Help! My birds laid eggs and I need to know how to feed!

[wittykristen]

Well, my lovebirds are evidently a male and female. They are breeding and have eggs now. I want to hand feed the chicks after 2 weeks of hatching but I work full time. What do I do????

 

[WilliamKenyon]

You are probably better off to let the parents rear them because baby birds are extreemly fragile and take a very experienced hand rearer to keep them alive. Just the specialist equipment alone (that is required) is quite expensive. The amount of time you are away at work would be to long between feeds for the baby birds. So in my opinion it would be better to let mother rear the babies in this case.

 

[wittykristen]

Would they still be able to become tame for me?

 

[LordTriggs]

I wouldn't keep the babies. You would have to focus your attention suddenly on a load more birds and include the first pair. Also what happens in 2 years when them babies get together, cause brother and sister doesn't mean much in the animal kingdom. Your best bet is to either give the babies away once they are weaned or to terminate the eggs.

It's unfortunate but it does need to be done some times. There's 2 ways to do it, 1. If they've just been laid then you just need to get the parents out of sight and give the eggs a good shake, which will scramble the inside. The other option would be to get some fake eggs and when mom and dad are out of the room to quickly replace the eggs with fake ones then throw the fertile eggs away. If you just throw the eggs away without replacing they will just lay more and put mom at risk

 

[LordTriggs]

as for hand feeding if the babies do hatch in short dont. It's so risky and you are in no way prepared. Let the parents handle them. Parent reared become just as tame as hand reared. But please don't keep them, you'll end up with inbreeding and dead pets. If you sell make sure you check if you need any licenses or certificates, some places require that. You would also need to by the ID rings for the babies. But once again I stress to try to abort the babies, you're not prepared and breeding is not to be tackled lightly. It would be far kinder for the babies not to be born

 

[itzjbean]

I would agree with the above. Take the eggs out, or replace them with dummy eggs, or shake them about to 'scramble' them. What happens if the parents are harming the babies/arent' feeding them properly/aren't laying on them to keep them warm and suddenly you have a clutch of babies that need your care to stay alive 24/7? You work full-time. I wouldn't let them keep the eggs.

I did have a mated pair of cockatiels have babies last year while I worked full time and when one baby became picked on by the others, mom and dad would pull its feathers out and it stopped getting fed. I had to pull and hand-feed the baby, and luckily it took to formula great and weaned just fine, but without my help and knowledge of how to feed it, it would have absolutely died.

Please don't let your birds have babies unless you have experience hand-feeding, a brooder, and proper knowledge of how to take care of unweaned baby birds.