in growth! Are you providing minerals to your adults? Cause the parents will feed it to their chicks. I watch my momma bird feed it to chicks and they grow a lot better. Another pair that don't do so their baby have stunted growth which they catch up when I do the formula.

 

[Kiran]

Yep! I have a whole line of various foods and supplements including both calcium blocks and cuttlefish bone I place for birds.

http://www.wilderstore.com/media/ca...d6e5fb8d27136e95/d/e/deli-nature-minerals.jpg

Ok, so for the formula, I have mixed an egg yolk, a spoon of cottage cheese, a spoon of the baby cereal in addition to some coconut water for electrolytes. That mix sound good for the baby?

This coming morning, the carpenter is coming over to make a vertical bridge between my 4 interconnected cages. Basically 2 cages are connected on the bottom and 2 on top of them. Now I've planned a wooden framed tower which will connect the open doors of both levels so the birds have a duplex cage, so to speak. Once he is done making the frame, I will tie in the bird net. One cage of the four is an exclusive eating area which will have bowls of everything, seed mixes, minerals, vegetables, water, etc with no perches around them to ensure a clean eating environment for the birds.

 

[MikeyTN]

Sounds good! Keep me up to date on how he does on it!

 

[Kiran]

*Whew* Sat straight from 09:30am this past morning to 01:30am and completed my cage setup. Made a wooden cabinet base myself to store the food in plus raise the 2 tier cages to a height where the birds can look outside the window and see more than just the sky.

Good news is baby has finally opened an eye and also when a new supplier came in to drop canary seeds to my place today, he offered to get me Deli nature CeDe baby food mix this week.



Anyways, following are the pictures of my new cage setup. It may not be fancy like you get in the US and UK but considering that only small cages are available here, I've done the best I could.



















I added some fresh corn and boiled & grated beet after I shot the pictures.

 

[MikeyTN]

I'm glad you can get some formula soon!!! Sounds like the baby is doing well on that formula mix!!!

 

[Birdlover11]

I've been to India and I'm surprised you found such pretty cages ! Usually the only ones there are wooden . Did you buy it in country? The cage is fantastic , the chicks are really lucky to have you !

 

[Kiran]

I've been to India and I'm surprised you found such pretty cages ! Usually the only ones there are wooden . Did you buy it in country? The cage is fantastic , the chicks are really lucky to have you !

These cages have just started coming in from China a few months ago and are available at most decent pet stores. I live in Bandra west, where there's about a million - dollar millionaires in this area alone so there's about 11 pet shops in a 2 block radius from me. These cages are INR5000 each (about $85). But yeh, all of the pet stores use the really cheap INR250 cages or even the INR100 wooden cages. They don't care about the birds, just the turnover. Here's a pic of me in a pet shop where you can see the cheap cages in the background, rare pic as they normally don't let people take snaps inside.

There's me with a Galah cockatoo on my shoulder INR120,000($2k), Sulphur cockatoos INR65000+ ($1.1k), Blue & Gold Macaw INR 100000+ ($1.7k), Green wing macaw (between my cheek and the Galah) INR 100000+ ($1.7k) and Palm cockatoo INR250,000 ($4200). In the cages around are amazons. As you can see it's a very unclean area and these guys are in it 24/7. Shop the size of a decent room. Too many birds, too little place imo. and should any of these jump out of the shop, to the back of the camera, there are crows, kites, eagles, cats & dogs just WAITING to gobble them up. These birds are literally living the walking dead experience.



I'm surprised no one's selling all the fancy cages like in the US & UK because the market is there. Considering cockatoos & macaws sell from 65000($1100) to 250000($4200) for the palm cockatoo, people would happily shell out $1k-2k for large cages, just there's absolutely no supplier. Wasted market imo.

 

[MikeyTN]

Thank you for sharing all that information with us! I guess we're rather fortunate here to have what we have. I think you've made a friend with the Galah!

 

[Kiran]

That Galah was just too awesome. I went to the shop to pick up bird feed and when I was pointing out which ones I wanted, this lil fella just quietly stepped onto my shoulder and started kissing me. The asking price was 120k INR ($2k) and I can afford him but I'm too scared to drop that kind of dough on a single bird, had it been say, $200, I'd have bought half a dozen or more for sure.

The shop owner actually commented that his birds are very noisy etc for almost all the people that enter his shop but for 2 people - me and another fella - these guys just go quiet and gaze at us intently during our presence there. So he said, these birds feel your love and that karma you have around you, of smiling at them and whispering sweet nothings. They'll caw rather loudly for most people that go near them, but somehow when i'm around they're always kissing me.

The supplier who dropped in to see me yesterday mentioned how bad the people in this bird trade are and how they take your money first and then ship you a problem bird, if at all, like someone was just delivered a B&G macaw without claws, and another who received a plucked bare naked cockatoo, and hence one should always buy a bird in physical presence and with a bird vet to verify all is ok before making the payment.

These bird shop owners simply tell people to feed the birds yellow millet and water. And so I am working to create some flyers that state the individual species - budgerigars, lovebirds, cockatiels, parrots, etc with information on what to feed them - which I will make 1000 copies of and hand over to these shop owners to give every customer who buys a bird, so at least they are aware that these birds too have a varied diet and not to feed them only yellow millet.

I'm definitely getting at least 20 of all those pricey ones when I shift to my new home I've planned a 2000 sq ft aviary in. WTB Lifetime of happiness!

Finally, the handrearing formula came in.

 

[Kiran]

Aight! Here's a picture of the baby taken a few minutes ago. It's a wide angle lens so the tummy is looking bigger and the rear smaller than it really is.



On a positive note, my wife will be delivering our child within 24 to 36hrs, so I'll be heading off to the hospital in 24 hours, for 3-4 days. The hospital doesn't allow animals so I'll be making trips home to feed it every 4 hours as the hospital is luckily only 2 traffic lights from my home. He'll probably be hungry for an hour or two between every feed, but as he is growing I don't think it should be a major problem.

He had a bit of a lump in his crop for a couple days (when the tissue had been stuck to his rear and he wasn't able to take a dump) and I was worried about it. Then I made a couple of feeds totally liquidy and it did the trick and cleaned his crop out good.

Soon, I'm going to have to take care of TWO babies. lol

 

[MissyMe83]

Thanks for sharing all of this...interesting to hear how things are done in other countries and good luck with the little one and the little one to come!