# Cockatiel Egg and Chick Thread



## SnowyShiloh

I thought maybe you guys would like to follow along as my cockatiels have babies, so I'm starting this thread! I plan to update it with photos and information about the eggs, and with luck, photos and info about the chicks 

A bit of info about cockatiel reproduction: Eggs are usually laid once every 48 hours. The average clutch (what a "litter" of eggs is called) has 5 eggs. Both parents take turns incubating the eggs, which have to be sat on pretty much 24 hours a day for 21 days. The chicks usually don't hatch at the same time since they were laid on different days. When the chicks hatch, the parents both take care of them.

The parents are Arthur, my 12 year old normal gray cock, and Poppet, my approximately 2 1/2 year old Lutino hen. Here they are:







They have been together for a year and a half now and are very much in love. They're first time parents and they had a rough start at parenting, but seem to be catching the hang of things now!

Here is Poppet with the eggs:






8! Wow, huh? Theoretically, cockatiels will only lay eggs if they have a nest box, but Arthur and Poppet felt the need to be parents and went on ahead and laid them on the cage floor. She started laying the day after Skyler died, May 14th. She laid an egg every other day, resulting in 4 eggs. They were all laid on the cage floor, but we bought them a nest box and moved the eggs in there. The eggs have a 7-10 day "grace period" before they have to be incubated 24 hours a day, but unfortunately Arthur and Poppet didn't really know what to do so those eggs never began to develop  Then the parents took a break for a week or so, Poppet started laying again (this time in the nest box), and now there are 4 new eggs ! Thankfully, Arthur and Poppet seem to have figured out what to do now and are incubating the eggs like pros  I've candled the eggs (held them up to a small flashlight) and two of the eggs definitely have embryos in them. One of the others looks like it has one just beginning to develop (it was just laid 3 days ago and it takes a while for things to become visible), and I don't know if the 4th one does since it was just laid yesterday. Interestingly enough, the last egg of the previous batch looks like it has an embryo too, but I think it died after not being incubated properly. If it continues to develop, we'll know! Also, after I took this picture, I removed 2 of the dud eggs that were laid 3 weeks ago on the advice of some cockatiel breeders because it's difficult for the parents to incubate more than 6 eggs properly. I left one dud egg and the one with the possibly dead embryo because the extra eggs can help keep the fertilized eggs warm.

So, as of right now, we have: 2 definite growing embryos, 1 most likely just beginning to develop embryo, 1 is too early to tell, and 1 likely dead embryo. It takes approximately 21 days for an egg to develop, so if all goes well, we should have the first chick here in about 2 weeks! I also wouldn't be surprised if Poppet lays another egg or two. A lot can go wrong, but hopefully we'll get at least 1 birdy out of this, which we will of course keep


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## TinysMom

This is so fascinating. Now for a few questions. 

How often will they lay a clutch? As in...what has to happen for them to decide to lay the eggs? (What made them breed? springtime?)

how long do the babies stay with the parents after they hatch?

I'm sure I"ll have more questions - but this is cool...


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## irishbunny

Aww how cute! 
I have only hatched chickens a few times, I really want to hatch more this Summer so hopefully one of my chickens will want to start sitting on eggs 

Hope they hatch!


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## hartleybun

im hooked! i hope all goes well - they are such a beautiful couple too.


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## SnowyShiloh

I'm glad there's some interest  I didn't really expect Arthur and Poppet to breed- the things I've read said that they won't do it unless they have a nest box. So much for that! They've been together for a year and a half and haven't tried to have babies until now. We're probably going to split Arthur and Poppet up once the babies grow up. We'll pair Arthur with a male baby and Poppet with a female baby. I don't want them to just keep breeding forever because that's not healthy and there's no way to spay or neuter a bird! Cockatiels form monogamous relationships, but it's usually not too hard for them to bond with another bird. Arthur and Poppet were best buds within minutes of meeting- she actually moved into his cage the day she met him because they got along so well! That's another neat thing about tiels- they're very gentle. It's pretty rare for cockatiels to be aggressive or violent. If they don't like another bird, they'll ignore it 

Peg, cockatiels usually have babies in the spring or summer- when the light increases (we live in the land of the midnight sun, for goodness sake!) and it gets warmer. They decide to have babies if they feel safe and have good food and water. And like I said before, they're SUPPOSED to only do it if they have an enclosed place to make their nests! They're very interesting- they can kind of pick when to have babies. Arthur and Poppet mate a lot (and have ever since we got Poppet), but haven't laid eggs until now. That's not unusual either. Arthur and his first mate were like that too.

The babies wean after about 10 weeks. The interesting thing is that they practically look like their parents by the time they're a month old! Also, the parents usually double clutch, which means they lay their eggs, incubate them, raise their babies, then do it all over again. So they usually have 2 batches of babies every year.

As you can imagine, I've been doing tons of research about breeding cockatiels. And, to be honest... I'm terrified. Oh my gosh, there are so many things that can go wrong! And I'm going to be gone for several days in the middle of July (Paul will be home to take care of the birds though), then the wedding is on August 1st and we already have our honeymoon planned and paid for. The babies will be around 1 month old when the wedding rolls around. Thankfully, they'll be slightly more independent by then, but we'll be gone for 6 days and have to rely on someone to come by and take care of them... Maybe the right thing to do would be to cancel the honeymoon. That would be really sad, we'd lose the money, and you know the saying "don't count your chickens before they hatch?" Well, I don't want to go canceling our plans when we may not even end up with baby birds.

Long, sorry! Does anyone have any other questions?


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## Nela

Are they wearing diapers?  (Sorry didn't read everything)


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## SnowyShiloh

Nela, yeah- those are their flight suits. It's essentially a bird diaper. You fold up a little square of toilet paper and put it in the butt of the suit. They get into their suits when they're going to be out of their cage for long periods because I don't like when they poop on me and everywhere else. They were kind of weirded out by wearing the suits at first, but have gotten used to it  I bought a pretty flowered one for Poppet and a manly (well, manliER) blue and green dot one for Arthur. Little Bird, a tiel I had several years ago (I miss him!) had a little rainbow one he'd wear whenever he came out too. If you can get your bird used to them, they're great because of the poop thing and because you can attach a little leash to the suit and take them outside without danger of the bird flying away! Little Bird used to go to the beach with me. If I were a guy, he would have been a GREAT way to meet girls :kiss:


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## SnowyShiloh

Just looked in the nest box again! I'm doing it once a day so Arthur and Poppet get used to me messing around in there. Plus, it's good to know what's going on! There are still 6 (took 2 of the duds away yesterday), which is good. Don't want Poppet laying too many and getting weak. I candled them all really quickly (it only takes a few seconds per egg), and Egg C (the one that I said last night probably had an embryo but I couldn't tell) DEFINITELY is fertile. There are little veins inside, and I saw what has to be one of the coolest things I've ever seen: the little baby's heart beating! Isn't that awesome? So we have 3 fertile eggs. Eggs A, C and D. I was being silly when I marked them and didn't actually candle them first so I didn't know which was most developed, but D is the farthest along, then A, then C. Egg B looks empty so far, but we'll know for sure in a few days. The egg that I thought probably had a dead embryo doesn't seem to have developed in the past few days, so it probably did die.

Poppet is being a great mom and only leaves the nest box to eat, drink and poop, while Arthur is guarding her and the eggs. He goes in to nest on them when Poppet is out, I think he'd sit on them even more if she'd give him the chance. Yay for good parents!

That's it for now


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## Nela

Cool Shiloh! I remember the poop being a bit of a downer when I had my tiels. I really enjoyed leaving them out but not having their poop everywhere!I think those are neat. :biggrin:


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## fuzz16

so excitin! keep us updated!


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## hartleybun

*SnowyShiloh wrote: *


> Nela, yeah- those are their flight suits. It's essentially a bird diaper.




well! you learn something every day!


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## irishbunny

Aw the flight suits are cute, and a good idea  I remember being at this woman's house, she had a bird that used to be out most of the time and there was always poop everywhere  I think she should have bought one of these


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## SnowyShiloh

Tonight's update: Poppet laid another egg! And Egg B definitely has a tiny little bitty embryo in it  I saw its little beating heart. SO cool. So we have Eggs A, B, C and D with confirmed growing embryos! WOW! I'll be able to tell if Egg E, the one laid today, has an embryo here in a few days. Considering that the other 4 have babies, I'm willing to bet it does, too. I removed one of the dud eggs so there's still a total of 6 in the nest. There's only one dud egg left, that's the one that has the tiny little dead embryo. If she lays another egg (which I hope she doesn't), I plan to remove the last dud egg and crack it open to see what's inside.

Now, I just need Miss Poppet to knock it off with the egg laying. Girl is depleting her calcium and nutrient stores. I'm hoping that now she's laid 5 new eggs, she'll feel her clutch is complete. Also, if by some miracle they all hatch (since they're first time parents and I'm a first time... grandparent?), Arthur and Poppet may have a tough time feeding all of those little ones. The eggs will probably hatch every other day since they were laid every other day, so at least they won't just have 5 new babies all at the same time. The thing with birds is that the parents feed the biggest, strongest, and loudest babies first. With how these eggs are being laid, one of the babies will be over a week old when this newest egg hatches. There's a biiiig difference between the size of babies that age and the tiny one may get neglected.

I'll try not to get too ahead of myself and learn as much as I can about handfeeding, just in case... I already bought a bag of handfeeding formula in case we need it!


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## luvthempigs

Very cool watching this thread as I have tiels of my own 

I want to see more pic's of the flight suits :biggrin2:


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## SnowyShiloh

Got a peek at the eggs again. I noticed last night that one of the more developed eggs looked darker inside. Don't know if it's because the chick is growing or if it may have died, but tonight I noticed a tiny chip on the egg shell. That's bad because moisture evaporates through the break. I wouldn't have noticed it if not for shining the flashlight through the egg. The baby may have died already or it may still be alive. In any case, you can patch eggs with clear nail polish and a tiny piece of toilet paper and it should be fine, so we're off to go get some nail polish! Wish me luck with the patching! Also this is a great example of why I should look at the eggs every day- I wouldn't have known the egg was chipped otherwise...

Oh and I could see the baby moving in one of the eggs! Not just the heartbeat this time  So cool


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## hartleybun

thank you for the update - hope all goes well with the patchingray:


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## SnowyShiloh

Patch job was successful! Paul and I ended up walking to WalMart (open 24 hours) to get the nail polish, it's about a mile and a half away.

Unfortunately, when I went to return the egg, Arthur was in the nest box. He is a VERY protective daddy, which I'm glad for, but the silly bird was jumping up and down on the eggs as he tried to leap out to bite me (he's not normally like this, just when he has eggs to protect)! I really hope he didn't break any of them. I didn't want to look too closely because the longer I had the lid open, the longer he was freaking out and trampling them. He wouldn't leave the nest box and I couldn't just wait to put the egg back later because the embryo will die if it's not kept warm properly. I hope they're okay! I'm going to be worrying about the eggs until I can check them again... On the one hand, I don't want to disturb the parents, and on the other, if he DID crack any and they're small cracks, I could do the nail polish trick on them too. 

Also I'm pretty sure Poppet is going to lay another egg. When a bird lays an egg, they hold their poop in which results in enormous droppings. She did that tonight.


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## hartleybun

we have swallows nesting in our utility room - the poor male is behaving the same as arthur now we cant go near the fridge without him flapping in front of our faces. it isnt as if they arent used to us - they've been in residence for a month:biggrin:


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## SnowyShiloh

It's funny and rather endearing that he's so protective of his eggs. He's always had an attitude (he is a diva bird if there ever was one), but would never bite me normally. He'll go back to normal once he doesn't have little ones to defend! I call it the beak of death. For some reason being bitten by cockatiels isn't as upsetting as being bitten by other animals. Luca (Arthur's old mate) used to bite me hard enough to draw blood, so they can certainly chomp when it comes down to it, but it never really bothered me. Maybe because they don't actually have teeth? Maybe because I can always see exactly what's happening? Being bitten by a cockatiel is more like being pinched really hard...


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## SnowyShiloh

Phew! I checked the eggs again and Arthur didn't crack any of them. What a relief! Now I'm going to leave them in peace for a while... I gave them some millet to make up for me meddling so much these past few hours. They don't know that the meddling was for their babies' sake!


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## SnowyShiloh

Checked the eggs again tonight. Egg A, the one that I patched last night, is dead  The inside of the egg looks dull and there's a blood ring, which forms when the embryo dies. I don't know if it died because of the chip on the egg (seems unlikely since it was there for less than 24 hours and I was already wondering if the chick was alive the night before the chip formed) or just died for some reason. 

However, Egg E, the one that was laid 2 days ago has the *tiniest* little heartbeat in it. I had to look really, really close, but I could see a teeeeeny bit of movement. There aren't even visible veins yet. I'm guessing that tomorrow night I'll be able to see some veins! 2 days is really early to see an embryo anyway, I only saw it because I was looking really hard. I also saw the baby in Egg D, which is the most developed egg (it's due to hatch in only 10-13 days!) moving around some. I couldn't see body parts, but I could see shadows moving. Cool!

So we still have 4 confirmed fertile eggs. Poppet hasn't laid another yet but I think she may tomorrow.


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## Raspberry82

That is so neat! I've never seen cockatiel eggs before. Can't wait to see them start hatching! Do you think the babies will all look like the mom/dad?


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## SnowyShiloh

Hi Raspberry  Cockatiel genetics are very interesting. I don't know if either bird carries another mutation (which is what the colorings/patterns are called, it doesn't mean anything bad), but if they do, they're sex linked mutations. Assuming Arthur's just a normal grey and Poppet is just a Lutino, all of the babies will be normal greys like Arthur, but the boys will carry the Lutino gene. If Arthur carries the Lutino gene (which is possible, he came from a small birds only pet store that bred their own birds and he was one of the only normal grey birds- the others were all different), then half the babies will be greys and half will be Lutinos. If Arthur carries the gene for the mutations of cinnamon or pearl, then all of the boys will be grey, half of the girls will be grey, and the other half of the girls will be whatever the mutation is. So it's not unlikely that we'd end up with most of the babies looking like Arthur, none of the babies looking like Poppet, then a baby or two that looks like neither of them! The funny thing is that because of how the sex linked mutations work, if Arthur was the Lutino and Poppet the normal grey, all of the girl babies would look like Arthur and all of the boy babies would look like Poppet.

Sorry, long answer that may not have been very clear, but, in short... I expect all the babies to look like Arthur


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## hartleybun

:nerves1:nerves1how can you remain so calm?


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## luvthempigs

Are you planning to hand feed or let the parents take care of feeding the babies?


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## SnowyShiloh

Donna, I want to just flash forward a couple weeks and have the chicks be here! Better yet, flash forward 3 months so I know the chicks hatched and grew up just fine. I'll be a little sad if some of the eggs don't hatch, but be much sadder if some of the chicks die  I really hope we get at least one baby birdy out of this. I miss my wonderful tiel, Little Bird (he died several years ago), and with plenty of handling, these babies could easily turn out as sweet as he was.

Maria, the chicks will be parent raised. I don't have the skills to handfeed and there's no one to teach me. If the parents don't feed the babies, of course I'll try to step in. I could see feeding them by hand some when they're three or so weeks old- they're much less likely to aspirate or any of the dozens of things that can go wrong with handfeeding then. Tiny chicks are so delicate and it's so easy to kill them  Even though the chicks will be raised by their parents, I plan to handle them a lot so they'll be sweet. Handle them every day for just a minute or so when they're tiny, then when they're 2 or 3 weeks old, handle them for longer periods of time every day. Hand feeding alone doesn't make birds tame- some people with lots of baby birds hand feed them, but only spend time with them when they're being fed so that doesn't really result in super tame babies.


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## JadeIcing

I have been following this. My aunt and uncle used to raise them. They hand fed all their babies. My aunt spent more time with them than the parents.


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## SnowyShiloh

Tonight's egg update! Egg E, the one that I saw nothing but the *tiniest* little bitty bit of a speck moving in 2 nights ago, now has lots of little veins and a wiggly embryo! The other three fertile eggs are developing nicely too  In the older eggs I could see shadows of the baby moving around. The first egg is now halfway through its incubation! The chick inside looks something like this now: http://animalscience.ucdavis.edu/research/parrot/c/c08.htm

Tomorrow the chick will grow down feathers all over its body! 

Alicia, I'm sure those babies were super sweet, too  Little Bird was rescued by his parents at 3 days old- she opened the nest box to find that the parents had already killed the other chicks and were working on killing him. I actually got to see and hold him when he was 10 days old- didn't know I'd be taking him home then- and he still had a gigantic scab on his back from the attack. I don't know how he survived it! So he was hand raised from three days on. He spent most of his time with the breeder and was so incredibly sweet and well socialized!


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## JadeIcing

Yes they were. They were the best birds ever. They just recently started keeping them again. :biggrin:


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## NorthernAutumn

I gotta say.... AWWWWWW!

I just read this thread from top to tail... what neat birds! 
That's awesome that you are actually able to monitor embryo growth and help Poppet out with her eggs a bit.

I LOLd at the flight suits. Those are absolutely ingenious. That would totally sell me on having a bird 

Looking forward to all the updates.. I hope you put up a cockatiel cam when the babies hatch.. heck, now would be good too


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## SnowyShiloh

Autumn, I'm glad you're enjoying the thread  I love the flight suits too! They're so practical. I hate being pooped on and having poop everywhere (bird poop is messier than bunny poop), so the flight suits are great. A lot of birds won't accept them right off the bat so you have to work with them, but it's worth it. Birdy likes it too if it means he gets so spend more time out of the cage 

Today in egg news, the oldest chick is 13 days old and is now covered in down! He will hatch in just 5-8 more days! I'm a little anxious now because it was at this stage 8 years ago when Michaela died suddenly and left Arthur and her eggs behind. Everything was going so well until then  Her death was an utter shock- I rushed her to the vet because she was kind of teetery, the vet gave her a calcium injection and said she'd be fine and we could bring her home in the morning. He called in the morning to say she'd died  I was so heartbroken, but not as much as poor Arthur who did a wonderful job of incubating the eggs all by himself for a few days before he gave up because he missed Michaela. I tried to keep the eggs warm with a heating pad, warm crockery bowl and towel, and even putting them in my shirt (they need to be 98 degrees) for a day before I found a breeder to take them. The breeder came right over that afternoon to take the eggs home to her pair of experienced birds with infertile eggs, but they never hatched  There were so many things that could have gone wrong in the previous couple of days. We ended up cracking the eggs open and saw 6 perfect little yellow down covered babies. I really hope poor Arthur actually gets to be a daddy this time around because he tried so hard last time and I'm sure he remembers it!


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## hartleybun

cockatiel cam sounds a good idea!


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## SnowyShiloh

A cockatiel cam would be great, but I don't have any way to do that! The nest box is pretty much completely dark inside and also I don't have a web cam  I will take some videos of the chicks once they hatch though!


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## TinysMom

I'm not a big fan of birds - but this thread is so fascinating. 

I look for it every day at least once to see if it is updated...


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## SnowyShiloh

Peg, it's funny that you don't like birds because you seem like you'd be a good bird person  I'll bet if you had a really sweet bird, you would be absolutely in love with it! In any case, I'm glad you're reading along 

Egg update for today: Oh my gosh! The oldest egg is 15 days today! That means we could have a chick here in as little as 3 days :shock: It will probably be more like 6 though. Maybe 7. It all depends on how warm the eggs are kept and when exactly the parents started to incubate  The big milestone for the oldest chick is that today his intestines will be pulled into his body. Exciting! I'll probably candle them one more time tomorrow morning, then knock it off until the chick hatches. The chick has to peck its way out of the egg in a certain way, and can get disoriented if the egg is moved too much. If he gets disoriented, he may not peck the egg in the right direction and could die  A lot of breeders monitor chicks that are in the process of hatching and candle them a couple times a day to make sure everything's going well, but I'm too nervous about disorienting the chick!


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## SnowyShiloh

Oh and here are a couple Youtube videos of cockatiel babies moving in their eggs:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrGbn4fP8Ws&feature=related[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQt9jz-1KR0&feature=related[/ame]

It's even cooler in person!


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## SnowyShiloh

Oh gosh, I would fail at being a breeder because I'd keep all the babies. I put a little Craigslist post up just to see if anyone would be interested in baby cockatiels and explained that we're still about 3 months away from when the chicks would be ready to go and that there may not even be any chicks that need homes (like if none of them hatch or... uh... we decide to keep them all). That was a couple of hours ago and I've got 2 replies so far. I was a resident assistant when I lived in the dorms on campus, and one of the people who replied was actually one of the girls on my floor! I'm going to be SO picky about choosing people who will love and take care of MY babies for the rest of their (up to 40 years long) lives.

