Female feeding an unrelated chick

[WesselG]

At the end of last year I bought a chick of roughly 8 weeks old that according to it's breeder had been handfed for awhile. When I put it in a cage with an adult female I have the adult female started regurgitating her food and feeding the youngster whenever it begged for food. Is this a known behaviour among IRN's?

The adult female is just over 8 years old and although she periodically laid a few eggs she never hatched them. She does have a devoted male with her so I can't say for certain if the eggs were infertile or not.

Since the female never showed any signs of being a successful breeder I was very surprised to see her react the way she did towards the young chick.

Has anyone else witnessed something like this before?

Wessel Gordon

 

[MikeyTN]

I didn't witness it with an IRN but with other species. It's just a maternal instinct as with many animals will foster a young baby animal.

 

[crimson]

always supervise when this occurs, it has been known for a different species of bird to kill a chick out of the blue.

 

[WesselG]

Thanks Mikey and Crimson

The chick has since stopped begging for food and is eating well on it's own.

Their cage is right next to an open window of the room I spend most of my time in so I hear every sound they make and can thus investigate if I hear a suspicious sound.

The only "discussions" so far between them was when sorting out their sleeping positions but even those was just a warning scream or two.

 

[MikeyTN]

What Beth says is very true!!!! That does happen as it happens quite often. The more recent time it happened to me was last summer when 2 of my pairs was having chicks, the males from each pair killed the other's chicks by invading each other's nest boxes and killed off the chicks.

 

[WesselG]

It seems I'll have to reconsider their housing arrangement in that case.