Kitekeeper
Well-known member
- Jun 19, 2021
- 263
- 701
- Parrots
- Budgerigar (Bud), Pacific Parrotlet (Sam), Roseicollis lovebird (BJ and Turq), Linneolated parakeet (Charlie and Emma)
Hi all,
I would like to share this story with you and hopefully help to provide more information to anyone that is beginning to breed lovebirds.
This is the story of a pair of Agapornis roseicollis peach faced lovebirds that are also from the "long feather" lineage. A friend of mine is an enthusiast with the "long feather" and provided me a couple that was about to lay their first clutch. "Long feathers are found only at roseicollis species and a can reach sizes up to 50% bigger than a common roseicollis. They also have more fluffy feathers and a brightest tone of colours.
Some of you have already met with Mango (the red faced male) and Marina (the white faced female). Mango is the ancestor / wild colour pattern which I find very beautiful (Red, green with a blue rump) and Marina is a dutch blue opaline mutation, also a gorgeous shade of blue green body.
Roseicollis lovebirds use to bath frequently when they are feeling a rising interest in mating. The first time they bathed together was last August 28th and the morning after I observed the first (unsuccessful) attempt to copulate.
August 29th was also the first day Marina showed interest in putting stripes of straw in her rump and thus starting nest building.
August 30th I observed a successful mating and then exactly 10 days later the first egg was laid.
The clutch usually come as eggs laid every other day, it was not like that for this clutch as the first and second eggs were just 24 hours apart. Marina put five eggs at September 10th, 11th, 13th, 15th and 17th. The incubation was made almost entirely by Marina, with Mango sitting in the perch outside looking very bored. He fed her in the nest during that phase.
The first two eggs hatched at 23 days of incubation, eggs number three and four hatched at 22 days of incubation and egg number five was accidentally perforated by the parents just after egg number four hatched, when they were trying to clean shell debris of number four egg that were covering egg number five. Chick of the egg number five did not survived being forced born two days earlier.
The egg shell debris covering the egg in the picture above was quite similar to the situation that lead to egg number five perforation. Above you can see the first chick minutes after hatching. The parents seems to feed very little the babies in their first day of life.
Above, the next day was hacth day for baby number two. You can see the difference between the colour of the down of both babies. Baby number 1 which is belly up has a orangish down meaning it belongs to the yellow/green series, baby number 2 (belly down) has a whitish down typical of birds from the white/blue series.
Below you can see that all four eggs hatched, but only baby number 2 has whitish down. The other thee are from the yellow/green series mutations. In that picture Baby four had just hatched and babies one, two and three were 4, 3 and 2 days old.
At the ages of 6 and 5 days old, babies number one and two had already pin feathers showing up along their spines.
As soon as baby number four hatched I started to follow the degree of crop filling every two hours. I attributed a percentage degree and wrote in a logbook to detect if the couple was having problems to feed all four babies.
I had noticed that Mango was showing evident signs of fatigue when the first baby was 7 days old. Mang was responsible for feeding Marina and the babies, so I guess too little food was stopping at his own crop and he started to sleep a lot in the perch, particularly in the early hours of the morning.
At that point in time, with babies ranging from 9, 8, 7 and 5 days old respectively, my logbook accused that Marina was feeding less and less babies number three and four. She stopped to feed the youngest altogether when he was 6 days old and I started to feed this baby every two hours. It was not easy with chicks that young as you can see below:
Unfortunately this young chick was found dead in the next morning. I then put all my efforts to save baby number three and start a five days effort to feed it while letting it in the nest with the its siblings. It was a very sad moment as the baby simply would not develop an inch. No pin feathers, just a very little progress in size and its eyelids where about to open, but all this with maybe a one week lag. This baby also was found dead in the morning when it had 10 or 11 days old but looked like a 5 days old chick.
Baby number three taught me two lessons. Marina knew what she was doing when she stopped feeding the last two babies. Something was wrong with them, she knew it somehow and yet as very patient with me trying to save the babies and putting them back in the nest. The second lesson is that animals bred in captivity are more prone to have babies born with weaknesses that make them impossible to save.
Below they are 12, 11 and 10 days old
ThatĀ“s how a clutch of five turns to a clutch of two... Thankfully the two older chicks were doing very well, below you can see them with 16 and 15 days old.
Considering Marina and Mango were in their first clutch, they were performing very well! Nevertheless they were showing signs of fatigue and the babies were nowhere close to the 40-50 days they take to leave the nest. Besides that, I think that a baby born in captivity can have a better life if it learns to not fear humans, so I decided to hand raise the two brothers.
When they reached 20 and 19 days old, they were good to go to the "school" to learn not to fear humans. IĀ“ve prepared two boxes to keep them individually enhancing the bond they might develop with people. The boxes were kept side by side all the time and under a heat source carefully positioned to avoid overheating.
IĀ“ve fed them the best available baby formula we have here:
At that age of 20 days old IĀ“ve fed them every three hours, filling their crops with 5 ml of formula each.
Below is baby number 1, that I named as Kwanza (which means "first" in Swahili) as a triple reference as it was the first born, it has the ancestral colours and a reference to the species native continent.
Below its brohter, the dutch blue baby that was named as Nisha
Since they still have weak legs at that age, IĀ“ve put a cup inside the box to accommodate the babies with their legs close together. Their legs will be strong enough to not spread and allow them to walk when they are about 26 days old.
One week later, Kwanza and Nisha with 27 and 26 days
Below is Kwanza 33 days old
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvJ6K5XUPd0&ab_channel=BluebirdC
and Nisha 32 days old
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmto9KJrjIs&ab_channel=BluebirdC
This video below is to show them together. Kwanza already shows a much more social personality, looking to interact with its sibling and with me. Nisha is more independent and less sociable as it shows no will to interact other than to get food
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSehVH3U7fM&ab_channel=BluebirdC
I would like to share this story with you and hopefully help to provide more information to anyone that is beginning to breed lovebirds.
