These clutches began hatching June 18, 19 and 20. By three weeks of age, parent Bourkes spend more time out of the nest than in it. The optimum age to begin hand feeding is also about three weeks, although I've hand fed a few birds from day one, when necessary, and they did fine.
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| Parents, Flame and Fuchsia were both hand fed and are very tame. Their first baby hatched on June 19, then every other day thereafter. Four babies here. |
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| These two are from Rhett and Cherry, my oldest birds. (His 1st mate was Scarlett and hers was Bing).Their first egg hatched June 18, 2012. Four of the five eggs hatched, however, two babies had dark stomachs, indicating some internal physical defect. Neither survived long. |
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| Rosie and Pretty Boy are the proud parents of these two. She laid four eggs. Only these two were fertile. Rosie was hand fed and is very tame. Her mate will get on my finger if I insist, but he was not hand fed and isn't as tame as the others. |
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| Looks like he will explode! So full he can barely move. This is an early photo of one of Cherry's babies (also shown in the 2nd photo above when older). I was worried about how absolutely stuffed she'd made her two, but apparently it didn't do any harm. He's healthy and happy. |
On Friday I'll begin hand feeding some, or maybe all of these. I may leave one in each nest for the parents to finish...haven't decided yet. I don't want the parents to be upset over having all their children stolen at once, but two of the pairs are tame and will want to "share" in the hand feeding process with me. They like to eat the hand feeding formula whenever they get a chance. I'll be hand feeding at least five of the eight. Flame, Fuchsia and Rosie all join in when I'm hand feeding. The babies will all share the same cardboard box and later the same cage. Colored bands help me remember who their parents are.
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| Six Baby Lady Gouldian finches have their own cage away from Mom and Dad now. They need new homes. |
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| Flame and Fuchsia are bathing in their water dish. So is their bachelor neighbor, Sweetheart, next door. Sometimes they start splashing me before I can even finish giving everyone fresh water. They're so cute! |
May all your eggs hatch and
all your babies grow to be beautiful adults.
Peace & Blessings.
2 comments:
Hi,
We had 2 eggs hatch yesterday. They Bourke, we would like to hand feed but, don't know how to go about it. This is only our 2nd clutch the first time there were 5 babies, this time 4 eggs and so far 2 babies. Also, do we need to put a heater in the room?
Thank you so much
Terry
Congratulations. The optimum time to hand feed is at three weeks of age...select the first hatched and feed all of them at once, as they help keep each other warm. As for a heater, our house is about 70 degrees year around, varying about two degrees either way. Mothers can keep their young warm.
If your babies are taken away from mom to hand feed, you do need to keep them warmer until they are feathered. I have posts on hand feeding that show photos of the small electric heater with oil in it that we use. We put it under part of their box hanging over the edge of a table, so they can move from the warm side to a cooler one as necessary. Newly hatched chicks can't do that, but at three weeks they are more mobile. I've hand fed day-old chicks, but only when rejected by their mother. This only happened with two very young hens whose younger mates wouldn't help, so they settled on feeding two babies and rejected two.
It's much easier to wait until baby Bourkes are three weeks old to begin hand feeding. I put them in a small oblong box (a shoebox or something similar). Bottom has pine shavings with paper towels above that can be thrown out as they become soiled...actually at every feeding.
Enter handfeeding into the search box and you should get more information. Best of Luck. You will have the sweetest of birds!
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