I know that every good breeder really wants to find their babies great homes. Of course! I'm not trying to pretend like these babies are more special than any other babies or more worthy of love. But I already feel so darned attached to the little things and they haven't even hatched. Birds are different than kitties or doggies because with mammals, you may suspect or even know that they're pregnant, but with birds, there is no doubt. Once those little eggs are laid, you can hold them in your hand. You can peek into the egg with a flashlight and see the tiny heartbeat and the baby wiggling around. Then sometimes when the chick is ready to hatch, you have to actually help it out if its shell. It isn't unusual either for chicks to rely 100% on humans from right when they hatch if the parents don't take care of them. It's interesting. I mean, no doubt I'd looooove the babies if my bunny had babies (and I'd be even less likely to be able to part with them), but I already feel so connected to these babies!


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## SnowyShiloh

WHEW! Just had a moment of terror with Arthur. I decided to clip their toe nails since the chicks will be hatching soon and pointy nails can tear up their thin skin. Arthur is molting right now and has new flight feathers which I can't clip yet because they're still full of blood. When I clipped his last toe nail, he flew off my finger... and landed right on the front of the rat cage. As you can imagine, all 3 rats immediately converged on him. I screamed his name while launching off the couch and batted him off the cage with the bath towel I'd had on my lap. Might seem weird, but split second decision making said that I could swing the towel and hit him (gently) with it quicker than I could grab him with my hands since I was a few feet away. The towel knocked him off the cage and he fluttered to the ground. All in all, he was on the cage for probably less than a second. In that amount of time, Saskia already had ahold of his tail feathers and the other girls were grabbing him too! Thankfully, I checked him over and he doesn't seem to have any injuries. He didn't even lose any feathers. I'm a little concerned because about a minute after I picked him up, he shook his head and some liquid droplets came out (and got on my face and mouth, naturally). I think he had just been drinking water and it was still in his crop, so when he landed a bit got in his throat. This happened to Arthur's previous mate, Luca (only much worse, he was wheezing and choking) twice and Luca was okay after a couple minutes, so hopefully Arthur will be fine too! It's better than the alternative of the rats biting his foot off or something. Oh and Arthur was sitting on my finger, moving his head around as I scratched his neck about a minute later. I don't think he really knows what happened!

Just had to share my scary bird moment. That's a great example of why I clip their wings!


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## SnowyShiloh

Tonight's egg update: 

I candled them all again even though I just did it this morning. I was concerned about the dead egg breaking and contaminating the healthy eggs, and a breeder on a cockatiel forum told me to remove any eggs that were fertilized but then died for that very reason. She also showed me exactly how to tell if an egg has died. So I got another look at the egg that I patched, and it's definitely dead. Took a peek at the others too just to make sure everything is okay since I know for sure what dead ones look like! The 4 other eggs are nice and healthy with movin' babies 

I removed the dead egg and the egg that was from their original clutch that I thought may have developed a tiny bit and then died. I was curious, so I put on rubber gloves and opened the eggs. The egg from the last clutch did indeed have a teeny, tiny little embryo in it... Only 2 or 3 days old. The embryo in the patched egg had eyes and a little bitty beak and wings. It died at about 6 days. Amazing how much more developed it was than the other egg, it was about 10 times bigger! It was sad opening the eggs, but interesting and I'm glad I took them out of the nest because they were pretty stinky inside.


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## TinysMom

*SnowyShiloh wrote:*


> But I already feel so darned attached to the little things and they haven't even hatched. Birds are different than kitties or doggies because with mammals, you may suspect or even know that they're pregnant, but with birds, there is no doubt.
> 
> I mean, no doubt I'd looooove the babies if my bunny had babies (and I'd be even less likely to be able to part with them), but I already feel so connected to these babies!


The minute I can see/feel babies kicking in mama's belly - I get the same way you are now. Those babies are now "my" babies and I wonder..."is it a girl? a boy? Will it have a sweet personality? be a diva?"

Even at 3 weeks old now - I can tell you about my babies' personalities thus far. There is a doe that has nice type for this age (she has the widest head and body of the does)...and she is a sweetheart. The two bucks are both sweeties too - but two of the does are more "diva" and a bit "standoffish". They will allow pets - they just don't "Crave" them like the others do.

So trust me - I understand how attached you can feel to them.


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## SnowyShiloh

Isn't it cool, Peg?  I didn't mean to say that baby birds are better than baby bunnies. Just want to make sure no one thinks that's what I mean!


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## TinysMom

I never thought you meant that at all...


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## SnowyShiloh

Today's update! The first chick could hatch as soon as Sunday :shock::shock: It probably will be longer than that (more like Wednesday), but wow. He's starting to run out of room in his egg! Soon we should be able to hear him chirping away inside the egg. Amazing, huh? I REALLY hope Arthur and Poppet know what to do when the chicks hatch, because I've done as much reading about handfeeding as humanly possible and I'm terrified about killing the babies accidentally. There are about 5000000 ways things can go wrong during handfeeding, especially with little tiny chicks. This excellent website describes some of the things that can go wrong: http://www.cockatielcottage.net/feeding.html Feed to slow and the chick can choke. Feed to fast and the chick can choke too. Food 2 degrees too cold? Crop won't empty and chick will die. Food 2 degrees too hot? It'll burn through the chick's crop. You can puncture the baby's esophagus with the feeding syringe. It can get bacterial infections. Feed too much and the crop will get all stretched out and won't empty right. Feed too little and the baby won't grow right. Etc.

To top it off, the avian vet (who is also the bunny vet!) is out of the state for the next couple months so if we need vet care, we're kinda screwed. I'll take them to the old vet (she treated Arthur and Poppet once when they were sick), she knows some about birds, but isn't super well versed.

I'm so worried about the babies dying. Not really them dying I guess, but about them suffering  Chances are all 4 won't make it. I'll be happy if 1 makes it! But I hate the idea of them being in pain. I'm doing everything I can to be ready (I have lots of supplies!) so hopefully it will all be okay.


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## TinysMom

It sounds like you are as prepared as you can possibly be.....

I can hardly wait till you have chicks.


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## Pipp

opcorn2


----------



## SnowyShiloh

Me too, Peg! My very being seems to have a terrible effect on reproduction (the disaster last time Arthur and Michaela tried to breed, I tried to breed my hamster 10 years ago and she ever got pregnant in spite of pairing her with 3 males, etc), so I really hope this works out. Go babies GO!


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## JadeIcing

God I love this thread.


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## SnowyShiloh

Yay, glad you like it, Ali! And Pipp, I didn't see your post because we posted at the same time the other night! I love the popcorn eating icon 

Today is day 18 for our oldest egg! Hatching could happen anytime between today or Wednesday, but since it's the first egg, it may even hatch on Friday since I'm not sure if the parents started incubating it right away. I'm going to guess we still have until at least Tuesday though. The little chick is almost completely developed now, his head should be tucked under his right wing in preparation for hatching!

I'm having to fight the urge to keep peeking in the nest box. I actually haven't looked since Friday. As time goes on, Poppet is getting more protective of the eggs and tends to knock them over in her zeal when I open the lid. I don't want the little baby getting disoriented! I'm pretty sure we'll hear the chick when it's hatching anyway because he will chirp.

I really need to find the cord so I can charge my camera battery! Gosh, I feel like a first time father whose wife could go into labor any minute


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## SnowyShiloh

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! HE'S HATCHING!!!! Okay, I'll stop yelling, but..... the first egg is hatching!!! It has pip marks on it (means he's breaking it open) and I can hear him CHIRPING!!!! That means that we should have a baby tomorrow!!!!


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## JadeIcing

*SnowyShiloh wrote: *


> AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! HE'S HATCHING!!!! Okay, I'll stop yelling, but..... the first egg is hatching!!! It has pip marks on it (means he's breaking it open) and I can hear him CHIRPING!!!! That means that we should have a baby tomorrow!!!!


ray::shock:ray::shock:ray::shock:


----------



## SnowyShiloh

I just took another peek (opened the lid to the box but didn't pick up the egg or anything) and there are lots more pip marks! He's doing great! They're in the correct spot on the egg and he's going in a counter clockwise direction, just like he's supposed to  I heard more cheeping too! C'mon, baby!

Bad thing is I can't find my camera charger  Of all the things to miss! I do have my video camera though so will film him once he's out. He will look like this:







then after his feathers dry, he will look like this!


----------



## Pipp

LOL! Didn't realize they'd look so gnarly! (Sorry little guy). 

Borrow a camera! 


sas :bunnydance:


----------



## SnowyShiloh

Pipp, they really are homely little things! They look like dinosaur aliens. They get even weirder looking for a while, then they start getting cute when they sprout feathers 

I'm going to bed now, but hopefully I'll have a little birdy surprise when I wake up! Please hatch, little baby!


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## JadeIcing

ray:


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## luvthempigs

Yea! I can't wait to see the new baby, how exciting :biggrin:


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## SnowyShiloh

No new baby yet! It's normal for it to take 24-36 hours. Longest 24-36 hours ever! I discovered he was starting to pip at about 4:30 Sunday afternoon, so I'm going to guess he started at 2:30. In that case, it has been approximately 18 hours since he started. The egg looks a bit more pipped than it did when I went to bed. I haven't picked up the egg in a while, but we heard him cheeping at 1 am last night. I stood there with the nest box lid open this morning for about 30 seconds and didn't hear him, hopefully he was just napping and nothing more sinister!

If anyone is in a prayin' mood, think some kind thoughts for the little baby because hatching is pretty dangerous business for a bird. Lots can go wrong!


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## SnowyShiloh

Okay, good news is I'm sitting about 4 feet from the nest box on the couch and I'm pretty sure I'm hearing baby bird chirps. Very quiet, but I'm pretty sure it's him and not Poppet since I've never heard the parents chirp so quietly! They chirp frantically like that when they're having contractions to bring the yolk sack into their bellies.

EDIT: I went and stood with my ear by the nest box and it's definitely the baby  C'mon, babyyyy! Hatch!


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## TinysMom

You have me so excited....I can hardly wait to know you have babies.

By the way - a bit of bragging here - I think baby bunnies look cuter the first two days than chicks do...maybe not by much.

I'm so excited - I almost wish the nestbox was right here - but then I'd be pacing in front of it.


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## irishbunny

Hatching them sounds quite a lot like hatching chickens! We have hatched a few clutches and I love when you can see them developing in the egg and see little heart beats! I love right before they hatch as well you can feel them moving and sometimes hear them chirping  I really want to hatch chicks again now lol! Maybe if one of the ladies decides she is going to start hatching.


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## SnowyShiloh

HE HATCHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He's perfect! Fuzzy and yellow and mama is feeding him! Uploading pictures now!!!


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## hartleybun

squeee!anic:anic::inlove:


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## SnowyShiloh

I'm so happy and so relieved everything went well! And just about bursting with pride for Arthur and Poppet! :toast: I just checked 2 hours ago and there weren't even holes in the shell (just the peck marks from within). I was gettin' a little worried because I read if there aren't light pip marks (not going through the whole shell) around 1/4 of the egg within 24 hours, the chick is in trouble. I hadn't picked up the egg since last night so didn't know how far around the pip marks were. So I washed my hands really well and found Paul's camera (which still had functioning batteries, woohoo!), opened the nest box expecting to find an egg... and instead, found an empty shell! Poppet moved over a bit and the baby peeped out from under her  He's all fluffy and wiggly and chirping up a storm! I only watched for a minute or so, but I got to see her feed him! He bobbed up and down really fast and flapped his tiny wings and chirped loudly when she fed him. It turns out that all that fast chirping I heard earlier was her feeding him! Sometimes they don't feed the babies for 8 hours or so, so she's doing GREAT! Such a great mommy. I was crying like a baby 

Without further ado, I present our little baby birdy!












Here his beak is open mid chirp:






Isn't he the cutest little ugly thing ever? :big kiss: I can tell he's not a Lutino like Poppet because his eyes are black, not red. Also he's not a whiteface (which means no yellow face or orange cheeks) and won't be white when he grows up because his down is yellow. All the other colorations start out with yellow down like his 

We are trying to think up a name for him! We were going to name him Rex after the dinosaur from Toy Story (we LOVE Toy Story and just saw the third one yesterday and baby birds look like dinosaurs), but he hatched on the summer solstice. The longest day of the year  Since we're in Fairbanks, Alaska, that means there will be no dark today. What a great day to hatch, huh? I think he needs a solstice or summery/sunny name. Any ideas?

3 more eggs to go :shock:


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## NorthernAutumn

Congrats, birdie ma!

http://nameberry.com/blog/2009/06/28/summer-baby-names/
http://youcantcallitit.com/2008/06/20/summer-solstice/

How about Julius? July, orange julius, Julius Caeser, etc.
Horus, God of light, sounds pretty good too 

He is one ugly little fuzzball! I'm pretty sure he'll look handsome soon though 

When do his eyes open?


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## myLoki

How exciting!!! I love this thread!

t.


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## luvthempigs

:clapping: Welcome to the world baby birdie &

Congratulations!:stork:


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## BooLette

Oh my goodness! This thread had me on the edge of my seat the entire time I was reading it!

I actually got choked up when you said he hatched!

I LOVE THIS THREAD!!!!:yahoo:


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## SnowyShiloh

Thanks for the kind replies, everyone! I'm over the moon. Paul just got home and we looked at the baby again. He has a nice, full crop, which means he's being fed well! Way to go, mama and daddy! They both spent most of the afternoon in the nest box with the baby. 

Also, I found the perfect name for him! Kiran  It's Sanskrit/Hindi and means "sunbeam." It also means "dust" which is very appropriate since cockatiels are incredibly dusty birds. It is pronounced KEER-in and is a boy or a girl name, which is nice since we don't know if the baby is a boy or a girl. I'm going to spell it Kieran though so it's a bit more phonetic. His nickname, of course, is already Kiki/Kiery. Seems a little more fitting for such a tiny baby.

Here are pictures of Kieran with Arthur and Poppet- Arthur was out of the nest box when we opened it up, and he had to come make sure we were being nice to his baby! In the first picture, the baby is under Poppet's tail- you can kinda see his yellow fuzz sticking out on the right side of her at the base of her tail, between her and Arthur's face.






"Hi baby!"





This is just a close up of the previous picture:


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## hartleybun

:inlove:cuteness overload - how on earth do you guys cope??? and dont the parents look soooo proud too!!


----------



## SnowyShiloh

I got to hold Kieran  Poppet was taking a break from the nest box and I was spraying her with water from a spray bottle (it's important so the other eggs get a bit of humidity), which she loves, but Arthur popped out of the nest box to see what I was doing. I seized my chance and gently picked Kieran up... he chirped at me! He's so fluffy and adorable and looks well fed  I swear he looks bigger already, too big to fit in the egg! I just held him for 30 seconds or so and then put him back. Not to worry, me handling the chicks won't make the parents abandon them or anything. 

I am worried though. After I cleaned the cage papers, Arthur pooped some pretty runny droppings. If he has some sort of infection, Kieran will get sick too. As you can imagine, newly hatched chicks aren't really able to fight off bacteria! Once last year they got sick with runny poop and I took them to the vet several times, medicine didn't work... turns out it was the food. Their bag of pellets hadn't expired yet, but it had started to go bad. When I replaced the bag of food, they were better within days. As soon as the pet store opens tomorrow I'm going to go buy a new bag of food, just in case! And I'm going to worry worry worry my heart out until I know Kieran will be okay! Wish the pet store was open right now but it's 4 am. I would be crushed if he died and so would Arthur and Poppet. I don't think Kieran's pooped yet (it takes a bit of time for a baby bird to poop the first time), but when he does and I can see what it looks like, I'll feel a bit better. Ah, the joys of parenthood: looking at poop.


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## SnowyShiloh

Kieran is still doing his baby bird thing! I picked him up again to check him and he pooped on me. I, of course, took a picture of the poop to post on the bird forum since I'm worried about the parents' poop. He has a full crop and his little butt is clean. He looks way too big to fit into an egg! He's a little quieter than he was yesterday, maybe because he's all hatched and fed now. Hopefully all is well in baby bird land.


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## SnowyShiloh

WOOHOO!!!! The second egg is hatching! I'm guessing Kieran's sibling will be here later today  I picked up the eggs to candle them because I haven't done it in several days and it's important to remove any dead eggs. Good news is all 3 other eggs are doing great, and like I said, one of them is hatching  I can hear his little chirps and feel him moving around in the egg! I got a quick video (to see if the chirps could be heard) and took a couple pictures of the crack marks.

I didn't expect the second egg to hatch until like Friday, these babies are overachievers! This egg was laid on either June 7th or 8th, which means it's only been about 16 days. Apparently they can hatch faster if they're kept really warm, and Arthur and Poppet have sat on the eggs perfectly. The egg that died was laid between Kieran and this egg, so I'm guessing if that egg had lived, we would have had a baby every day for 3 days. Normally eggs hatch every other day. Talk about a lot of stress for new bird parents!

I'm going to go upload the pictures now  And I can't wait to meet little Teddy.


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## SnowyShiloh

Here is the picture of the egg! You can see where Teddy is pipping from the inside 






Also, bonus- it turns out that Photobucket WAS uploading my videos, even though it said it wasn't. Here's Kieran with Poppet earlier. 







I'm uploading the video of the hatching egg right now. The video doesn't look like much, but you can hear him chirping away. I'll post that too of course 

And here's the new chick chirping in his egg! Turn up your speakers so you can hear him  I know the video is fuzzy, but I was trying to get close enough so you could hear him.


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## hartleybun

:thud:more cuteness! the next box looks so clean! is this you or the proud parents?


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## SnowyShiloh

Donna, the parents don't poop in the nest box. They hold it in until they get out. Let me tell you, that leads to some GIANT bird poop! Especially from Poppet, who will stay in the nest box for 8 hours at a time, until Arthur essentially kicks her out so she'll go get some food and water. She's been coming out more today, I assume since she literally is eating for 2 now, but she goes right back to the nest box.

The chick is pooping in the nest box, but they're super tiny little poops. As he gets bigger, he'll back up to the wall and poop around the periphery of the nest box so as not to soil where he and his siblings will be sitting. Smart, huh? I'll also start cleaning the nest box once we have more babies who are pooping more


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## SnowyShiloh

Me, yet again... Last night I was all worried about Kieran because of Arthur's poop and today I was a bit worried because of the color of Kieran's poop and because he was chirping less. I e-mailed a very experienced breeder, she replied that his poop looks perfect and it's completely normal for chicks to quiet down after the first day, and that they should only really chirp when being fed (or stimulated somehow). So everything's good  PHEWWWWW. We got a new bag of bird food too. I'd imagine if there's anything bacterial going on with the parents, it will show in the chicks pretty soon. I'm fanatical about hygiene though!


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## SnowyShiloh

Look who's here 






Meet Teddy! I just went and took a peek, and found little Teddy, fresh from the egg! He will be all fluffy here pretty soon. I hope Arthur and Poppet cope with 2 babies well!

2 eggs left


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## Happi Bun

This is so exciting!! Beautiful parents too. 
The babies _are_ adorable in a alien looking kind of way.


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## SOOOSKA

Shiloh, this is so exciting. Those babies ars so cute, well they will be soon. lol

I listened to the chirping, that was exciting. Geez I get excited seeing the baby birds in my backyard, I can just imagine what you must be feeling.

I look forward to watching them grow.

Susan


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## missyscove

They're cute in that awkward, ugly way... a face only a mother and a forum of people who get excited about poop could love.


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## Pipp

inkbouce:


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## hartleybun

*missyscove wrote: *


> They're cute in that awkward, ugly way... a face only a mother and a forum of people who get excited about poop could love.


:yeahthat::litterhealthy: the parents have such a proud look on their beaks! im loving this thread...now goes off to do me routine poop check of bunnies outdoor litter box:biggrin:


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## LuvaBun

OMG :shock: I just found this thread, and I am Soooo happy for you, Shiloh. This is just awesome. And I swear Arthur is smiling in this picture 






Can't wait to see the chicks grow 

Jan


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## TinysMom

OMG - Teddy seems so TINY now....

I agree - daddy is smiling - big time. As he should...of course!


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## SnowyShiloh

Jan, I'm glad you found the thread!  The baby birds make me think of my sweet Skyler.