This is the story of a pair of Agapornis roseicollis peach faced lovebirds that are also from the "long feather" lineage. A friend of mine is an enthusiast with the "long feather" and provided me a couple that was about to lay their first clutch. "Long feathers are found only at roseicollis species and a can reach sizes up to 50% bigger than a common roseicollis. They also have more fluffy feathers and a brightest tone of colours.
Some of you have already met with Mango (the red faced male) and Marina (the white faced female). Mango is the ancestor / wild colour pattern which I find very beautiful (Red, green with a blue rump) and Marina is a dutch blue opaline mutation, also a gorgeous shade of blue green body.
Roseicollis lovebirds use to bath frequently when they are feeling a rising interest in mating. The first time they bathed together was last August 28th and the morning after I observed the first (unsuccessful) attempt to copulate.
August 29th was also the first day Marina showed interest in putting stripes of straw in her rump and thus starting nest building.
August 30th I observed a successful mating and then exactly 10 days later the first egg was laid.
The clutch usually come as eggs laid every other day, it was not like that for this clutch as the first and second eggs were just 24 hours apart. Marina put five eggs at September 10th, 11th, 13th, 15th and 17th. The incubation was made almost entirely by Marina, with Mango sitting in the perch outside looking very bored. He fed her in the nest during that phase.
The first two eggs hatched at 23 days of incubation, eggs number three and four hatched at 22 days of incubation and egg number five was accidentally perforated by the parents just after egg number four hatched, when they were trying to clean shell debris of number four egg that were covering egg number five. Chick of the egg number five did not survived being forced born two days earlier.
The egg shell debris covering the egg in the picture above was quite similar to the situation that lead to egg number five perforation. Above you can see the first chick minutes after hatching. The parents seems to feed very little the babies in their first day of life.
Above, the next day was hacth day for baby number two. You can see the difference between the colour of the down of both babies. Baby number 1 which is belly up has a orangish down meaning it belongs to the yellow/green series, baby number 2 (belly down) has a whitish down typical of birds from the white/blue series.
Below you can see that all four eggs hatched, but only baby number 2 has whitish down. The other thee are from the yellow/green series mutations. In that picture Baby four had just hatched and babies one, two and three were 4, 3 and 2 days old.
At the ages of 6 and 5 days old, babies number one and two had already pin feathers showing up along their spines.
As soon as baby number four hatched I started to follow the degree of crop filling every two hours. I attributed a percentage degree and wrote in a logbook to detect if the couple was having problems to feed all four babies.
I had noticed that Mango was showing evident signs of fatigue when the first baby was 7 days old. Mang was responsible for feeding Marina and the babies, so I guess too little food was stopping at his own crop and he started to sleep a lot in the perch, particularly in the early hours of the morning.
At that point in time, with babies ranging from 9, 8, 7 and 5 days old respectively, my logbook accused that Marina was feeding less and less babies number three and four. She stopped to feed the youngest altogether when he was 6 days old and I started to feed this baby every two hours. It was not easy with chicks that young as you can see below:
Unfortunately this young chick was found dead in the next morning. I then put all my efforts to save baby number three and start a five days effort to feed it while letting it in the nest with the its siblings. It was a very sad moment as the baby simply would not develop an inch. No pin feathers, just a very little progress in size and its eyelids where about to open, but all this with maybe a one week lag. This baby also was found dead in the morning when it had 10 or 11 days old but looked like a 5 days old chick.
Baby number three taught me two lessons. Marina knew what she was doing when she stopped feeding the last two babies. Something was wrong with them, she knew it somehow and yet as very patient with me trying to save the babies and putting them back in the nest. The second lesson is that animals bred in captivity are more prone to have babies born with weaknesses that make them impossible to save.
Below they are 12, 11 and 10 days old
ThatĀ“s how a clutch of five turns to a clutch of two... Thankfully the two older chicks were doing very well, below you can see them with 16 and 15 days old.
Considering Marina and Mango were in their first clutch, they were performing very well! Nevertheless they were showing signs of fatigue and the babies were nowhere close to the 40-50 days they take to leave the nest. Besides that, I think that a baby born in captivity can have a better life if it learns to not fear humans, so I decided to hand raise the two brothers.
When they reached 20 and 19 days old, they were good to go to the "school" to learn not to fear humans. IĀ“ve prepared two boxes to keep them individually enhancing the bond they might develop with people. The boxes were kept side by side all the time and under a heat source carefully positioned to avoid overheating.
IĀ“ve fed them the best available baby formula we have here:
At that age of 20 days old IĀ“ve fed them every three hours, filling their crops with 5 ml of formula each.
Below is baby number 1, that I named as Kwanza (which means "first" in Swahili) as a triple reference as it was the first born, it has the ancestral colours and a reference to the species native continent.
Below its brohter, the dutch blue baby that was named as Nisha
Since they still have weak legs at that age, IĀ“ve put a cup inside the box to accommodate the babies with their legs close together. Their legs will be strong enough to not spread and allow them to walk when they are about 26 days old.
One week later, Kwanza and Nisha with 27 and 26 days
Below is Kwanza 33 days old
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvJ6K5XUPd0&ab_channel=BluebirdC
and Nisha 32 days old
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmto9KJrjIs&ab_channel=BluebirdC
This video below is to show them together. Kwanza already shows a much more social personality, looking to interact with its sibling and with me. Nisha is more independent and less sociable as it shows no will to interact other than to get food
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSehVH3U7fM&ab_channel=BluebirdC
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