I'm glad everyone else likes the thread, too! And Christina, your comment made me laugh  I didn't share this in the thread because I wanted to find out for sure first, but I was worrying a lot this morning that Kieran (Kiki) wasn't being fed well enough. I was SO worried and wondering if I'd have to step in to handfeed. I have been reassured by a very good breeder that both chicks look great and it's normal for baby tiels' crops to be almost empty in the mornings when they're only a couple days old. That's certainly a relief! 

Here are a couple pictures of Kiki and Teddy this morning. I took them so I could show the breeder the size difference between them and so she could see a closeup of Kiki.






brand new babies have terrible balance!











I hope no one thinks I'm being mean by taking them out of the nest box for pictures. It's important for the breeder to visually inspect the chicks after they hatch and several times a day because problems with them can spring up VERY fast. If Kiki really had been having a problem, I could have saved his life by noticing so early. They weren't out of the nest box very long either, of course.

I haven't peeked in on them since 10 this morning (when Kiki had a nice, full crop after being fed), so 7 1/2 hours ago. I can hear feeding noises though! I would peek, but Arthur's in there with Poppet and the chicks and he's REALLY gung ho about protecting the chicks so I don't open it when he's in there if I can avoid it. I don't want him to trample them in his enthusiasm!

The next chick will probably start pecking his way out tomorrow. 2 eggs left to go! Talk about an exciting week, huh?


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## TinysMom

As a rabbit breeder - I think its VERY important they get taken out of the nestbox and inspected daily - several times per day even.....

I gotta say these two are so ugly...that they're cute somehow....in a strange way.


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## SnowyShiloh

Aren't they, Peg? The knowledge that they WILL be cute pretty soon makes them cute now  They look like old man alien dinosaurs. Also, if you look at the picture of Kiki, you can see eye slits! His eyes won't start opening for several more days, but you can see a white line across his eye that wasn't there when he hatched.

I checked the peepers again. Both babies are being fed well. I only picked up Teddy (who is now fluffy!) this time, and he pooped on me. That's pretty good, considering he just hatched! Sometimes they don't poop for 24 hours.


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## TinysMom

Isn't it amazing how excited we get over baby poop and pee?

Wait till they get older and poop and pee...maybe a different reaction?


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## LuvaBun

*TinysMom wrote:*


> I gotta say these two are so ugly...that they're cute somehow....in a strange way.


LOL! Got to agree. Like little punk aliens (but very cute ones).

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

It's funny how chickens and ducks and geese pretty much hatch adorable, but parrots do NOT. It's pretty interesting I think. Parrots are very smart animals, and birds like ducks and geese really aren't. Their babies have to hatch ready to walk around and swim and eat on their own. Parrot babies are totally helpless. Reminds me kind of how people are (supposedly, heh!) smart and it takes years and years for human children to be old enough to live on their own, but animals like dogs are ready a lot younger.

Know what's cool about Teddy? I remember candling his egg a short 15 days ago, I peeked into his egg with my little flashlight, and thought I maybe saw a tiny little speck inside. The next day, he had grown a little more and I could see his heart beating away even though he was still super tiny! And now here he is, a mere 2 weeks later, MUCH bigger (though still little for sure), identifiable as a bird, able to chirp and everything.


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## Nela

Awwww they are so ug... I mean adorable! Lol seriously, they are cute. I used to handfeed cockatiels a lot and I've always really enjoyed it. Glad Poppitis feeding them properly though ^_^ It will be fun to see them as they grow!


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## SnowyShiloh

I want to ask people to think good thoughts for little Teddy. He's having some digestive issues- he's passing whole millet seeds in his poop and has since yesterday. I thought maybe it was normal, but it isn't. I'm going to get some acidophillus capsules to mix in with the parents' water so we can get some good bacteria going in his belly. This was advised by the experienced breeder I'm in contact with. I hope Teddy will be okay! He looks great other than that.

Raising babies is NERVE WRACKING. 

Oh and when I had the babies out to examine them, Arthur decided he needed to investigate and ended up flying around the room when I saw him and tried to shoo him back into his cage. Kudos to Paul for jumping out of bed and running downstairs to grab him when I called for him. I was holding both babies at the time. We're going to have to do something about the rat cage because I have this fear that when the babies get flight feathers, their sudden first flight will end with them on the rat cage and they'll be killed or injured.


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## hartleybun

ray:


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## LuvaBun

Aww, hope little Teddy is OK ray:

I am beginning to think Arnold has a Death Wish - 2 flights near the "Jaws of Death":shock:

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

Teddy's still hangin' in there! He looks good to me. I just got them out of the nest box a few minutes to check them over, and Teddy wouldn't poop on me  The one time I want to be pooped on! I want to see how his poop is. I bought some acidophilus capsules to mix in with the parents' water, hopefully that will help him out. I hope he'll be okay!

I of course got some pictures and video of the little ones to feed everyone's baby bird addiction 

Guess what kind of animal this is?!






They kinda look like big furry caterpillars...






Baby birds! Teddy on the right, Kieran on the left. You can see how much they've grown!
















And the video... They were getting sleepy, I gently tickled Kieran to wake him up a bit 





For the next video I'll back up a bit so the babies are clearer. They're so small that I need to get up close so you can see them though!


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## Numbat

oh WOW! This thread is fascinating! Congrats on the new additions!!! They look so... alien, but in a very cute way :biggrin:

Arthur and Poppet are an absolutely gorgeous couple btw  Hope everything continues to go well!


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## SnowyShiloh

I'm glad you like it, Tess!

I think the third egg may be working on hatching  It's "due" tomorrow, so this is about the time I'd expect it! I can hear really quiet chirping from the nest box, in addition to the babies being fed. I don't want to interrupt when the little ones are being fed, but I will check the egg later


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## SnowyShiloh

YAYYY!! Baby 3 hatched!! I didn't even know he'd started yet! The super tiny chirps were from him  I knew when I opened the nest box and saw the top of an egg shell- I've been removing the shells as the babies hatch.

Hooray for the third baby! Congrats to Arthur and Poppet!

Let me get my photos resized, then I'll post them  He's still all wet, he just hatched!

One egg left...


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## SnowyShiloh

Okay, here is our newest little one! He's kind of hard to see, but he's the tiny wet one. You can see his head!






I let Paul name him, and he picked Neeja. Paul is a Star Wars geek and Neeja and Kieran are characters in his favorite book. Neeja is a male character, but it sounds kinda girly, so it'll work regardless of the baby's sex!

Welcome to the party, Neeja!


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## SnowyShiloh

Okay, I went on and cropped the previous photo so you can see Neeja better. And you can see the 4th egg! I'm actually willing to bet it will hatch tomorrow, since Kieran hatched Monday, the egg that died probably would have hatched Tuesday, Teddy hatched Wednesday and Neeja hatched today, Thursday. Isn't it odd to think of Neeja being in a little egg just like that other one a couple hours ago? You can also see the size difference between the three. Later tonight or tomorrow I'll take a picture of all 3 chicks together so we can see the size difference.
His feathers will be all fluffy and dry then.


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## Nela

Wooo Shiloh! They are looking gooood. I love their names (Jeff is a bigStar Wars fan as well :wink) Not sure I quite understand what is going on with Teddy? Doesn't the mom regurgitate the food, so if he is passing millet seeds, wouldn't the others as well? Hope all will be okay!


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## SnowyShiloh

Yay, thanks for reading Nela! I was replying to your new bunny thread when you were replying to this one 

How it works with feeding the babies is that the parents eat food and water, and store it in their crop, which is like a holding tank that drains into the stomach. So the food isn't digested at all, it's just chewed up and soaked in water. Then they feed that to the babies. Something that a lot of people don't realize is that it's not actually vomiting- birds CAN vomit up from their stomachs partially digested food (Little Bird did it once), but that's not what the babies are fed. Birds don't really chew up small seeds like millet, they just kind of swallow them and then they get digested. So the millet fed to the babies isn't chewed up at all and the babies' digestive systems are supposed to digest it. Kieran is digesting seeds fine, but Teddy isn't. There are whole millet seeds in his poop! Hopefully the acidophilus will help him. The breeder lady said it may be because of the Grape Seed Extract I was putting in the water- she told me to do that because we were a little worried about the parents having a bacterial problem in their guts and grape seed extract kills the bad bacteria. I didn't think of this at the time, but the grape seed extract of course also kills some of the good bacteria and that could be why Teddy isn't digesting right. To tell the truth, I'm a tiny bit annoyed that I was told to give them grape seed extract when it could cause problems like this. I put it in their water just to be safe, but it may have done more harm than good. Now that there's no grape seed extract and the good bacteria instead, hopefully things will clear up for him! It's amazing how attached I've gotten to the little fuzz balls!


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## TinysMom

Um....when do they turn cute?


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## Nela

Awww okay I see, thank you for explaining Shiloh. I didn't realize that the babies' digestive tracts actually had such a role at this age. I thought basically the food was processed by the mum and the babies system just gathered the nutrients. Hopefully, there won't be anymore issues and he will be digesting it okay.  There are times when I miss having the turtledoves and having babies as well. It's a really rewarding experience, cockatiels are especially fun! Hahaha I remember how noisy they get when hungry :shock: Are these your first babies? I don't remember...


----------



## MyLOVEABLES!!

*TinysMom wrote: *


> Um....when do they turn cute?




:rofl:


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## SnowyShiloh

Haha, Peg! Well, cute is kind of a matter of opinion, so here's a page that has a picture of a baby tiel every day, from hatching to when it gets all feathered. 

http://justcockatiels.weebly.com/watch-me-grow.html

I think the babies are cute now (I'm biased), but to me any animal is cuter as soon as its eyes open, which should be around 3 days from now for Kieran. They go from kind of ugly, to looking still ugly but like punk rockers, to kind of scraggly when their feathers are almost grown in, to undeniably cute... when they're actually the size of their parents. Heh. Baby birds actually get HEAVIER than their parents at one point. Arthur and Poppet are pretty small birds (they both weigh about 90 grams, some tiels weigh 120 plus), so I doubt these babies will be hulks when they grow up.


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## TinysMom

great website....can stunted babies survive or are they like peanut rabbits that can't make it?

I gotta admit - baby rabbits aren't always cute at first either...but I'll never tell their mamas that.


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## SnowyShiloh

Baby bunnies are undeniably cuter than baby birds at first. To be honest, I think baby bunnies are always cuter than baby birds. I mean, I like birds and all, but what's cuter than a baby bunny?!

Stunted chicks have a hard time surviving. They're so delicate, so much can go wrong... In a lot of ways, birds are even more fragile than bunnies. A stunted chick that survives is very likely to have health issues as an adult. My Little Bird was stunted and he had lifelong health issues and died at the age of 3 after I sunk several thousand dollars into his vet care. I think his growth was stunted BECAUSE of his problems, rather than that his problems were caused by him being stunted. His breeder was very attentive and fought for him to live... then I did the same when he came to me!


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## SnowyShiloh

It's baby bird photo update time!

All 3 chickies with the remaining egg last night:












The rest of these were just taken a few minutes ago. Kieran chirping/wanting food:






Teddy:






Neeja all fluffed up:






Babies together (left to right, youngest to oldest):











Baby pile!






All 3 are here, I think Neeja is the one at the back:


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## TinysMom

I forget - are you going to keep them all?


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## SnowyShiloh

Peg, it depends on how many baby birds we end up with! I certainly WANT to keep them all. 6 cockatiels is a lot though and if we leave the parents together, I'm quite certain there will be more to come.

Our rough plan is to get the chicks DNA sexed, then when the babies wean, pair Arthur up with a boy chick and Poppet with a girl. That way they can't have babies anymore but will still have a friend to bond with. Cockatiels bond, but they aren't super picky about who they're with for the most part, so Arthur and Poppet shouldn't freak out at not being together anymore. They'll still be able to see each other and come out to play together. They will probably bond with their baby-friend pretty quickly. We'll see. I want to keep 1 chick as a singleton so it will bond strongly to me instead of another bird (he'll still be able to play with the others but won't be caged with another bird). So that's 5 birdies. If we do end up with a 6th, I would probably have a really hard time selling one baby... So might end up keeping all of them anyway. I don't know! We'll see! I just want to make sure to have 1 baby all for myself to be my special little buddy  Also the idea of selling the chicks at this point feels like selling my own children. I will have to find really good owners if we do sell any of them.


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## SnowyShiloh

Haha, Paul is so funny. On the cockatiel forum I post on, there's a lady whose cockatiels laid eggs at the same time as our birds. As in, our first egg was laid on June 2nd, and so was hers. She had 5 eggs too, laid every other day, just like ours. One of her eggs died too. Very parallel! She was getting worried because here I am with 3 chicks, and none of her birds' eggs had hatched... until tonight! Hooray! I showed Paul a picture of their new baby. His reply? "Our babies are cuter." Biased much?


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## hartleybun

:inlove: aaa my fix of baby birds! we have swallows nesting in our shed - 3 chicks also. as they chose the darkest, most inaccessible corner we havent been able to get pics. they are quite used to us pottering around tho' when we realised they were nesting chris put tarpaulin under it to catch any fledglings.


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## SnowyShiloh

Donna, I bet those baby birds are so cute!

Guess what's also cute? A 4th baby cockatiel! The parents left the nest to eat, so of course I swooped in to examine the babies. The last egg is pipping! I can hear the wee one chirping inside too  Doesn't stop getting exciting! Hopefully that means he'll hatch soon. Wow, 4 babies!

In my inspection of the babies, I found that Kieran is starting to sprout feathers  Well, they're still under the skin, but he has tiiiny little dark gray marks where pin feathers are forming on his wings. Right on schedule! They weren't there a mere 12 hours ago. How cool is that?

The other babies are doing well too. I gave the parents some millet again so we could see how the babies' poop is, but none of them pooped on me. Hopefully later! They're growing well though so I don't think they're doing too poorly regardless.

Next time I update, hopefully we'll have our fourth babe!


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## SnowyShiloh

The fourth baby is still working at hatching! He's made more progress and when I hold the egg up to my ear, I can hear him chirping AND pecking at the shell with his little beaky 

Also, Kieran is mastering the baby cockatiel begging for food sound. This is what hungry baby cockatiels sound like: 

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alI2eoxefdY&feature=related[/ame]

It's pretty loud and can be really, really obnoxious. I've actually known of breeders who stopped raising cockatiels because they couldn't stand the sounds the babies make. They make it most of the time when they're awake, too! So far our babies have only been doing cute little chirps when they're hungry. I'm glad Kieran is starting to make the static sound because it means he's developmentally on target. Thankfully the sound doesn't really bug me, Little Bird made a variation of that sound for most of his 3 years on this planet and I got really good at tuning it out!


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## SnowyShiloh

I'm getting a little anxious! 4th egg still hasn't hatched. I've been aware of it pipping for about 13 hours now. I don't know how long he was working to get out before then. You're supposed to give them 36 hours to get out by themselves, then try to help them hatch. Hopefully it doesn't come to that! I can hear him chirping in his egg and when I held a flashlight up to it, I could see him moving his head and beak around in the air cell  I could see, feel and hear every chirp! I tried to capture it on video, but the video didn't turn out that great. You can see him in the egg but not see him moving.


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## hartleybun

:nerves1ray: hope that 4th chick is faring well! we cant really see much of our swallows - just beaks poking up demanding food! they have chosen the darkest, highest part of the shed for their nests. one has the babies in, the other smaller bowl is used by the father. lol! we are watching thru binoculars as we are only going within 6ft of them. anything nearer and the parents start flying around in circles flapping.!


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## SnowyShiloh

Okay, it's been 8 hours since I last checked the nest box right before I went to bed. I hope the egg hatched! Arthur needs to get his feathery little keester out of the nest box so I can check without him trampling his children in his desire to pierce my fingertips. 

Thanks for the good thoughts, Donna! I dreamed about a baby bird hatching. I wonder why... Paul dreamed that we broke into a lady's house where she was keeping lots of bunnies in tiny (like 8 inch by 8 inch) cages and neglecting them and we stole all her bunnies.


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## SnowyShiloh

I swear my hair is going to be white by the time these chicks grow up. The egg still hasn't hatched, but the chick is chirping. I'm considering trying to help him out... I wish I had experience in helping chicks! You're supposed to assist if it's been 24 hours and the chick hasn't pipped 1/4 of the shell. It's been 27 hours since I first noticed pip marks (so he started some time before then, probably hours before) and he's gone around about 1/4-1/3 of the way. The first thing to do is break the shell over the air cell so I can see in and tell if he's drawn in his yolk sack and if he's drawn in the blood from the vessels. I have this article to go off of: http://justcockatiels.weebly.com/assist-hatches.html

I have a heating pad and a cup but not anything with humidity (a cup of water also on the pad and then cover them with an upside down container maybe?) or a thermometer to check air temp. We could go buy a thermometer. I'm worried I'll mess it up and he'll die if I try to help! You aren't supposed to put the egg back in the nest if you've broken part of the shell (you put the baby back once he's hatched, of course). I don't know if he's really stuck or just taking his sweet time.


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## SnowyShiloh

You can see the little eggling moving here:





You can hear him chirping too. The black thing is his eye ball.


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## SnowyShiloh

WE HAVE BABY! PHEW! I heard random chirps (the babies only chirp now if they're being fed), went to investigate, and found an empty shell and a wet, wiggly baby. Mama and papa are taking care of him I got a video of the family really quickly. Arthur was in the nest box (sometimes he doesn't leave for hours and I wanted to check on the egg), so you can see how protective he is. Yay for 4 babies! And yay that I didn't have to help him hatch!

Video uploading now!


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## SnowyShiloh

Hooray! Our little bird family is complete 

I present you with Phoenix! Nela and I named him together. He has a very special name. He's named after her bunny Ashton who passed away a couple years ago, my Skyler (whose middle name was Ashton after her bunny), and her bunny Ashlynn who just died. Also back when Arthur and Michaela tried to have babies but Michaela ended up dying, I named one of the chicks Phoenix. When the mythical phoenix dies, it's reborn out if its ashes (hence the connection to the bunnies with Ash in their names). It seems like a good name for our last chick. Hooray for new life!





In the video, Phoenix is under Arthur's wing but his head pops out partway through  You can see how protective daddy is. Poppet is protective too, but Arthur is really protective. No one messes with his babies! Something funny happened a couple of hours ago- Arthur and Poppet were out of the nest box so they could eat, and I decided to put more clean litter in the box. Took the babies out of the nest box and put them in a bowl so they'd be safe. As I was sprinkling in the clean bedding, Arthur poked his head in the nest box and screamed really loudly. I think he thought I was burying his babies! He calmed down once I showed him the chicks and put them back in the box 

Also, you can see that Kieran's eyes are starting to open! How cute is that?! A mere 2 hours ago, his eyes were quite shut! Way to go baby! His development is right on target  He looks like Mondo Bird next to Phoenix.


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## LuvaBun

Phew! What a relief he's hatched out of the egg 

How's Teddy doing?

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

Jan, Teddy is doing well! He seems to be digesting just fine now and he's growing like a weed  Everyone is doing well. I'm going to check on them again in an hour or so to see if Phoenix has been fed yet. Since he's the youngest chick and so much smaller than the others, he's the most at risk for being neglected. The parents feed the loudest chick first.


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## hartleybun

yay! i love the look on arthur's face!


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## Nela

Shiloh, 

I can't thank you enough. Phoenix will always have a special place in my heart. I'm glad they are all doing well, especially Teddy. I think it's exciting to be able to follow them through your posts and pics.:biggrin:I think Smores agrees, he's binkying up a storm. :shock:


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## SnowyShiloh

Nela, I can tell Phoenix is going to be a feisty bird- he's very chirpy! I got some cute photos of him with Kieran and of all the chickies together.

I'm worried about my little Teddy Bird again. His crop seems to have air in it, which isn't a good thing. I've contacted the nice cockatiel breeder about it. It's odd because in spite of the air in his crop, he's developing really quickly- as you can see in the photo of all 4 babies, his eyes are opening today! 2 days ahead of schedule, and he's also already hissing and begging for food and getting gray feathers. He's ahead of schedule as far as those things go. I hope he'll be okay!

Here are all 4 chicks together tonight:

Phoenix is in front, Neeja is behind him, then Kieran, and Teddy on the end (his eyes are opened a tiny bit in the second picture!)











And Kieran and Phoenix being adorable:


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## JadeIcing

Pure awesome.


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## SnowyShiloh

Good news! It's okay for Teddy to have a little air in his crop! They get it when they gulp air when begging for food  Phew! Do I sound like a worried first time mother or what? Also, I checked him 10 minutes ago and he didn't have any air in his crop then so he must have burped or something 

A bad thing is that I just watched Poppet pluck about 5 feathers from the back of Arthur's head. She's been plucking her legs and belly a bit too since before the chicks hatched. This is a concern because she may end up plucking the chicks. If that happens, she can't be with them anymore because she could seriously damage them... Arthur and I will have to raise them! I'm optimistic though and we'll just see what happens. I like to know what to look out for. 

Oh and the breeder looked at Teddy and said she thought he may end up being a pied rather than a normal grey. That would be pretty cool because pied is my favorite mutation! I assumed all the chicks would be grey like Arthur because of how cockatiel genetics work, but if he has some pied genes lurking in there, Teddy could be pied. We will find out soon enough and I'll love him just as much if he's grey


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## landi

Your pics are brill congrats on your chicks we have 2 that are now 8 weeks old if i suss out how to upload pics i will 
we are now waiting on the next lot to hatch should be any day now. I was reading your comments and you said that you was told by a breeder how to tell if the chick was dead in shell we have 2 eggs going dark i know it could be a chick inside growing it also could be DIS could you let me know please


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## hartleybun

*SnowyShiloh wrote: *


> A bad thing is that I just watched Poppet pluck about 5 feathers from the back of Arthur's head. She's been plucking her legs and belly a bit too since before the chicks hatched. This is a concern because she may end up plucking the chicks. If that happens, she can't be with them anymore because she could seriously damage them... Arthur and I will have to raise them! I'm optimistic though and we'll just see what happens. I like to know what to look out for.


this may be a stupid question but is this for nesting? :?


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## BooLette

Yay! Congrats on all of the babies! They are gorgeous!


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## SnowyShiloh

My little babies are doing well today! Everyone is growing. Teddy and Kieran are getting more feathery. I'll take pictures tonight, the camera batteries died and I need to get some more!

Hartleybun, it's probably not for nesting- cockatiels don't usually pull feathers to put in the nest. We're going to take her to the vet after the chicks grow up. She's plucked her little legs naked and a bit under one wing and her belly. Plucking feather off of Arthur is definitely not normal though. I thought maybe she was itchy so I've been giving her showers (spraying her with a spray bottle full of water), but that doesn't explain her pulling feathers off of Arthur. So far she hasn't plucked any of the babies' feathers, I'm keeping a close eye on them! I really hope she doesn't decide to do it because I'll have to take her out of the cage then. You can't leave a plucking parent with the chicks because they'll pluck the poor things naked and it's very bad for the chicks' development. Plus the chicks learn to pluck! Hopefully everything will be fine


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## SnowyShiloh

Okay... know what's adorable? A 7 day old chick nibbling your fingers and then preening his "feathers." He's growing up so fast!


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## TinysMom

SEVEN days old already?


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## SnowyShiloh

Yep, he's growing like crazy! He weighs 7 times as much as the chick that hatched yesterday. Wow!


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## SnowyShiloh

Okay, here is Kieran (aka Mondo) today! His 7 day birthday. He can open his eyes more than he's showing in the pictures, he was getting sleepy. He's a lot bigger than he was when he hatched, but he can't stay awake for much longer! You can see he has feathers growing on his wings and his chest and he has the tiniest bit of a hairdo growing. It looks like he's going to be a normal grey just like daddy, but he could surprise us and end up being a pearl. We'll know once those feathers come out of their sheaths!











compared to 7 days ago:






He weighs about half as much as his parents now. I bought a gram scale yesterday so I can monitor their weight gain, but I need batteries!

So, Peg, do ya think he's cute yet?  Paul thinks he's cute now because his eyes are opening and he's getting feathers. His eyes should be all the way open in about 3 days. Also I took the pictures before cleaning him up- twice a day I clean any food or poop off of them with wet Q tips and cotton balls. It's kind of hard to get everything off of their down but they're way cleaner than they would be if I didn't do it!


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## SnowyShiloh

Little Phoenix is suffering from some dehydration. I'm doing what I can for him, let's hope he'll be okay! He's so tiny! For some reason he just grabbed my heart as soon as he hatched, he seems even cuter to me than the others even though they all looked the same when they hatched.


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## missyscove

Kieran is so big! Look at that nice full crop too!


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## hartleybun

another cute up date! thank you! hope phoenix fares wellray:


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## Luvmyzoocrew

oh to cute hearing the cheeping from the baby in the egg,lol


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## SnowyShiloh

Good news is Phoenix's crop is a bit softer this afternoon. Bad news is partway through when I had him out, he started clicking when he breathed! I checked him again 10 minutes later and it stopped, but that's certainly not good. I wonder if he could have breathed in a tiny bit of food from his crop. I hope he doesn't get pneumonia. 

The other chicks are doing well. I'm having a harder time differentiating between Teddy and Neeja because they hatched 1 day apart and the size difference between them is getting less noticeable. We think Kieran may be a girl because he's very hissy and apparently girl babies tend to hiss more. It doesn't mean he doesn't like me, hissing is a natural thing for little chicks.


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## TinysMom

Yeah - they're starting to get cuter...


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## Pipp

Funny... you know how when a song gets into your head? Or sometimes a movement? I found myself doing a weird little 'sway' while cooking, it seemed oddly familiar but I couldn't put my finger on it at first...

... and then I realized I was imitating the video of Arthur! :headsmack

PS: Good vibes for Phoenix! 

sas :laughsmiley:


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## SnowyShiloh

Sas, that's so funny! They do the swaying I think to make themselves look more dangerous. Hilarious because the babies do it too (you can see Kieran swaying in the video).

Poor baby Phoenix isn't doing so hot. He's still clicking but it's quieter. I checked on him and his crop didn't have much in it but it was very doughy feeling again, which is bad. I decided to supplement him with some super watered down formula on the advice of the cockatiel breeder I've been in contact with. I don't want to try to feed him unless he genuinely is in danger and he is, so the risk of him aspirating is low than the risk of him dying without me trying to help. I nervously went about preparing the formula... Everything has to be sterile and the perfect temperature and consistency... Went to get Phoenix... and Poppet had just fed him! His crop is so full. Thankfully it doesn't feel doughy anymore since he got some fluids, but I'm willing to bet it will be doughy again here soon when the runnier food drains into his stomach. He's not actually dehydrated anymore, which is good, but the doughy food in his crop is dangerous. Since it appears the doughy food isn't draining into his stomach, that means it's just sitting there and will start to ferment and could grow yeast and other bad baby bird killing things. I'm going to be checking him every hour or so all night and supplementing him with the runny formula if his crop isn't full so we can hopefully dissolve the doughy food so he can digest it.

This may sound terrible, but I'm trying to emotionally detach from him in case he doesn't make it. Crop problems and breathing problems in a 2 day old chick are very bad things. I'll try everything to make him live but won't be surprised if he doesn't. At least we have 3 other healthy chickies.


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## Nela

Shiloh,

It's a natural reflex to want to detach ourselves from them when they are not 100%. After this, I don't think we'll be naming any of our pets with anything 'ash' or related to ash. :expressionlessHere's hoping lil Phoenix gets through alright. Keeping you all in my thoughts!


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## hartleybun

ray:


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## landi

Hope little Pheonix is ok his that chick 4 by any chance i am feeling it for you we got chick 1 around an hour ago from our 2nd clutch
leaseplease: little pheonix fight it


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## LuvaBun

Sending positive vibes for little Phoenix ray:

Why do those pictures of Kieren remind me of a vulture :?:biggrin2:

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

Phoenix is still hanging in there! He's not dehydrated. And he just pooped on me. But his crop is back to being doughy and seedy. It's plump and fairly soft when he's just been fed, then goes doughy as it empties. None of the chicks looked like they'd been fed in a while and all but Kieran had slightly doughy, seedy crops. I really hope they aren't all developing a problem! However I just heard Arthur feeding them so I'd imagine they've plumped up again. The parents haven't eaten any millet in about 12 hours so it's rather concerning that they have millet in their crops. I will check them again in a couple hours.


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## SnowyShiloh

Arthur and Poppet are being huge doofuses. They want to only eat bread and millet. They can have a little of those foods, but not as their sole intake! Silly birds are refusing to eat pellets or mixed up baby bird formula and aren't feeding the chicks properly. 3 of the 4 chicks have doughy crops because of the bread. I've cut back the bread big time but they're just screaming for it now and refusing to eat other foods (other foods that they've been eating consistently for years). They really need to cut it out or I'm afraid I'll have to take the chicks away from them and hand feed them! It would be so much better if the parents would do it right though.


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## myLoki

Silly birds! They need a good spanking! hehe... I hope they stop being spoiled rotten!

t.:tantrum:


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## SnowyShiloh

Babies still aren't doing so great! I weighed them for the first time last night, and did it again tonight. They should be gaining about 4-6 g every day. Kieran gained 4 g. Teddy and Neeja gained 2 and Phoenix gained 1  Come on, Arthur and Poppet! Feed your children properly! And GROW, babies!

Little Kieran is the only one who's doing well at this point. He's getting more alert and actually didn't do his baby dinosaur impression (the begging to be fed sound that is very reminiscent of what I imagine a baby dinosaur sounds like) that much when I had them out to weigh them. He was looking around. I'll bet he likes being able to see, his eyes are close to being completely opened. Teddy did plenty of hissing and dinosauring though.


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## Nela

Hang in there, Shiloh :bunnyhug:Sending you all the positive vibes I can!


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## landi

this might sound silly but whilst feeding ours eat what ever is going the loved mashed potatoes also for the chicks of ours that are growin and starting to wean we soak seed in water to soften it parents are loving it too


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## SnowyShiloh

Look at my handsome big boy, Kieran :inlove: He was so awake this evening! Usually he only stays awake for about 30 seconds. 







I have a video of him and one of all the chicks together but Photobucket's being weird again.

Poor little Phoenix who only gained 1 gram in the past day. Sleepy baby.






I hope everyone gets better. Worry worry. I'm glad at least that Keiran is doing okay. He didn't gain as much as I would have hoped, but 4 grams is better than nothing.


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## SnowyShiloh

Okay, here is the video of Kieran!


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## SnowyShiloh

Oh, gosh. My breeder friend thinks Kieran has sour crop after watching a video of him. To cure it, you have to empty the crop by either sucking out the contents or holding the chick upside down and forcibly squeezing out the contents so it comes out the baby's mouth. There's a serious risk of the chick aspirating on the food. There's pretty much no way I'm going to do that myself so I'm going to call the vet when they open. Hopefully she's there today and has some experience with this sort of thing (I know she sees cockatiels because she's treated the parents before).


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## Nela

Geez! ray:They sure are keeping you (and us) on your toes!


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## JadeIcing

Oh man good vibes your way.


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## hartleybun

ray:ray: healing vibes and good wishes coming your way!


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## SnowyShiloh

Kieran's crop is so bad right now that he's having to swallow constantly to keep the fluid down. He's at risk of aspirating that fluid that's coming up his throat. He NEEDS to have his crop emptied and flushed. I'm talking to the breeder about whether I should try to do it myself, or take him to the vet as an emergency- the vet who is in today says she has experience with birds and can empty his crop, but she also misdiagnosed Tallulah more than once, including the day Tallulah died. You can see why I'm reluctant. At the same time, she would have syringes at her disposal to stick down into his crop and suck out the bad stuff instead of having to hold him upside down and squeeze it out. I honestly feel like if I had the right syringes (need a long rubberized tip) I could do it myself.

Good news is if we get this taken care of ASAP, there's a good chance he'll be just fine by tomorrow. If we wait, he can aspirate or the infection can take over his whole body and kill him. 

I bought some new pellets for Arthur and Poppet and some freeze dried veggies and Arthur is scarfing down the pellets (and some of the veggies) like no tomorrow, so that's good. The pellets are bright colored, shaped like fruit, and smell fruity. They're actually nutritious too. I tasted one and it's like a way less sweet Fruity Pebble cereal piece.


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## SnowyShiloh

Just wanted to update- we're off to the vet! Wish us luck! I am armed with lots of information and the breeder's phone number in case the vet needs guidance.


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## Amy27

Good luck and update us when you get back. These little ones sure are keeping you on your toes!


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## SnowyShiloh

We're home! Poor Kieran got his crop emptied. It was very traumatic for both of us. Picture tiny baby bird crying with a metal thing crammed down his throat and foamy, yeasty baby food pouring out of his mouth while he choked and coughed. It took a good 20 minutes for him to stop coughing after  He's begging to be fed now though. The vet didn't do anything with the other 3 chicks but good news is their crops are emptying without any help (unlike Kieran's). I have no idea if their crops are healthy or not. They aren't doughy anymore, but maybe they're too liquidy? I have no clue!


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## LuvaBun

Oh man, I never realised that baby birdies can have so much going on . Poor little Kieran - that sounds very traumatic.

Hoping things settle down and they (and you) are all OK

Jan


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## Pipp

Wow, lucky you shot the video and the breeder was alerted. Kieran was the non-problem child! 

Hope everybirdy makes out okay. 


sas :hug:


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## TinysMom

ooh - poor baby


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## SnowyShiloh

The contents of his crop were full of yeast, and yeast is the #1 killer of baby birds  I will try to remain optimistic. I really hope we don't lose Kieran or all of them. I'm going to have to try my hand at hand feeding them here in a few minutes because they need a bunch of things added to their formula.


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## SnowyShiloh

Thanks for the good wishes, everyone! Please continue to think good thoughts for my babies. I love them. I don't want them to die.

I finally got everyone fed. Kieran got some Alka Selzer water and the other chicks got formula mixed with a variety of other things. Kieran's water went pretty uneventfully, but Teddy was being uncooperative with the eating. Neeja was fairly cooperative, but as I slowly pushed down the plunger of the syringe, it suddenly squirted out a ton into his mouth. He miraculously did not inhale the food, but it sure scared me! Phoenix was actually easiest to feed even though he has an itty bitty mouth because he was giving me the feeding response and swallowing very eagerly. That's good! 

All in all, it took almost an hour and a half. Gather utensils. Wash. Disinfect. Prepare food. Get to right temperature. Feed babies. Clean babies. Wash utensils. Disinfect. Essentially did it twice though since Kieran was fed something different. I have to feed him actual baby food here in half an hour, then we'll wait 2 more hours and feed him more baby food, then he can finally go back to his parents. I put the other chicks back with their parents about 20 minutes ago and they got fed right away. Mama and daddy are happy to have their little ones back after 4 hours away!

For now poor Kieran is sitting all alone in a cardboard box on top of a heating pad. His parents aren't supposed to feed him for several hours so he has to be away from them. He keeps chirping sadly. He will get to go back to them in about 3-4 hours.

Tomorrow and the next day I'm supposed to supplement all 4 chicks with the special formula twice a day. I hope it goes well and that everyone gets better!

Side note, is this what parenthood is like? I did not go to bed last night because I was worried about the chicks and haven't slept at all today. The whole day was devoted to the babies. I'm so tired. All I've eaten was a small handful of the Just Tomatoes brand freeze dried veggies that I bought for the birds!


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## TinysMom

Welcome to the world of being a breeder....


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## SnowyShiloh

Peg, I do not think I'm cut out to be a breeder! They may not like it, but Arthur and Poppet are definitely going to be separated after this. They won't be alone of course, they'll have a birdy friend and I'll put their cages next to each other so they can still see each other and everything. I just hope they don't decide to double clutch. It's very common and the mama usually starts to lay the next batch of eggs when the chicks are about 6 weeks old. I don't think I'd have the heart to shake up the eggs (which would top them from developing). Birds sometimes even try to triple clutch! If they DO have a second clutch, I will separate the parents when the next batch of chicks are 4 weeks old or so and probably leave Poppet with them. She'll be more experienced at motherhood then and can feed them alone, possibly with some help from me. Females can store sperm in their bodies for over a week so they'd need to be separated early enough that she wouldn't be storing any sperm to lay more eggs.

Little Kieran has been fed his baby food and seems happier. He's stopped chirping and finally went to sleep, poor exhausted little baby. What a terrible day for him. At least he didn't die today! Before I fed him, Arthur was chirping and he was chirping back. How sweet is that? The other 3 babies are all fed and asleep in the nest box while the parents are eating. Kieran can go back to the nest box in about 2-3 hours after I feed him 1 more time. He'll spend the night in the nest box, then I'll have to keep him in the brooder tomorrow to monitor his pooping and feed him the special baby food. It has garlic, cinnamon and ginger in it so it smells interesting.


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## hartleybun

*SnowyShiloh wrote: *


> Side note, is this what parenthood is like? I did not go to bed last night because I was worried about the chicks and haven't slept at all today. The whole day was devoted to the babies. I'm so tired. All I've eaten was a small handful of the Just Tomatoes brand freeze dried veggies that I bought for the birds!



:hugsquish:yep! you're getting the idea of what us parents put ourselves thru! says she who has just finished rescuing one of our swallow fledglings. they have all flown but are still returning to the nest. i could hear flapping coming from under a pile of toys ready for the bootsale some careful dismantling of the pilerevealed a small petrified swallow. he is now perched and preening

hope everybird is faring well and will continue to send good wishesray:


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## landi

I feel for you and you made me feel quite sick the thought of having to suck it out of there crop we still have the 1 chick just wondering if the others are going to hatch or not. I dont know if its something you can get in the USA but we use EMP REARING FOOD its egg based they can either have it dry or mixed fingers crossed for you and sending good vibes across the water. thinks you need either alot of :caffeine or your :bed:


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## SnowyShiloh

It looks like Kieran is not better and Teddy probably has it now.

Neeja and Phoenix are looking pretty good and both have gained a good amount of weight since yesterday.

For Kieran and Teddy, I may have to empty their crops myself today. We are not going back to that vet. I should have trusted my instincts. She did not empty Kieran's crop using a good/safe method and there's a good chance she punctured one of the air sacs in his crop, based on how he's ballooning up with air. Yay, spent $150 for her to injure my baby bird. A good vet would have drained him properly and actually looked at the other chicks- when I saw what she did with Kieran, I didn't WANT her to do her "magic" on the others.


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## SnowyShiloh

Okay... I'm gearing up to empty Kieran and Teddy's crops using the "hold upside down and squeeze" method... Please wish us all luck. Kieran is doing very poorly. He's dehydrated now and the veins on his crop are getting big and angry and red, which means he's in very serious condition. He WILL die if I don't empty his crop, but he has a chance at surviving if I do. I feel so sad for him, he is our first baby and I love him so much. Hopefully emptying Teddy's crop now will do him good, he's nowhere near as severe as Kieran right now. He now actually weighs the same as Kieran and looks just as developed even though they're 2 days apart and Kieran's crop is heavier.


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## JadeIcing

Good luck. I'm at work but keeping an eye on the thread. *hugs*


----------



## Pipp

ray:


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## myLoki

My prayers are with Kieran and Teddy. ray:

t.


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## TinysMom

Oh no...I'm praying from here.

My pm box is open if you need a place to cry or vent...you know that - right?


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## SnowyShiloh

I got them both emptied. It actually went smoother than when the vet did it. I'm sure the babies didn't like it, but they weren't choking for 20 minutes after. They kind of coughed a little but were okay. Then I gave them some anti yeast stuff and massaged their crops and Teddy threw up  Poor baby.

I have the option of giving Kieran sub q fluids, but he only needs 1 CC in each thigh and my syringes are giant 60 CC ones meant for bunnies. And I think my needles are too big.

This is all very difficult  Thanks for the good thoughts, everyone


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## TinysMom

Go to someplace where you can get insulin needles - they come in 1 cc sizes. I'm thinking the pharmacy at Walmart/Fred Myers, etc.


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## SnowyShiloh

Peg, why didn't I think of that?! Paul came home with some 10 sterile 1 CC needles from the pharmacy (he meant to get syringes) and I was just wondering what in the world I was going to do with 10 sterile 1 CC syringes. Duh! Thanks so much, Peg!


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## Pipp

What gage is the needle? 


sas :clover:


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## SnowyShiloh

The butterfly needles for the bunnies are 19 gauge, don't know what gauge the insulin syringes are but they look little...


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## TinysMom

*Pipp wrote: *


> What gage is the needle?
> 
> 
> sas :clover:


I googled it and the brand I use is .28 - .31 depending upon the needle size.


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## LuvaBun

All good and positive thoughts being sent your way. I can't imagine emptying the crops on something as small and delicate as a chick 

Jan


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## JadeIcing

I'm keeping them in my thoughts and prayers. I'm going to my awesome vets tomorrow for Connor. Wish you lived here they treat birds as well.


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## SnowyShiloh

I wish I lived there too, Ali  Or that I could beam them to someone who has raised lots of baby tiels before. The sad thing is our regular vet LOVES birds and is actually planning to focus specifically on parrots, but she went down to help wash oil covered animals. Great for them, less great for my baby birds and for my bunnies if they get sick.

I feel like I'm torturing Kieran. He's so pathetic. He's dehydrated, his skin is puckered and red and he weighs 27 grams. Neeja, who is 4 days younger, weighs 30 and Neeja is small for his age. I'm about to give him fluids, and the thought of jabbing him with needles on top of everything... I feel like I'm hurting him and drawing out his life and he'd be better off warm and cozy with his mom and dad and siblings instead of me squeezing his crop empty and getting him to eat weird food and sticking him with needles and everything else I've had to do to him.

We got a better brooder tonight. I'm going to put him and Teddy in it, and give him a few hours to improve. If he doesn't, I'm putting him back in the nest box. I'd rather have him die there. If he magically improves over night, I'll maybe try supplementing him a little tomorrow (mainly fluids). 

What makes it worse in some ways is that he's now old enough to be aware of what's going on. He's awake most of the time and cries and cuddles with Teddy and looks sad. He reacts to pain and to seeing me. He looks around. He nods off in my hand if I hold him for a while.

I hope no one thinks I'm being a bad "mom" by not continuing to do invasive things to him. I love my little Kieran and can't bear to hurt him, especially since it doesn't look like he's going to get better.


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## Pipp

I would honestly let nature take its course. 

The chances of having all the eggs hatch and all the chicks survive to adulthood is so slim especially with first time parents. 

I think you're doing the right thing by letting him rest and be with his mom and dad. 


sas ray:


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## SnowyShiloh

Thanks, Pipp. Hopefully he'll make it... most likely not. It was easy to say I'd be happy if we ended up with just 1 chick, but it's not that simple now that all 4 are here and I've spent the past week plus with them! Hopefully at least one DOES survive.

I gave him sub q fluids. I had to have Paul help hold onto him. He cried when I poked him with the needle and did his best to get away. It was so sad  I didn't put in the full amount of liquids because it looked like his skin was going to pop, but it got absorbed within 5 minutes. When I put him back in the brooder, I found that Teddy had regurgitated again 

I'm now worried that if I put them back in the nest box, the infection will pass to the other chicks. It looks like Neeja's crop is maybe starting to get bad, but Phoenix's is nice. I don't know what to do. My breeder contact has gone to bed by now.


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## landi

I'm pleased you managed to empty the crops of your 2 chicks dont think I could but its suprising what you do when you have to. Glad your breeder friend gave you some good advice sounds better than the vet but that probably cause they have more experience and know more about them unless its avian vet. We still have the 1 dont think we will get any more but still a couple of days. Hoping to get another pic up later today.
Take Care Fingers crossed for your your 2 little fluffy bundles of joy


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## SnowyShiloh

Kieran has pooped 3 times (each one bigger, all looked healthy) since getting sub q fluids and his color has improved noticeably. I decided to give him fluids again since it's been 3 hours, but he started to make choking sounds again as soon as I started to inject the liquid. He did it on both of his sides. I was making extra sure not to press on his crop. The needle was just barely under the surface of the skin. I don't really understand what is happening, but I immediately stopped injecting the fluids when he started coughing. I injected him in the exact place with the needle pointing in the direction that the breeder told me.


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## SnowyShiloh

Neeja's crop is feeling like the other two... Phoenix still seems good. I wish I could just look into the future and know what would happen.


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## hartleybun

:hug: what will be will be. you and paul are doing all you can for these little fragile babies. nature can be so cruel sometimes.ray:


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## Pipp

How is Kieran?



sas ray:


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## Nela

Poor birdies and poor Shiloh. This must be so tough. I wish I could help you out, at least be there, feed you something while you care for them. Bleh. Sending all our love your way ray:


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## JadeIcing

*hugs*


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## SnowyShiloh

Thanks, guys. I'm glad to know I'm not alone. It's funny, I've been posting on a cockatiel forum with plenty of nice people, but you guys are the ones who I'm telling all my worries to. You aren't bird people but you're bunny people and you're my people.

I've left Kieran and Teddy alone in the new brooder for the past 3 hours. The new one is better because it's a lot more humid inside (which is good for them) and I don't have to open it every 5 minutes to check the temperature. I can see the thermometer from the outside. That means the babies are getting more rest and darkness. I want to put them back in the nest box, but I'm waiting to find out if this will spread to Phoenix and Neeja. I'm iffy on Neeja's condition, but Phoenix seems okay and I don't want him to get infected and die also. I think Kieran and Neeja are reasonably comfortable in the new brooder. They aren't crying. 

I got them out of the brooder about 10 minutes ago to check on them. There crops are not emptying and they're fuller than they should be based on how much they've been fed. Their crops are very watery. Poor Kieran's crop is so big and over stretched, but his body is shriveled  His body is actually dumping its fluids into his crop. When I had him out, he was flailing about and crying and trying to vomit. It is absolutely heart breaking. I put him back in the brooder and he quieted down after a couple of minutes.

I want to call the vet when they open at 8 and find out about euthanasia. I don't want him to suffer anymore. If it turns out it is safe to put him back in the nest box, I'll put him back so he can spend his last hours with his parents and siblings, then I'll bring him to be put to sleep. I think this is kinder than waiting for him to die in the nest box because it will be faster.

Teddy's crop isn't nearly as full and overstretched, but it's still full. He isn't looking dehydrated yet. When I took him out, he was crying in hunger. His crop is full (and I can see the muscles working), but it isn't emptying into his stomach very fast so he's hungry. I can't feed him when his crop is full of goo though, it will just back up and make him vomit and stretch out his crop. He isn't past hope yet and I'm willing to try emptying him again once I talk to the breeder contact (who is still asleep understandably since it's 4:15 in the morning there).


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## SnowyShiloh

Some jerk on the cockatiel forum told me I shouldn't kill my bird because he'd rather choke a little and make it to adulthood. Does this person not understand what he's going through and that it is very unlikely he will make it to adulthood, or even to next week? The person has been reading my whole thread so they know what's been going on. There birds just started laying eggs and I only hope their chicks don't end up suffering from something like this ssd:


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## RexyRex

I've been following this from the beginning and I am just heartbroken for you. I'm so sorry this has been such a trying experience.

That being said, I wanted to let you know that you are an awesome person for all you're doing for those chicks. Don't let that person on the bird forum get you down. You know what's going on with Kieran and you know when it's time to stop his suffering. BIG BIG hugs to you.


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## landi

:magicwand: I'm Waving it


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## JadeIcing

You know what is best for him.


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## Nela

People can say some of the dumbest things at the worst of times. It's like some enjoy contradicting you and making you doubt your every move. Trust your instincts. I'm sure the breeder and vet (a better one) could help guide you if you aren't too sure... ray:


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## SnowyShiloh

Thanks for the encouragement, guys  I really appreciate it, even if I can't muster a smile. Because it's Saturday, the vet does not open until 10. 25 more minutes! I'm dead set on getting some actual medication for Teddy. I'm going to try to get the vet on the phone and find out what exactly she would do for him if I brought him in, and beg for medicine if I have to. She refused to prescribe any when I was there Thursday, and that medicine may have saved Kieran's life. I would rather just go over and get the meds for the other chicks instead of stressing them out by bringing them again. Last time I had to sit in the waiting room 40 minutes with them in a cardboard box with a snuggle safe worrying about them staying at the right temperature.

Poor baby Kieran is getting weaker. He's losing consciousness. When I pick him up, he flails around and can't stand up. When I set him down, he lies on his side. I just had to keep Teddy from standing on him in the bowl. My poor little one, he doesn't deserve this. I hope he dies quickly. I may actually bring him along to the vet and have him euthanized while picking up meds for the others. That way the vet could see what she's dealing with and hopefully accept that she needs to prescribe medication!!


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## SnowyShiloh

I want to SCREAM. I'll settle for crying. Does the vet office even CARE about animals?! I called right when they opened, and the doctor who treated them isn't in today, but there is 1 other vet who "sees" birds (not that that necessarily means much). The receptionist copped quite an attitude with me and said that "maybe" the vet would call me back in an hour or two. I told her that these chicks WILL die if they don't get medicine and 1 little phone call (and the prescription of medication) could save them. She was so rude. You guys no me, I am not pushy or rude- her attitude was completely unnecessary. She said if I "feel like" bringing them in, we'd have to wait a while and pay the emergency fee. Of course. We had to sit in the waiting room 40 minutes last time, as I worried the chicks were getting too cold or hot.

Kieran is getting even weaker. I know he won't live, but at least the others have a chance with medication. My heart is just aching.


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## Nela

I'm on gmail, Shiloh. :hugsquish:


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## myLoki

I am so so sorry. That is so terrible! I wish there were something I could do to help you but you and the chicks are in my thoughts.


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## SnowyShiloh

My sweet Kieran just died while I was on the phone to another vet :bawl: I found a very nice vet who talked to me for a good 15 minutes who has everything we need to treat the chicks. She has a pet cockatoo. She said she'd be able to see the remaining 3 chicks immediately. I'm going to call the original vet clinic (not that I think they'll care) and then take them to the new vet.


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## Nela

Keeping you guys in my thoughts and hoping everything works out alright for the others. Iam reallysorry about Kieran.


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## hartleybun

:bigtears:dear shiloh, i am so sorry. please stay strong for the sake of the others. we are all here for you!:hug:

fly free little keiran, you brightened many a life during your brief time with usray:


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## Nela

Shiloh has asked me to update the thread as she is getting ready to leave...

Luckily the nice vet with the pet cockatoo spent some time talking with Shiloh and she is adament about seeing them.After discussing, it was agreedthat they will bring onlyTeddy in so that the other two can stay in the nest box. If I understood correctly, this vet will give them medicine but Shiloh may have to go to another vet to get another prescription that she prefers. 

Please keep them all in your thoughts as they deal with all this. Sending you good vibes!!! ray:


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## luvthempigs

I am in tears just reading about this....:bigtears:I am so sorry about little Kieran. I will keep you and the others in my thoughts and prayers ray:


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## landi

Your not he only one I have tears running down my face too 

Kieran :angel: R.I.P


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## Pipp

:sad:



sas :cry1: ray:


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## JadeIcing

I am so sorry. RIP little one may you fly to your hearts content.


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## Nela

Going to bed... Hopefully there will be better news in the morning. Hang in there Shiloh :big kiss:


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## TinysMom

I am so sorry that you lost Keiran....I was hoping that wouldn't happen - but I know you have wonderful memories of your limited time with him.

I'll be watching the thread for more updates.


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## SnowyShiloh

Nela, thank you for updating the thread for me. And thank you everyone for writing. It's good to know baby Kieran will be remembered and other people cared about him. He was only here 12 days, but I grew so attached to him in that time. I remember how thrilled I was when he started to chirp in his egg and how elated I was when he hatched. I thought I would have the next 20 or so years with him :in tears: Watching him suffer and die was terrible, poor baby. I'm glad he didn't linger any longer than he did. 

We got medicine from the vet. Paul's actually at the pharmacy right now filling the prescriptions. The vet turned out not to be terribly experienced with cockatiels and said several very obvious things that I know are not correct, but it's better than nothing! She confirmed that Teddy has sour crop (no surprise there) and that Neeja seems to be just beginning (I decided to bring him too). She didn't have much hope for Teddy, but we will try. He's going to need around the clock care with food approximately every 30 minutes and meds 4 times a day. She told me not to return Neeja to the nest box for now because his crop is being slow too. So he will be hanging out in the brooder with Teddy for the time being. Hopefully we can get him turned around since his sour crop is just beginning. 

Little Phoenix is all by himself. So far he is looking pretty good. I'm worried about him being alone in the nest box though because Arthur and Poppet aren't going in there very often (they're undoubtedly wondering where the heck their other babies) and I don't want him to get chilled. I can tell he's cooler feeling already. If they won't keep him warm, I'm going to have to take over and hand feed him! It would be best for him if his parents would take care of him and I already have 2 other sick babies to look after. Breeders don't normally pull chicks to hand feed until they're 14 days old and he's only 6 days old- the younger they are, the harder it is to feed them and the easier it is for things to go wrong


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## SnowyShiloh

This may not be fair, but I am irritated with Arthur and Poppet. Phoenix is sitting in the nest box getting cold, and Arthur is sitting at the entrance to the nest box instead of keeping him warm! Phoenix will die if he gets chilled. He's already at risk of getting sour crop, and being chilled makes the risks even higher. If I pull him to keep him warm in the brooder, I doubt I'd be able to put him back and count on them keeping him warm/feeding him. They need to figure things out really darn fast. 

Now Arthur is at the bottom of the cage with Poppet. Argh! Do not squander the life of your 1 healthy chick! I'm sure they're upset about only having 1 chick and wonder where the others are, but they still need to take care of him.


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## LuvaBun

I'm so sorry about little Keiran. I was so hoping he'd make it.

I am praying the others do OK. Don't know how you can get Arthur and Poppet to take care of Phoenix 

Hang in there, Shiloh, we are all with you!

Jan


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## Pipp

Are the other chicks far away from them so they're not a distraction? Can they hear, see or sense them? 

Maybe they're concerned that they've fallen out of the nest and they'll settle down if they take a look outside the cage or if the babies are farther away? 

I don't know anything about birds, but I have a yard full of nests and predators. I can't imagine birds 'mourning' because so many are lost. The birds around here are only upset while the chicks are on the ground or while there's a predator around. Once a chick is taken by a predator, the parents go back to tending to the others. 


sas ray:


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## Pipp

PS: Will a warm rice sock or snugglesafe help?


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## SnowyShiloh

Pipp, those are good ideas. I made it so they can't see the chicks in the brooder. I don't know if that's why they wouldn't stay in the nest box, but Arthur is in with the chick now. I'm a bit alarmed because I've been hearing lots of feeding noises. If they overfeed the chick, his crop will stretch to much and lead to what the other chicks have. Who knows, maybe that's what caused the others to be sick.

Ohhhh, great. Paul just got home with ONE of the prescriptions. It was $130! The vet or pharmacist made a very serious mistake- they gave us about 1 1/2 CUPS of this medication! On the bottle it says to feed 5 ML twice a day. The babies' crops can't even take that much. Each chick is only supposed to get .1 CC twice a day. So I have enough medicine for probably a couple thousand chicks! And it was not inexpensive! What the heck happened?! Do they refund if they made such a big mistake? I called the vet office and the receptionist (the same rude one as before) said she'd call back but they close in less than an hour and of course will not be open tomorrow or Monday.

Is every single thing going wrong that possibly can? I'm surprised Paul wasn't killed in a car accident or something on the way home!


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## Pipp

Yikes, I hope they get that straight ASAP, I'd call the pharmacy and vet back until you get an answer. One the meds are opened, I dont' think they can take them back, may not even be legal. 

:clover:


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## Pipp

PS: The pharmacy is a better bet because I think they have to power to only fill a percentage of the prescription.


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## SnowyShiloh

Alright, I called the pharmacy. Talked to a very nice guy who knew exactly what medication I was talking about. He said he was super skeptical when he got the fax from the vet with the dosage amount, so he called the vet office. He by name mentioned the very rude receptionist who I've dealt with today. He said he asked the receptionist to verify the amount, and the receptionist went back to ask the vet, who confirmed it. So it's not the pharmacy's fault for giving us a ton of medicine. Also they can't take back 2 of the bottles and give us a refund.

If the vet office does not call back before they close in 15 minutes, I'm going to be calling them bright and early on Tuesday when they open again. There's no way we're going to accept paying $100 extra for their mistake. No what makes it even sadder/funnier/something? I needed either this medicine OR the Nystatin. Not both. Thought I'd get both because it would be good to have them on hand. The Nystatin cost $10.


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## SnowyShiloh

Just checked on Phoenix. His crop is wayyyy too full. Way to go, birdy parents  This is one of the worst days I've ever had.


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## Pipp

Just try and de-stress. :hug1

You don't want the little guys to sense your tension, and there really isn't much you can do than go with the flow. Do your best to help out, but try not to get too emotionally involved, which is way easier said than done, I know. But most of this isn't in your control. You're doing as well as humanly possible, but the key word is 'human'. You're not the parents, nor mother nature (as much as we try to be). 

All you can really provide is gentle guidance and just hope for the best. 

Even if they were flying around the jungle, the outcome would probably be the same.


sas ink iris:


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## SnowyShiloh

Pipp, I know you're right. It's so hard not to get attached and not to want to help. I wish Arthur and Poppet and I could just understand each other and I could explain to them what's going on.

I'm going to do intensive intervention stuff with the chicks for a couple of days, and if it doesn't help, I'm just going to give them back to mom and dad and let things happen as they will. As much as I want them to live and be healthy, I can't make that happen.

Going to go take care of the babies now!


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## SnowyShiloh

I have emptied Teddy's and Neeja's crops, flushed them, emptied them again, and given Teddy sub q fluids. Thankfully he didn't make horrible noises when I did it. Kieran was having a stress reaction when we gave him fluids 

I've called the vet office 4 times to figure out how much of this medicine to give them since the directions on the label and the directions the vet gave me are very, VERY different (1 of the doses is 500 times bigger than the other). Each time I've talked to someone and they've said the vet would call me back, but they haven't yet. I am annoyed. These babies need their medicine sooner rather than later! I mean, it's been almost 3 hours since I first called them! The chicks are sitting here crying for food, but I have to give them the meds when their crops are empty for them to work properly.


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## Pipp

I'd Google the med and the doses, it should be fairly apparent if the difference is that great. 

:censored2: vet! 


sas :clover:


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## JadeIcing

I can not say what I think of this vet office.


----------



## SnowyShiloh

I feel the same way. Darned vet! I don't want to go that clinic again, but I think I probably will because they're open on the weekends and they're at least somewhat capable sometimes 

Good news is I figured out the med amount. When I called the vet the last time, it went to the after hours emergency vet and they helped me figure out how much to give. What a relief! As a slightly unfortunate side note (that doesn't compare at all to the much more unfortunate things that have happened lately!), as soon as I opened the cap to one of my 3 giant expensive bottles of Fluconazole, I *instantly* recognized the look (thick and white) and scent (disgustingly orangey). When I was about 4, I had to take this medication for a while, and I hated it so fiercely that I gagged when I had to take it and have never been able to stomach orange cream ANYTHING since. The medicine was thick and chalky and had the horrible orange flavor. Makes me shudder. If it makes the babies get better though, I'm okay with it.

Teddy and Neeja also got fed a thinned down formula. Just a little, made with an electrolyte solution and with BeneBac added. They made things infinitely easier by actually wanting to be fed and cooperating. Bad thing is I'm not supposed to feed them again until their crops have emptied, and while the crops are smaller than they were right after I emptied them (interestingly enough), they still have food in there. Adding food to food that hasn't been digested is bad. It will all just go sour. But they're crying for food and acting like they're starving 

Also I will never complain about being afraid to give sub q fluids to a bunny again. I remember I was a mess when I gave fluids to Rory the first time. Sticking a needle into the skin of a 25 gram bird who does not want to be stuck and then actually delivering the fluids without tearing the paper like skin is wayyyyy harder.


----------



## JadeIcing

Man I wish this was going a lot smoother for you. It is just not fair knowing you are going through this.


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## SnowyShiloh

Alicia, it seems like I'm cursed with animals or something... I always go into pet things really optimistic! It's so pathetic hearing the babies cry for food in the brooder  Breaks my heart. Things like the floor creaking and the faucet turning on sound like crying baby birds. I fed them again less than an hour ago, but their crops aren't empty so their tummies aren't getting the food. They get meds again in 20 minutes. I hope the medications kick in soon. I gave Teddy sub q fluids again, it's very nerve wracking. In some ways worse than emptying crops because there's this big long needle that could go right into him, and he struggles... His skin tore a tiny bit (he's fine, can't even see where it is) the first time I did it and the mental image of his skin bleeding keeps coming back to me. I think I'm going to give Neeja fluids too next time.

In case anyone is curious, this is where I have to stick them. I have to do it on both sides too because you can only get in a little in each spot. This picture is from my breeder contact.

http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/...bies in Trouble/injection-site-for-fluids.jpg

Poor little babies


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## JadeIcing

I believe that certain people are trusted with animals that will be here a short time because they will love them unconditionally. They will grieve but take away so much from that brief time. *hugs*


----------



## SnowyShiloh

Ali, I hope I can make my pets' lives better. It seems like the ones that I've loved the most urgently are the ones that don't stick around for long. Like my little Mae Mae who has been gone for 2 years but I still think of her very often, and my cockatiel Little Bird who lived 3 short years.

I took pictures of Kieran all through his sickness to show to my breeder contact, but I haven't posted pictures because they're so sad. I'd rather people see him when he was healthy and growing. But I took this picture of Neeja tonight and I think it's really sweet, even though he's ill. He looks so trusting somehow... The babies aren't hissing at me anymore. They're excited to see me. Neeja was probably the hissiest of all the chicks (and Phoenix is the least hissy), but he doesn't really hiss at me any longer.

Little Neeja, 9 days old (or technically 10 since it's Sunday now):






and him waving "hi"- his foot was down right before and right after the picture was taken!






Just a bit of sweetness in the middle of a lot of sadness.


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## TinysMom

I LOVE that photo - see - that's CUTE....it shows personality and expression and is....adorable.


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## irishbunny

I'm sorry you lost Kieran  Those last pictures you posted are so cute though! I hope the rest of the babies make it.


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## SnowyShiloh

Peg, I'm glad you think they're cute now  It made me smile! And Grace, thank you for your thoughts for Kieran and I'm glad you like the pictures of Neeja.

I have some good news. I'm trying not to get too excited, but... Neeja's and Teddy's crops are emptying on their own! Slowly, yes, but it's a start, and both babies gave me the gift of poop. Neeja has gone 3 times in the past couple hours and Teddy 3 times as well. This means they're digesting. Neeja's first poop was red (because of the pellets the parents are eating, the next was red and green (green is from the formula they've been eating) and the most recent one was all green. They're clamoring to be fed now. I'm going to wait a liiittle longer, but am eager to feed them. I'm trying to remain very cautious in my optimism, but this is surely a good sign especially since Teddy went for a good 8 hours without going.

Normally I wouldn't discuss poop, but I know bunny folk don't mind!


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## JadeIcing

Eek love that picture.


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## RexyRex

I'm so sorry that you lost Kieran. I really rooting for Teddy, Neeja and Phoenix!!

And you know that you can ALWAYS talk poop to bunny folk :biggrin2:


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## SnowyShiloh

I have another positive update! Youngest first: Phoenix is doing well in the nest box with his parents. I was a bit worried because his crop was really big and it felt kind of soft, but my breeder contact assured me his crop looked great and the softness was most likely from the medication he's getting (which is dissolved in water). Sure enough, I just checked him and his crop has gotten smaller (they don't get fed as much at night after a certain age) and it's firmer again. Good firm, not bad firm. Poppet spent the night keeping him warm in the nest box and Arthur went in a couple times too. They're both out of the box preening now, hopefully someone will go back in soon to keep him warm!

Neeja and Teddy ate like champs again. I'm still feeding them really watered down formula because it digests easier. Both chicks were super hungry but I only gave them a little since their crops are just starting to work again. Both little chickies are sleeping very soundly now instead of crying in hunger all the time. And my breeder friend took a look at pictures of them with empty crops and said their stretched out crops are not too bad and they shouldn't need crop bras (look here. So that's great- sometimes babies with overstretched crops need crop bras that support their crops above the level where food drains into the stomach. Breeder friend also said neither appear to be dehydrated! Woohoo! So no more subcutaneous fluids for now. I'm sure they helped Teddy, but for now it's not necessary.

I'm still staying guardedly optimistic, but I feel like a huge weight has been taken off my shoulders. It's lovely. I really hope everyone continues to improve!


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## TinysMom

yeah - go Neeja and Teddy - we LOVE talking about poop on this forum since poop usually = healthy....we hope.


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## SnowyShiloh

Isn't it funny how that goes, Peg? Normally it's impolite to discuss such things, but it's so important with pets  Speaking of which, all 3 babies are pooping along! Phoenix poops very predictably whenever I pick him up out of the nest box. I've learned to have a paper towel handy. That little thing makes the biggest poops, like bigger than adult sized. Impressive!

Anyhoo, enough poop. Neeja and Teddy's crops are already empty of their feeding from 2 1/2 hours ago. Go babies go! They just got their medications and I got everything washed and disinfected. I'm about to go make up another batch of formula for them. I've finally developed a rhythm/routine and it makes things much quicker. For this feeding, I'm going to make the food a tiny bit thicker... It was essentially water with a bit of formula mixed in before. Enough to produce poop, but definitely not as thick as what they would normally be fed.


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## hartleybun

:highfive:some good news at last!


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## myLoki

arty0002:YAY! Good news!! Go Neeja! Go Teddy! Go Pheonix! RA RA RA!arty0002:


t.


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## SnowyShiloh

Teddy's crop isn't emptying again... come on, Teddy! Also I am exhausted... I slept for 3 hours broken up yesterday and that was over 24 hours ago. Paul went to bed late and I'm going to wake him up and ask him to keep an eye on them so I can sleep some.


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## LuvaBun

Oh Shiloh, this is a roller coaster just reading about what you are going through, so I can't imagine what it's like for you! I was so pleased that their crops were emptying and theyt were pooping, but now Teddy is having problems again. 

You must get some rest, and take care of yourself.

Keeping everything crossed for you

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

Jan, it's so hard  I'm never going to breed any animal. Teddy's crop STILL has not emptied all the way and Neeja's is almost empty, but I fed him 5 hours ago. Better than nothing I guess. His last feed was thicker so it would make sense for it to take longer to digest. Any digestion is better than none, I know. Arthur and Poppet are leaving Phoenix alone in the nest box again. The brooder is having trouble staying the right temperature and is fluctuating, which stresses the chicks. I'm going to have to empty Teddy's crop again, which I don't like doing because there's always the risk of aspiration. If they aspirate, they can either die immediately or die a couple days later or even get an infection because of it and die months later.

I know I said I'd try to emotionally detach, but I'm literally making myself sick with worry. I tried to sleep a bit with Paul watching the brooder, and succeeded for about an hour, but then the brooder was having temperature swings. We got it stabilized but I couldn't go back to sleep because of worry. I can't leave the house with the chicks in the brooder because it's too unreliable, but I still have to do a ton of wedding things for our wedding in less than 1 months, prepare for our house guest who is arriving in a week and a half, sign the new lease for our apartment (I suddenly imagined them not letting us sign a new lease and making us move out on very short notice), I'm going to be out of town for 4 days in a mere 12 days and what if the chicks are still sick, I need to register for classes still... So many things. Sorry if I sound whiny! I know I'm quite a lucky person to have what I have and the people I have (Paul has been fantastic through all this), but it's still hard.


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## GoinBackToCali

I have to admit.. I know nothing about birds... have no interest in having any.. but I have been riveted to this thread.

I cried like an idiot yesterday when I read about Kieran, I watched his video today..cried some more..

Thank you for sharing..

Your in my thoughts, and I am reading intently even if I don't post.


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## SnowyShiloh

Zin, I'm glad to hear you've been reading along. I'm surprised and touched by how many people the chicks and Kieran have affected. Kieran was the little trail blazer. I miss him. I wish his illness had been caught sooner. Maybe we could have saved him and the others wouldn't have even gotten sick. I remember back when his crop was big and watery, and I thought it was supposed to be like that- his crop was like that when he first hatched (which is normal since the parents feed the chicks very runny food) and I just thought it was how it was supposed to be. Remember, I thought the others were all sick and he was fine? And it was the reverse. I wish the vet we saw on Thursday had been better and had NOT aspirated him (I've emptied the babies' crops about 8 times over the past couple days and none of them were anywhere near as traumatic as what the vet did to Kieran) and that the vet had prescribed medicine for them all then. She said we'd wait a couple days and see. You cannot just wait and see with tiny little baby birds. If we'd got meds on Thursday and the vet hadn't been so rough with him, maybe he would have recovered and the other chicks wouldn't have even gotten sick.

I had to empty Teddy's crop again this afternoon  I hate doing it. He coughed a little bit but was begging for food again within 10 seconds. I hate taking their lives into my hands by emptying their crops, but if you let the food sit there and it's not being digested, it just goes bad. You can smell the sourness.

After emptying his crop, Teddy got his medicine and then he and Neeja both got formula. So far Phoenix's crop is looking good and he's being fed well, but Arthur and Poppet don't seem to get that they're supposed to keep him warm (they'll sit with him for 3 hours and then leave him alone for longer than is safe for him), so I rigged up a heating pad on the outside of the nest box. It's just on low, but it will give him a little extra warmth I hope.

Even though I had to empty Teddy again, the fact that his crop emptied earlier is a good sign I think. Better than the vomiting he was doing on Friday night! Hopefully both their crops will empty well. I'm going to go take a nap because there's nothing that needs to be done with the chicks until 8 when it's medicine time again. I'll probably check Teddy and Neeja once before then, but it's best not to check them too much because they need to get as much sleep as possible. Paul is going to monitor the temperature in the brooder for me. I'm so paranoid that I have 3 thermometers in there but I still worry.


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## myLoki

You're doing great. You're so dedicated to those little lives. We're all very proud of your efforts. 

t.


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## TinysMom

Shiloh- we're all very proud of you and we know you're doing your very best. This is a great time for you & Paul to see how you can handle stress together as a married couple (which you will be soon) and while I know that sucks....it sounds like you're both supporting each other through this.

I have to admit - I'm devastated that you lost Kiernan - I was really looking forward to watching him grow up. It sounds like you're doing all you can for the others and that they're doing well with your diligent efforts to care for them.

Bless you all - this is always the first thread I check when I log on.


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## JadeIcing

*hugs* Not much I can say. I know the worry that you are feeling been there a lot as of late. Off to the vet with Montana as reply. Was there with Connor yesterday. I'm with you and those angels.


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## JadeIcing

*hugs* Not much I can say. I know the worry that you are feeling been there a lot as of late. Off to the vet with Montana as reply. Was there with Connor yesterday. I'm with you and those angels.


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## SnowyShiloh

Thanks, Peg and Ali. Loving sick pets is so hard, but how can you possibly refuse them? I'm so glad I have Paul. He's a great guy. He's gone to the store 3 times a day to buy random things for the babies and didn't even flinch at the $130 medicine bill (still need to get that figured out but they were closed today), which he paid. I'm generally very laid back, but yesterday and the day before I was a little testy- not yelling or anything, just stressed and testy, and he was great. I think we communicate well. He's given me lots of hugs and made us dinner the other night (usually that's my thing).

I got a bit of sleep. Paul birdysat while I took a very nice 1 1/2 hour nap. I was afraid to check the chicks when I came back down. It had been 3 1/2 hours since they'd last been fed and I kept telling myself both their crops would be full. Neeja's is actually completely empty- his crop is hardly even overstretched anymore. Thank goodness! I'm still very weary- I got too excited this morning, which only led to me being even more worried when it took him longer to digest the next time- but it is a step in the right direction. Sweet Teddy's crop looks like it has only emptied a little bit  I'm going to give him his medicine and then massage his crop some. A double whammy is that the medicine is not absorbed as well when the crop has food in it, so he isn't getting as much of the meds he needs this way... I'm reluctant to empty his crop for him yet though.

I'm going to give everyone their medicine and then feed Neeja. It occurred to me that I haven't eaten anything yet today so going to do that too.


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## SnowyShiloh

Another update. Hope you guys don't mind me updating all the time. I'm going to give Teddy sub q fluids here in a few minutes. I hate doing it, but providing I don't accidentally stab him with the needle when he moves around, it will be good for him.

Neeja ate his food and I'm hoping his crop will empty quickly. I'm going to boost the amount of food a little when it empties. For a bird his weight, he should be eating 3 CCs every meal, but I've only been giving him .5 CC because I don't want to overload the crop. If it's emptying a little slowly, the food has a chance to go bad, but if I instead feed him really frequently, that won't happen.

Speaking of weights, Phoenix is a little porker. I hope there's nothing wrong with him. Dude weighs 38 grams! He is a solid little guy. In comparison, the perfectly healthy baby tiel in the "Watch Me Grow" article weighs 40 grams at 7 days. Phoenix outweighs both of his older brothers at 7 days old. He only weighed 13 grams on Thursday if it gives you any idea of his weight gain. His crop has a good feel to it and his parents are keeping him well fed. He's pooping so much!


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## myLoki

I enjoy your updates. Keep 'em comin'!

t.:biggrin2:


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## Nela

We're all sitting here, watching this thread in anticipation. You may not have noticed, but we've made a series of 'cheer gear' and we're all sitting here in our t-shirts that say 'Go Shiloh you can do it!' and 'Go birdies Go, keeeeeep poopin'!' We've all grown attached to them through you, and we go through ups and downs ourselves as well as you post updates. Seriously though, I'm thinking of you and the little ones. I keep opening this thread with my eyes closes and then slowly opening an eye and then finally opening them fully when I realize they're alive and fighting. Make sure you eat properlywhen you can.


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## SnowyShiloh

You guys are the best. It's nice to have support. I feel lucky! I have good news and bad news. Bad news is little Teddy is getting more dehydrated and his crop is not emptying  I gave him fluids and he pooped a little, but I don't have high hopes for his survival. Of course I will be doing everything I can to make him live, but realistically, I don't know.

I am more optimistic about Neeja. I fed him .5 CC of slightly thicker formula and he had it out of his crop in 2 hours. Go baby go! Baby steps... I just fed him again, this time .75 CC. Next feeding I'm going to bump it up to 1.25. He should be able to eat 3 CCs of thicker formula than he's getting at every feeding, but I want to take small steps. I'd rather feed him more often and work our way up to where he should be. I'm more optimistic about him recovering. When empty, his crop actually looks like it should! It doesn't seem distended. So his crop emptying problems are improving and he's not dehydrated, but the yeast and bacterial infections that CAUSED the sour crop are still there, just under control from the medications he's on. Hopefully the medications will continue to work without damaging his tiny body or messing up his intestinal flora too much. They're so small that medication amounts (and even BeneBac amounts) are kind of guesses. For one of the medications, I don't even have real dosage amounts or anything because the amount they need is sooooo tiny- I have 1 little capsule of medicine that I broke in half and how I measure it out is by scooping the teeniest little amount up with my pinky fingernail (picking it up with my fingers would result in too high of a dose) and mixing it with 1 drop of water.

I haven't checked on Phoenix since I last posted, but Arthur is with him in the nest box.


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## hartleybun

ray:am also gripped by this thread. and as others have said, we are all with you in spririt, even tho' we would like to be there giving you guys a break.

i would like to echo what nela has said - remember to eat! your dedication and love to these lovely birds is to be commended. take care of yourselvesray:


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## landi

I have laughed and cried at this thread your doing a great job and fingers crossed that they all pull through its hard to say your not going to get attached to the little bundles of fluff cause you do but remember to take care of yourself.
We still have only the 1 from the second clutch which is now 5 days old not looking like the others are going to hatch which is sad but better that way than them hatching and going through losing any like you.


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## SnowyShiloh

Yeah, Landi, I would have much preferred to be disappointed about none of them hatching than having them die after  Or it would have even been "better" if they'd died within the first couple days. Now they're little bitty birdies with big round eyes who freak out when they see you (scream for food), can clumsily waddle around, itch themselves and try to preen their feathers (even though they don't really have feathers yet). We have to be really quiet so we don't wake them up when they're sleeping.

So, birdy update. Teddy's crop isn't really emptying, maybe just a little  Neeja's took longer to empty after his last feed, but the food was also thicker and there was more of it so no real surprise there. I just fed him a few minutes ago and I made even thicker formula. It's still not as thick as a chick his age should get, but a little thicker than it was. He's been pooping mostly liquid with just a little bit of actual feces (which doesn't really mean he has diarrhea, bird poop contains the urine too), so he needs some more actual formula to have as nourishment. Good news is I'm pretty sure he's not dehydrated since he's been passing urine. Poor Teddy has pooped a couple times and it was almost completely urine. They ALL like to poop on me when I pick them up.

I don't know what the heck Arthur and Poppet are up to. I'm a little afraid Poppet is going to start laying more eggs. They're keeping Phoenix fed and are in the nest box about half the time (maybe a bit more, thank goodness for the heating pad!), but I'm not sure they're actually keeping him warm when they go in. I lifted the lid when just Poppet was in there with him because he needed his medicine, and she was sitting on the complete opposite side of the nest box in roosting position. Had to go in again to give him his other med and Arthur and Poppet were in there, neither actually sitting with him. Maybe the heating pad is just doing a good enough job of warming him and they don't want him to overheat? Also Arthur has been chewing on the entrance to the nest box. He hasn't done that since before they started laying eggs. Chewing the nest box like that is a very common thing they do to make it homey before having babies. I don't know WHAT I'll do if they lay more eggs right now! Sheesh! 

Okay everyone should be good for a couple hours and Paul is going to babysit while I get a little sleep.


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## irishbunny

If they laid eggs, couldn't you just take them straight away? I hope they don't!


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## SnowyShiloh

Grace, it's not as simple as that- if you take away their eggs, they'll lay more to replace them.

Teddy's crop still isn't emptying properly.

Neeja's is still emptying slowly (slower since I gave him thicker formula and went up to 1 CC for the most recent feeding) but it's better than not at all.


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## irishbunny

Oh really? We always do that with the chickens, they lay more and try and sit on them but after a while of taking them away they get over it. Pity it isn't that easy!


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## landi

have you seen them mating again our female didn't want to know at all till the chicks were older she kept knocking him off it was funny it wasn't till the chicks were about 5 weeks that she let him then it was us trying to seperate them lol but cant watch 24/7 and they must have sneaked a quickie while we were out


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## SnowyShiloh

Yeah, Poppet would just lay more... That isn't good for her health either because laying eggs takes a lot of her body's nutrients and resources. The calcium for the egg shells is actually drawn from the bones if the bird isn't ingesting enough calcium.

I had to empty Teddy's crop again. It was actually the "best" crop emptying so far, he didn't so much as splutter. Wish I didn't have to empty it ever though! Everyone's been medicated and I'm about to feed Teddy and Neeja.


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## LuvaBun

You are doing such an awesome job, Shiloh. It's a pity you have to keep emptying Teddys' crop, but it sounds like you've got it down to a fine art.

If Poppet lays more eggs, could you replace them with artificial ones? They are doing that to control the geese population - they remove the eggs and put artificial ones in to stop them laying more

ray: for you all

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

If she lays more eggs, I'm just going to shake them up. I'd have to buy fake eggs online and I don't know how long they'll take to get here. I would feel too guilty shaking up eggs that already had embryos growing in them, but if the embryo hadn't even started to develop yet I wouldn't feel as bad. Maybe I'll shake them up and then buy fake eggs, I don't know. My breeder friend thinks it sounds like they're going to lay again too but hopefully that's not the case. 

I just gave everyone their medicine. Neeja was fed the full amount for his age and weight (3 CCs) as sort of a test of how well his crop is functioning. He had 6 hours to empty it and have it be in the normal range. 1 hour left to go and his crop is about half empty. Come on, little guy! Teddy was fed half as much as Neeja and his crop has barely emptied  It's enough that he is pooping some though.

Here are pictures of the babies from right after they were fed. The breeder says they look great and you'd never guess they were seriously ill because they don't look dehydrated and their feather development is on target. They are quite a bit smaller than they should be though. They're very bright eyed and boisterous even though they're sick. I'm glad they at least seem to be feeling okay...

(Teddy is on the left and Neeja is on the right)







freaking out still because they think they're going to get more food. 





You should hear how noisy they are! I should take a video of them. They're brutal and try to knock each other over and keep each other down by putting their wings over each other when feeding time arrives. This is normal baby bird behavior. Also you wouldn't know it, but when they're REALLY begging for food, they stand up on their back legs as tall as they can and stretch their necks about 3 inches long and screeeeeam. They're at least 6 inches tall when they do it!

Also, remember how earlier in the thread I talked about a girl on my cockatiel forum whose birds laid eggs on the same days as my birds and only 1 egg hatched? He died today at 10 days :cry1: His name was Meatball and he was a little white faced chick. He died because his owners were going out of town and they brought the parents, baby and nest box to the pet sitter's house and the parents abandoned him. She's feeling very guilty right now. Poor little Kieran and Meatball.


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## SnowyShiloh

Okay, Teddy's crop only emptied about 1/3 of the way over the past 6 hours with the small amount of food I gave him. I'm going to walk to the feed store and buy Vet Wrap so I can make him a crop bra:

http://talkcockatiels.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=5109&d=1278239871

Sexy, huh? Hopefully the brooder doesn't flip out and cook the babies. I should only be gone for about 30 minutes.


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## SnowyShiloh

Only scroll down if you think you can handle the manliness that IS the crop bra.

Teddy sporting his stylish "light red" bra and demonstrating how very tall he can be:






Neeja showing off his "reddish blue" ultra sexy bra:






In all seriousness, I have high hopes that these bras will help them! I can't remember if I said before what they do, but they elevate a stretched out crop so that it's above the opening to the stomach. When a crop is stretched out and part of it hangs below the stomach opening, the food in the lowest part cannot enter the stomach and instead sours and ferments.


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## landi

Awwwwwwww bless em


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## SnowyShiloh

Okay, there's at least 1 good thing about the bras: it's a lot easier to judge how much their crops have emptied! It's been 2 1/2 hours since they were fed and I'm happy to say that both babies' crops have emptied visibly. It will be a great sign of their crops are completely empty in 3 1/2 more hours. Hope hope hope! I'm going to go get some sleep while Paul babysits them and hopefully they'll get some good rest during that time.


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## Nela

I right about died of laughter when I saw their bras. Hehehehehe. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay for good news though! Soooooo happy to hear that their crops are emptying some!


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## hartleybun

:roflmao:i shouldnt laugh but i just cant help it! i was enjoying the close up cute beak pics and then.......bird bra!!

glad to read some good news at last! thanks for the update!


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## SnowyShiloh

It is cute, isn't it? Good news is Neeja's crop has emptied a bit more. Teddy's seems roughly the same as it was. He has 3 more hours to get it emptied or I'm going to have to empty if for him AGAIN. I'm a bit worried about Phoenix because this round of medicine and the last his crop felt a little soft to me. Not watery per se, but soft. I don't know what to do if he gets sour crop. He's already being medicated the same was the other babies. He's actually at an advantage since he's being fed by his parents, and they get immunities and good enzymes from the parents. The only advantage that pulling him from the nest box would have is that I could time his feedings and make sure he was empty before being fed again since any sour food in the crop contaminates the new food. He's reaching the same age the others all were when they developed sour crop.


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## irishbunny

Hope things start to go well! Is it because of their parents that they are all ill? Or was it just bad luck?


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## SnowyShiloh

Grace, I don't really know. Wish I did. 

It's been a very disappointing morning so far. I think I got too hopeful about the crop bras. Their crops seemed to empty at about the same rate as they did before. I had to flush out and empty Teddy's crop again a few minutes ago  Even aside from the actual infections they have, what are the chances Teddy won't flat out aspirate and die in my hands one of these times, or (possibly worse I think and also more likely), simply get aspiration pneumonia from breathing in a little bit of liquid and dying a few days later? I'm feeling a little more optimistic about Neeja's prognosis since I've only had to empty him once (though it led to him having fluid come out his nostrils, which is quite bad!) and his crop is emptying better than Teddy's.

I'm going to go feed them.


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## SnowyShiloh

Oh my gosh. I got the babies both fed and everything, and when Teddy fell out of my hand when I went to put him back in the brooder. I was opening the lid with one hand and he was in my other, screaming because he was hungry (it takes a while for healthy cockatiels to get food into their stomachs from the crop and it takes these guys even longer so they act like they're starving when they have full crops), and he toppled out of my hand. Thankfully I was sitting on the edge of the couch at the time, and I caught him with my thighs. It didn't feel like I caught him too hard and he didn't even stop screaming for food, but I hope he's not injured. Poor guy cannot catch a break. Ugh :sad::sad:


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## JadeIcing

*hugs*


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## hartleybun

:hug: you will probably find that the parents are a lot rougher with the babies than you think. i learnt this when my choc lab, brandy, had her litter. i was treating them like little pieces of wedgwood bone chine, she was treating them like nine pins

keep up the good work and remember to look after yourself tooray:


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## SnowyShiloh

Poor babies  Teddy doesn't seem to be improving. Teddy and Neeja both weigh 29 grams. They're still losing grams  Neeja seems to be improving very slightly every day- so slight that I can't even notice it from day to day?! But he's not gaining weight. They have been on meds for almost 72 full hours now. How long should I keep going with Teddy on this? Tell me what you think  

Phoenix is 48 grams this afternoon, up from 45 last night. I was worried because the last 3 medication times his crop felt softer, but this time it feels good again. Maybe Arthur and Poppet just fed him more water for a while. Hopefully he will be okay. Arthur is even more protective of Phoenix now than he used to be but isn't really warming him like he should. Since Saturday I've only seen one of the parents actually standing above Phoenix to warm him 1 time. The rest of the time they may be in the nest box but aren't snuggling him.

Going to go feed Teddy and Neeja now.


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## SnowyShiloh

We have a small improvement... Their poop is getting to be a more acceptable color and texture. Before their poop was practically fluorescent green because they were taking so long to digest and the bad bacteria in their intestines made it that color. For the feedings last night and this morning, I added crushed papaya tablets. I don't know if that's what's doing it, but their poop is more olive green now. It still doesn't look good per se, but it's less bad at least...


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## SnowyShiloh

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, as I'm sure you can imagine. Teddy and Neeja have made hardly any progress since they started getting medicine 3 days ago. All the things that I thought were progress ended up not really being much. For instance, I don't think Teddy's crop is actually emptying any faster than it was on Saturday and there was actually a slight change in poop color for a little while last night before it went back to being fluorescent green. They're losing a little more weight every day and the difference between them and Phoenix is so startling. Tomorrow it will be 1 week since I really realized there was a problem- that's half of their lives. There was a problem before that too but I didn't realize what it was. I'm afraid that even if they did somehow manage to survive, they would be very sickly adults too.

Paul and I have decided to give them until Thursday night to make noticeable improvements or we're going to take them to be euthanized on Friday morning. Of course if they make some miracle recovery on Friday morning we would not have them euthanized. Friday will be 6 days of medication. 

I decided against returning them to the nest box because they would simply starve and dehydrate to death over the period of a couple days while the yeast and bacterial infections took their toll too. Going to the vet would be the quickest and least painful method for them.

I hope people don't criticize me for this. Believe me, it breaks my heart to think about giving up on them, but I don't want their little lives to be so full of suffering forever. It's even harder because they associate me with food and get very excited when they see me because they're so hungry. Next week I'm going to be out of town for 4 or 5 days (it is unavoidable) and if I did drag out their lives until then, Paul would not be able to give them the round the clock care that I am because he has to go to work. If they have improved by the time I go out of town, they won't need as much care (and will hopefully be back with their parents even) so Paul would be able to handle it.

Phoenix we will be staying with Arthur and Poppet and we'll hope for the best because he appears to be doing okay so far. If he does end up getting sick, there's not much I can do for him because he's already being given the same medications as Teddy and Neeja and parent fed babies do better than hand fed ones anyway.


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## hartleybun

:hug: one of the most difficult things about having pets is doing the right thing for them. so often we have to act in their best interests - something that can be so heartbreaking. no one will ever think ill of you - you have done so much for these little birds, far more than most breeders would ever do. you have given them a chance. sadly nature will not let them take it.

am thinking of you both. ray:xx


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## SnowyShiloh

Just gave everyone meds and got Neeja and Teddy fed. I weighed Phoenix and he gained 6 grams since yesterday and is now 51 grams and on target for his age. He weighs 22 grams more than the other chicks and is 3 and 4 days younger. He weighs 8 grams more than Kieran did at this age (Kieran was sick and I just didn't know it yet). He's 9 days old. I'm pleased that he's growing well. His crop has a good feel to it tonight. It felt soft for 3 rounds of medicine yesterday/today (the days run together since the little ones get round the clock care and we're in Alaska so it doesn't get dark!) but the past 2 rounds of medicine it has felt good. I'm not going to let myself think he's out of the woods for another couple weeks.

Here's the little chunk. The parents are a little messy when they feed him and I always clean his face when I take him out for medicine, but for some reason I cleaned his face after taking the pictures.


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## SnowyShiloh

OH MY GOSH. Neeja and I just had a very scary experience! Even worse than the one with Teddy this morning. The temperature in the brooder was going up for some reason and sometimes it registers as being hotter than it is because one of the chicks is sitting on one of the thermometer probes. I peeked in to check it out and sure enough, there was Teddy, sitting on it. But where was Neeja? He was in a cup of water! You're supposed to put an open container of water in the brooder to keep it humid inside, and last night I upgraded to a much taller mug that I didn't think they could get into and I put a Beanie Baby between the chicks and the water so he had to scale the Beanie Baby, then somehow get into the mug.

About half an hour ago I filled the mug with very hot water from the sink to help keep the brooder warm. Neeja fell into the cup. Thankfully, the water level was low enough that his head was above the water, but talk about a moment of panic! He would have drowned if he'd fallen in head first. Also I checked the temperature of the water and it was 102 degrees. Chick temperature is about 103 degrees so assuming he wasn't in there for very long, it didn't cool him or heat him up. He doesn't seem to have breathed in any water. Poor little baby. I feel so guilty  We'll know in the next couple of days how long he was in there because his skin will have been burned by the hot water if he was in there a long time since the water was pretty hot when I put it in and liquid temperatures over 110 degrees cause burns to chicks :bawl:


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## Nela

Oh geez Shiloh! You know, long long ago I thought I wanted cockatiel babies since I was pretty used to handrearing but yanno what, I think you've cured any any doubt that it might be fun to do that again :expressionlessLol :expressionlessI think you'll need a nice vacation after this. Are you doing any sort of honeymoon? If there is anything I can do to help, don't be afraid to ask. 

Sending hugs and kisses from everyone here to everyone there!


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## landi

one of our chicks decided it was going to go for a swim last week i had filled the kitchen sink with water and put the pots in to be washed but i need to go and use the loo whilst up there charlie [daddy] was making right noise so i came running down to find the chick with his head bobbing up and down covered in bubbles i had the scare of my live luckily he was on a cup but he was wrapped in a towel patted down and then i used my hairdryer on him at a low speed & heat he looked very clean and fluffy afterwards lol but it scared the life out of me and of course i was in on my own .
as for your babies its your decision and its going to be a very hard one no one elses. 
I've read that your getting married congratulations which is going to take up alot of time.
dont let anyone criticize you but on a personal note i would give it another go when things are settled maybe in a year we had all DIS first time like i said before upsetting that nothing hatched but easier than getting attached and then loosing one or more. You take care


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## TinysMom

Shiloh - only you & Paul know what is best for the babies - you are there with them.

You have to make the decisions that you can live with - and if the whole world disagrees - who cares? They're not you - they've not seen / heard /experienced what you've seen/heard/experienced...

You know you have my support no matter what your decision is....and my pm box is always open.


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## Nela

Agreeing with Peg...

It's terribly hard now but maybe as days progress and as they get older they will have a better outlook. Don't get beat down just yet. When you see it in their eyes that they want to go, that will be the time. You'll know it, you'll feel it. And there will be no guilt, no blame, no bad feelings that you should feel at that point. You havedone beyond what most people would have done for them. You have given it your all. IF that time comes, then know you will have offered them a fighting chance and then peace. 

I, myself, am staying positive. Hang in there, it may look grim but they're still fighting. If they're still screaming for food, you know they aren't ready to call quits yet.:winkMan do I ever remember how noisy they are! 

ray:


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## SnowyShiloh

The screaming for food kills me because I know they're really hungry but their crops won't empty fast enough to feed them properly. They're wasting away  Kieran screamed for food up until an hour or so before he died... they are very food oriented little guys.


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## SnowyShiloh

Phoenix's crop is feeling soft again. Hopefully Arthur and Poppet just drank a lot of water before they fed him or something. Today he is 10 days old. The exact age that I knew for sure all of his siblings were having crop problems too. We were thinking it was caused by something the parents were eating (bread), but it could also be that one of the parents has some sort of infection that they're strong enough to fend off but the babies aren't.


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## SnowyShiloh

His crop is STILL soft and a little smaller than it was before. Like I said before, if it's sour crop, I'm not going to do anything other than be sad. He's been getting the exact same medications as the others and if they couldn't stop the sour crop from even beginning, even while he had the benefit of being fed by his parents instead of formula, I don't think being removed from his parents is going to do any good. He hasn't pooped on me since yesterday afternoon and he usually poops like clockwork every single time he's taken out of the nest. Not pooping could be a sign that he's not digesting right. I'd imagine we'll know for sure if he has sour crop in the next couple of days because he'll only get worse. 

I know I've said this before, but I am never breeding again. I'll leave that to other people. I had the feeling something like this would happen before the eggs even hatched because I have this horrible effect on pregnant things.


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## SnowyShiloh

Ok, I decided with the advice from my breeder friend to put Teddy and Neeja back in the nest box long enough for them to be fed, then back into the brooder. I'm about to put them in. She said their infections *shouldn't* pass from Neeja and Teddy to Phoenix, but to be more on the safe side I'm going to move Phoenix out of the nest box when the other chicks are in there and then clean it after I take them out and before I put Phoenix back in.

Wish us luck.


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## SnowyShiloh

Okay, they're in... They're screaming for food! I wonder what Arthur and Poppet think of them. Hopefully I'll hear feeding sounds soon.


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## landi

good luck


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## SnowyShiloh

Neeja has been fed and is back in the brooder asleep already, Teddy is still screaming for food and when I checked on him a couple minutes ago, he hadn't actually been fed yet in spite of me hearing feeding noises! I will leave him in there for a while longer and then take him out and handfeed him if necessary. Maybe the parents only ate enough food to feed Phoenix so they need a while to eat more and fill their crops again.


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## SnowyShiloh

They never fed Teddy and his cries for food went down to little wimpers, then silence  Poor baby. I took him out of the nest box and hand fed him, he fell asleep within about 2 minutes after being fed.


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## JadeIcing

*hugs*


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## SnowyShiloh

I have a good update, a bad one, and a really bad one. Good first: Phoenix's crop feels good again. It could be getting soft sometimes because the parents may drink more water than usual before feeding him sometimes. He's up to 58 grams now- twice as much as his older siblings. His little peepers are pretty much completely open now.

Bad news: Neeja was fed by his parents 5 hours ago and his crop has drained of liquids but not seeds. 

Really bad news: Teddy is weakening. He's shivering and his cry is quieter. He's getting dehydrated because his crop isn't emptying- it's as empty now as it was this morning when I fed him. I don't think he's going to make it much longer


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## JadeIcing

*hugs*


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## SnowyShiloh

Thinking on it more, I suspect Teddy may have aspiration pneumonia from one of the many times I emptied his crop  I'm not surprised, it was a very real risk every time I emptied it. Each time I had to choose between him maybe dying if I emptied his crop for him or definitely dying if I didn't. Aspiration pneumonia can take several days to develop and it would explain why his chirp sounds trilling and watery. Poor little guy


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## JadeIcing

*squeeze huggles*


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## SnowyShiloh

My little Teddy Bird just died in my hands :bawl: I'm so sorry I couldn't save you, baby.


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## Myia09

I am so sorry :hug:


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## SnowyShiloh

I'm shocked. I didn't think he was that bad yet. I went to check on them and Teddy was sitting there kind of flailing his head around the same way Kieran did before he died. I picked him up and held him as he died  Poor baby. I'm so sad that he spent half of his tiny life ill. Today was his 14 day hatchday. I should have started socializing him today instead of holding his little body. I think Teddy would have grown up into a really sweet birdy- he was never as hissy as the others and didn't hiss at me at all over the past couple days. Just cried and cried because he was hungry since his body was working against him  I can't believe it's only been 14 days, it felt like he was here a long time. Today his feathers started coming out of their sheaths too, it looked like he was wearing tiny paintbrushes. I wish I'd got a photo.

Here's Teddy nuzzling my hand for food:







Doing the same thing at 2 days old:






3 days old:






right after he hatched:






Mama and daddy were both there when he came out of his egg:






starting to break open his egg:






chirping inside his egg:





Fly free, sweet baby. I'm so sorry.


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## TinysMom

Oh no....I really did not want to see this here. I don't know if I can bring myself to come back to this thread after all the losses I've/we've had lately. (I lost one rabbit this week - plus the losses on the forum).

You may have to update me privately ... I don't know.

I am so sorry for your losses though.


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## GoinBackToCali

I'm so sorry..


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## myLoki

I'm so sorry. ray:

t.


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## LuvaBun

Oh No, poor little Teddy 

I am so sorry, Shiloh. You worked so hard on doing everything you could for him. Sometimes, things just aren't meant to be 

Jan


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## landi

So Sorry poor little Teddy


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## SnowyShiloh

I made Teddy and Kieran a Rainbow Bridge thread  I know it doesn't make sense, but I hadn't made one for Kieran before because I was afraid of jinxing the other babies or something.

I'm still worried about Phoenix. Little dude gained 13 grams today. That seems really excessive. Normal is 6-10. Maybe 13 is ok, I don't know. His crop is quite full and kind of soft again. 

Little Neeja still has not emptied all the seeds from his crop from when Poppet fed him 14 hours ago. A healthy bird would be able to empty a crop like that in less than 4 hours! I've supplemented him with runny formula ever since and the seeds are slowly leaving his crop. I think I'm going to hold off on letting the parents feed him for a couple more days.


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## SnowyShiloh

This may be utterly illogical based on the fact that both Kieran and Teddy have already passed away from slow crop, but I changed my mind about giving Neeja until Friday morning or we'll take him to be euthanized. I want to give him more time. I will be out of state from next Thursday through early Tuesday morning. We will see how he's doing next Wendesday before I leave. If he gets worse, we'll have him put to sleep before then. 

I can't believe how much I miss Teddy.


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## hartleybun

:hug:


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## SnowyShiloh

Thanks for the condolences, guys. It really means a lot to me.

I have another moment of guilt. I was very tired and decided I could take a little nap before the babies were due for their meds (and Neeja for his feeding) at 11 am. I set the timer and everything. I woke up at 1 pm! So we were more than 2 hours late once you factor in the time to make everything ready to medicate and feed  I'm sorry, babies! Neeja's crop was almost completely empty and he'd been fed 9 hours earlier. What was in his crop though was a few more seeds left from yesterday's feeding from his parents. They've been in there wayyy too long. I don't think seeds go bad as fast as other food though and his crop was drained of formula which is good.


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## SnowyShiloh

I feel like I should mention that the reason I slept so long this afternoon and missed regular med and feeding time is that I was asleep on the couch so I would be close to Neeja whose brooder is on the coffee table. I have a digital probe thermometer in the brooder and have an alarm on it set to go off if it gets too hot. The alarm is loud and I didn't want it to disturb him in case it went off, so I put it next to me on the couch. The Thermometer also has a timer and I set it for an hour, but since it was next to me on the couch, I rolled on it and stopped it! It was paused at like 35 minutes to go.

Little Phoenix seems more aware of his surroundings today and not nearly as sleepy. He's 11 days old. He's hissing at me lots. When he's hissing or alert, his little crop pin feathers point straight up and it's quite cute. 

Here is the ultra chunky (64 grams, he's 20 grams less than his parents and 34 more than Neeja!) Phoenix:






Neeja's developments for the day are that he's learning to chirp (it sounds kind of funny and he chirps randomly in the middle of crying for food) and the tips of his feathers are just coming out of their sheaths. He's so super tiny but his feather development is on target. In some ways I wish it wasn't because his body is using the nutrition he's receiving to grow feathers instead of grow him!


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## mistyjr

:hugsquish::hug1 So sorry for your loss!! Hugs to ya!


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## SnowyShiloh

I feel so defeated. Baby Neeja passed away at some point since I fed and medicated him a couple of hours ago. I checked on him in the brooder and he was gone. He was snuggled with his stuffed bunny. Poor baby. In some ways I'm relieved because he's finally at rest, but so sad at the same time. Fly free, my feisty baby- you tried so hard to survive.


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## Nela

:cry4:

I'm so sorry...


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## mistyjr

:hug1:cry2 I am soo sorry for your loss of those babies!! I didnt know it was that hard to raise cockatiels. I had them when I was a teen. I tried to breed them and the eggs would never developed. **HUGS TO YOU**


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## JadeIcing

*hugs*


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## landi

I'm so sorry but little Pheonix looks like he's doing good 

xxx


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## hartleybun

:hug: i am so sorry - fly free little birdray:

on a happier note i am pleased to see the lovelypic of phoenix - such a handsome little dude! stay strong and positive for his sake now.


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## SnowyShiloh

Yes, I'm glad we still have baby Phoenix. He is 12 days old today. When I gave him his morning meds, his little crop was nearly empty. That makes it pretty obvious that his crop is emptying fine! It's normal for the parents to go several hours without feeding them at night and they're feeding him right now, so I'm only a LITTLE worried.

Phoenix is going to face some hurdles. First, my friend is coming to stay with us on Tuesday. She will be sleeping on the couch in the living room (no other place for her to sleep) which is 3 feet from the bird cage. I'm sincerely hoping Arthur and Poppet don't abandon Phoenix because of her presence. And then my friend and I are leaving on Thursday and coming back the next Tuesday, so Paul will be in charge for 4 days and 2 half days. Hopefully they don't abandon him because Paul's caring for them, which he doesn't normally do! And THEN, after my friend and I get back, our relatives who have never seen our home because they live far away will be arriving for our wedding. I actually only plan to let them peek in the door of our house quickly because I don't want a bunch of people parading through the living room right now. Final hurdle will be our honeymoon. We'll be gone 6 days and the pet sitter will be caring for the birds. Hopefully Arthur and Poppet won't abandon him then...

The plan is as follows: starting this evening, Paul will begin to share the bird chores so they get used to him digging around in the cage and nest box. I will teach him to handfeed as best as I can (wish now I'd made him watch when I fed Teddy and Neeja!) and how to do all the other important baby bird things in case they abandon him while I'm gone since he'll need to be hand raised then. As for the pet sitter, if Phoenix is still in the nest box with Arthur and Poppet, we'll have the sitter meet all 3 birds and do some bird chores before we leave so they'll hopefully be used to him. We'll keep in daily contact with the pet sitter and if it appears Phoenix begins to develop any problems while we're gone, we'll come home, get him and the handfeeding/brooding supplies, and drive back to finish our honeymoon! Where we're going is only 6 hours drive away so we can do that if we have to.

So we have some interesting times ahead of us, but hopefully everything will work out.


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## LuvaBun

Oh, poor little Neeja! I'm so sorry, Shiloh. This breeding thing really sucks

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

Arthur and Poppet are mating right now :grumpy::grumpy: Nooooooo. I had the feeling they were thinking about laying another clutch! There will not be more babies, I can't do this again. *IF* we ever do let them have babies again, at least I will be much more prepared since I know what to look for in crops and have all the supplies on hand (particularly special syringes with soft, flexible tips to stick down into the crop and suck out the contents which is much safer than holding the chick upside down to empty them) and know how to handfeed, but I want to get Arthur and Poppet to the vet to be checked for any infections or health problems before they would ever have babies again.

If eggs are laid, I'm going to have to shake them up. Mean, yes, but the baby won't feel it- I'll do it as soon as they're laid so they won't even have begun to develop.


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## TinysMom

I'm so sorry. I agree with you for deciding to shake the eggs - I know its a hard decision but with all you have going on right now with your upcoming wedding, etc.

I wish I could be there to help....


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## SnowyShiloh

Yeah, I looked at the calendar and the first egg would hatch in the middle of our honeymoon. Not happening. I'd rather the chicks' lives never begin than them hatch and suffer and die.

Also Mr Fatty is 76 grams today and I've been given permission to discontinue his medications! He isn't showing signs of sour crop and being medicated unnecessarily is dangerous, especially to a delicate baby bird. I still have the meds on hand to treat him should he get sick. And I paid $20 shipping for those syringes with the long flexible tips to use to empty his crop if it comes down to it.


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## SnowyShiloh

Every day I weigh Phoenix at 10:30 pm and that's his official weight for the day. Little dude managed to pack on 1 extra gram since earlier and is 77 grams. Wow! 10 grams in one day! That is not the weight gain of a sick baby. He weighs 8 grams less than his parents. EIGHT. And he's only 12 days old! 1 week ago he weighed 15 grams and was undersized because he was dehydrated when he hatched and then was being fed food inappropriate for his age so didn't grow fast. 77 grams is exactly the weight of the chick on the Watch Me grow chart at 12 days: http://justcockatiels.weebly.com/watch-me-grow.html

Only difference is Phoenix's feather growth is more advanced than that chick's and his hairdo is taller.

Speaking of hairdo...







Baby face! Also I think I spy some tiny little yellow feathers at the very front of his crest! They may be gray and just look yellow because they're tiny, but tomorrow we should have a better idea. It would be beyond cute if he had a couple yellow feathers in his hairdo!


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## mistyjr

Very Cute!


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## Starlight Rabbitry

Very cute indeed  I am sorry for the loss of the other three chicks. I have been reading this thread for a while and just want to say THANK YOU for sharing it with us. I have learned a lot just by reading this thread. I had a cockatiel as a child, very pretty birds.

Sharon


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## hartleybun

:inlove:cute.

and i think you are doing the right thing with this new clutch. we bred budgies and canaries when i was a child. the same thing was done then. pheonix is doing so well now - you should be proud of all you have done so far. xx


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## SnowyShiloh

Okay, I found out that Phoenix will have a yellow spot on his forehead where those feathers are! It's called a diamond  Just another indication of his specialness and pricelessness. Aww, I'm so sappy. Diamonds are fairly unusual for tiels to have, but it does happen. If he really is a boy, the diamond will probably disappear when he molts because his face will be yellow anyway, but if he's a girl it will be much more obvious.


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## JadeIcing

OMG! I let out a squeal he is so cute!!!! Thank you so much for sharing I need smiles from anywhere I can get them. So thank you so much.


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## TinysMom

Reminds me of the song "Baby Face....you've got the cutest little baby face...".

Yeah - I admit - he's cute....


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## SnowyShiloh

Oh good LORD. It is just one thing after another. Poppet has taken it upon herself to pluck poor baby Phoenix's feathers out of his little noggin. At the time of that photo, all his feathers were intact. Then I checked on him again and I could see a tiny pin prick of red on the black of his head and a reddish spot. Then I went to take pictures and can see 2 obvious holes on the back of his head where pinfeathers USED to be. Poppet? Seriously? WHYYYYYYY? This means that Poppet must be removed from the cage because she'll continue to pluck him which is very unhealthy for him. Hopefully Arthur will take care of Phoenix but I have my doubts because as protective as he is, Poppet does most of the care and undoubtedly Arthur will be freaking out over being separated from her. If he won't care for Phoenix, we will have to handfeed him.

Last night was to be my first night of uninterrupted sleep and I didn't go to sleep at all. What a waste.

I guess I should just be glad I have a healthy baby (and I am), but that doesn't stop this from being exasperating!

-says Shiloh, who is off to the pet store to buy a new cage for Miss Plucky...


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## SOOOSKA

Shiloh, he/she is so cute. I'm so sorry you lost the other 3, Ican't imagine how hard that is for you. You are doing such a great job with the "birdies".

I keep coming back to see updated pictures of the little guy to watch his developmentalprogress.

Try to get some sleep tonight.

Susan


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## SnowyShiloh

She's still plucking him. I'm so annoyed at her. I just went out and bought a new cage and everything since she's going to have to move out. I'm hoping Arthur will resume caring for Phoenix. I'm going to put her cage right next to theirs so Arthur and Poppet can see each other, and I might put her in the cage a few times a day so she can feed Phoenix and then take her back out.


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## SnowyShiloh

Phoenix is still being plucked  At this very moment, both parents are out of the nest box and Poppet is grooming Arthur and occasionally plucking a feather from the back of his head. Niiiice. 

Baby Phoenix has sprouted a yellow tail feather and the feathers around his beak are yellow too. How very interesting and unusual! He will probably end up looking like this:







This bird is a girl and belongs to my breeder contact. Girls do not usually have yellow on their faces. I don't know what's up with the yellow tailfeather. I can't remember if that's normal or not.


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## landi

arthur should be ok on his own with pheonix as we have found that charlie did most if the feeding when they were getting bigger still giving the odd feed now and they are 10 weeks old this week cheeky hasn't fed them at all since laying the other eggs 
How do i get pics on this page


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## SnowyShiloh

I'm hoping Arthur will be a good daddy and not miss Poppet too much. I plan to let them out together for a few minutes every day so they can still interact with each other. Arthur is REALLY BAD at being alone! I'm concerned because Poppet does most of the baby bird care. Arthur's more the protector than anything. Also they didn't feed Phoenix a whole lot Saturday. In the morning I'm going to move Poppet into the new cage and hopefully Arthur will feed Phoenix. If he doesn't, I'll supplement him with some formula then put him back in the nest box. I'll give Arthur some time to adjust to single parenthood before pulling Phoenix for handfeeding.


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## SnowyShiloh

Okay, I'm putting Poppet in the new cage now. Please wish me luck that Arthur does okay with being separated from her and takes over his new full time parent role well. One parent can raise 3-4 chicks by themselves so he should be fine with Phoenix, as long as he's actually willing to care for him and doesn't just scream because he's separated from Poppet!

I haven't slept yet tonight and was about to go to bed now, but looks like that won't be happening. I'm going to stay up to make sure Arthur is caring for Phoenix. I have a TON of wedding things to do today and preparing for my friend's arrival, so it looks like I'll be consuming lots of caffeine! And it's not even 5 am yet... My life is crazy.


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## landi




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## SnowyShiloh

Okay, I have to share my baby Phoenix's picture. Today is his 2 week birthday. I would say he is now firmly in the cute category and no longer looks like an alien dinosaur!


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## hartleybun

:inlove: now that phoenix has officially achieved level 1 cuteness will you considering relaxing a little and throwing yourself into wedding planning?ray:


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## JadeIcing

Haha he was cute from the get go.


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## LuvaBun

Adorable! You should be proud of yourself, getting him this far!

BTW - why does Poppet pluck his and Arthurs' feathers? Is it a way of over grooming or is there no real reason for it? Just wondering :?

Jan


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## Amy27

Look at how cute Phoenix is now! I agree, this is the cute category now. So adorable! He looks like a little bird now.


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## landi

how do i get pics on here


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## SnowyShiloh

I absolutely will not relax yet! I didn't even go to bed last night. Poppet continued to pluck the poor guy. This morning at 5 am I moved Poppet out of the cage. She freaked out at being separated from Phoenix and was pacing and chirping frantically, Arthur freaked out at being separated from her and screamed as loud as he could frantically, Phoenix freaked out at being alone and hungry and cried for food as loud as he could, and I freaked out at the idea of having to hand raise Phoenix if Arthur didn't get his feathery butt to the nest box and feed him.

Then, my breeder contact took a look at how Phoenix had been plucked and she said she thought Poppet was doing it because she needs sodium since she's getting ready to lay eggs again soon and blood is salty. She plucked little feathers on his head, and chewed a few bigger feathers on his body but didn't rip them out. And she didn't bite him at all. She said to put Poppet back in the nest and we'll try to get some sodium into her another way so she'll stop plucking him.

However, once I got Poppet back in there, they were too shaken up from the whole ordeal to feed Phoenix. I had to step in and handfed him 2 CCs of formula. He's been getting meds 4 times a day from a syringe from me, but does not yet connect syringe with food. So I got a bit of formula into him and when he was screaming for food good and loud, I put him back in the nest box (which Arthur and Poppet had gone into in my absence) and they fed him within 15 seconds. Phew!

Then I went and got a 4 hour nap since I hadn't slept yet. Came back downstairs to find an almost empty cropped and alone Phoenix. Thought I was going to have to feed him again, but apparently the parents were waiting until I came downstairs to feed him because they BOTH fed him within about 30 seconds. They're now eating more food and hopefully baby Phoenix is sleeping. I'm a little worried about him getting cold since he's by himself so much, but he's getting bigger and his pinfeathers keep him warm some, and I have a heating pad set to low on the side of the nest box.

Hopefully when we get some sodium into Poppet, that will stop her from plucking him. If it doesn't but the plucking is not severe or aggressive, my breeder contact actually suggests leaving him with mom and dad. If we DO have to remove him, he will figure out the handfeeding thing quickly and hand raising him should be way less stressful than hand raising his siblings was since he's healthy and needs food 4-5 times a day versus every 2 hours around the clock.

The next hurdle after the sodium issue is that my friend from out of town is arriving Tuesday and will be sleeping on our couch 3 feet from the bird cage for the next 3 weeks. Hopefully the parents will not feel threatened by her presence and abandon him. Then the NEXT hurdle is that I will be out of town for 5 days and Paul is going to have to take care of everyone. I am the usual bird caretaker so hopefully they will not abandon him when Paul ends up taking care of them.

My plan to get them used to Paul is to have him change the papers and water until I leave and have him look in the nest box and stuff, and I'll give Phoenix some supplemental hand feedings so he gets used to it and so Paul can learn how to do it in case he has to.


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## SnowyShiloh

So Paul and I are considering just giving in and hand raising Phoenix. Arthur and Poppet did a very shoddy job of caring for him today and yesterday, between the feather plucking, not sitting in the nest box with him, and not feeding him consistently. I've had to supplement feed the little guy twice. The power went out at our house a few hours ago so Paul and I are at his workplace so we can have the electricity we need to keep his brooder warm and heat up the water for his formula. Never mind that our friend is arriving in less than 2 days and our house is a complete mess and I was going to get a lot of cleaning done tonight but am now stuck here!

If we decide to hand raise Phoenix, we won't have to worry about Arthur and Poppet abandoning him or doing a shoddy job of feeding and warming him. We'll be able to tell immediately if he gets any crop problems because there would be no question about how much he was last fed and when. Crop problems are much easier to fix when you recognize the bird is struggling with emptying right away! Also I ordered syringes with flexible tips that we can use to empty his crop in a much safer way if we ever have to (please don't let that happen!) and I already have antibiotics and 2 antifungal medications I can give him immediately if he develops crop problems. He should also turn out very sweet if he's hand raised. And if we just decide to hand raise him now, Paul will already know how to take care of him by the time I have to leave to go to Washington on Wednesday and won't have to worry about monitoring him with Arthur and Poppet or have to possibly handfeed him for the first time when I'm not there to help him. Handfeeding is dangerous if you've never done it before.

Down sides, aside from the time commitment, are that cockatiel chicks do better and grow bigger when their parents raise them. They get immunities and beneficial bacteria when their parents feed them and they're less prone to crop issues. They wean faster too. However, if Arthur and Poppet are plucking and ignoring him, he would obviously be best off away from them.

What I'm going to do is feed Phoenix one more time before bed, then leave him in the brooder overnight. I'll try putting him back in the nest box tomorrow morning when I'll be home for a few hours so I can monitor him. If the parents continue to flake out and pluck him, we'll just resign ourselves to hand raising him! How funny is this- if we hand raise him, I'm going to have to leave my own wedding reception to go home and feed him once and we're going to have to take him on our honeymoon.

I just hope that whatever happens, Phoenix will grow up big and strong and healthy and sweet. This whole breeding experience has had more than its fair share of tragedy and sadness. 

What do you guys think?


----------



## SnowyShiloh

What in the world is with our bad luck?! The power at home still has not gone on. This wouldn't be a problem any other night when Arthur and Poppet were still caring for Phoenix, but now we have to spend the night awake at Paul's workplace so we can plug in his heating pad and heat the bottled water for his formula in the microwave. Poor Paul has to work tomorrow and I have a TON of stuff to do in addition to feeding Phoenix because I had planned to get lots of cleaning done tonight since my friend gets here Tuesday.

I can hardly bear it. I'm tired. I can't go to sleep. I have so much to do and a tiny feathered dictator to tend to. Can I scream into a pillow? Maybe that will make me feel a little better.

Oh and Phoenix still isn't giving me a good feeding response, which means I can only feed him half of what he should be getting at each feeding, which means I need to go through the hour long process of feeding him and cleaning up twice as often. Yayyyy.


----------



## TinysMom

What about those heating pads you can get for your back or if you're cramping (I forget what they're called) - you open up the package and the air activates them or something?

In the pharmacy section of Walmart and other stores....


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## kherrmann3

I'm sorry to hear about the other three chicks... At least Phoenix is still going strong! I hope that you guys are doing OK with the power off! 

My mum's cockatiel, Sweetie, had almost no feathers when we got him. His mom plucked all of the feathers off of his back and neck. He looked like a goofy vulture.

I would safely say that Phoenix is in the "cute" stage!


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## SnowyShiloh

We are back home! The power came on at 5 and we got home as quick as we could.

Bad news is Phoenix has lost 2 grams since yesterday. He had a very weird past couple of days though between the feather plucking, Arthur and Poppet not feeding him right, and the supplemental feeding. He's pooping and hydrated and everything so I'm not over the top worried yet. 

Good news is Phoenix started to figure out how to properly eat from a syringe this afternoon. This means that I can actually give him the full amount of formula each feeding that he should be receiving (this should get him back on the road to weight gain) and the feedings are farther apart. Also, I finally found 2 digital probe thermometers that read the same temperature! Thank goodness! I have purchased 12 thermometers since the whole handfeeding thing started a week and a half ago. Yes. TWELVE. 5 are digital (1 is designed for inside the brooder though), 3 are the kind with the little dial like a clock, 4 are the the old fashioned stick kind with the red "mercury" (2 are for inside the brooder). One of the digital ones and one of the old fashioned ones broke, the clock ones take forever to show the right temperature so are useless, and 1 of the other digital ones showed a temperature a full 5 degrees different from the other. Problem was I didn't know which one was right! The new digital thermometer has the same temp as the high quality digital thermometer we have though. I'm going to toss the other digital one. So between Phoenix giving a feeding response and having 2 good thermometers for the formula, feeding him just got 10 times less stressful! Woohoo!


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## Whiskerz

This is an amazing thread!


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## SnowyShiloh

Baby Phoenix can perch on my finger! I wouldn't walk around with him like that and only let him do it if I'm kinda holding onto him, but it's a start. Go go toe control!


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## kherrmann3

Hooray for baby birdie milestones! :biggrin2:


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## SnowyShiloh

Indeed, Kelly! The little guy is also preening himself some (he must be so itchy!) and pulling off the feather sheaths. He's hissing at me less now that he's figuring out I feed him. He was very hissy there for a while!

I just fed him his final meal for the day. 7 CCs. In the past 24 hours he has consumed 28 CCs. For a bird his age and weight, that is exactly what he should be eating. I've read conflicting information- some things say a 15 day old bird needs 4 feedings a day, others say 5. I would probably lean towards 5, but he can't digest any faster than he can digest and if I fed him the same amount more frequently, he'd have more food hanging around in his crop just waiting to sour. So I guess we'll stick with 4 feedings per day for now. Want to know the best part? The best part is that he goes 8 hours between the last night feeding and the morning feeding! That means I'll be able to do things like sleep a decent amount of time uninterrupted. The 8 hours gives his crop a chance to empty completely once a day. Everyone agrees the crop on a handfed bird must empty completely once a day. Some people say the crop needs to empty completely between every feeding. The problem with that is if you wait until it's completely empty, you'll have even longer between feedings so the chick won't be able to eat as much food on any given day. Also it's not really healthy for a chick's crop to be completely too often, so I'd have to wait around for him checking him all the time and then feed him as soon as it was completely empty. I have lots of stuff to do right now with the wedding and my friend arriving tomorrow, so I don't really have the time to do that. Hopefully our method will work out just fine.


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## Nela

Hey Shiloh, still reading this thread and wincing every time I open it... I hope everything will work out alright. How stressful! Wish there was something I could do to help. Wishing you all the best with Phoenix and with your wedding planning. Enjoy the company!

ps: do you think you'll get away with not really showing the family where you live?


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## SnowyShiloh

Hi Sophie! Since Arthur and Poppet have been relieved of their parenting duties, it doesn't really matter if other people come over. That's one of the good things I guess about hand raising Phoenix... I haven't taken the nest box off the parents' cage yet just in case I have to put him back in there or something. They're sitting in the nest box a lot, but I don't think it's because they miss Phoenix. He was in the nest box with them for a good 6 hours this morning and didn't feed him at all! His crop was completely empty when I took him out. I'm quite certain that they're gearing up to lay more eggs. That's just too bad, we aren't having more babies right now or probably ever.

I really hope he's gained weight when I weigh him in the morning!


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## kherrmann3

I remember the "pinfeather days". *winces* Poor Sweetie would try to preen, preen, preen, and every once in awhile, he would squawk, look up to see who had hurt him, then resume preening. I don't know if the poor little guy knew that HE was the one doing it. (I should post a picture in my blog of Sweetie-in-vulture-mode).

I hope little Phoenix gets through the pokey pinfeather stage soon! :hearts:


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## SnowyShiloh

I hope he gets through this stage soon too! Poor itchy baby. I'm worried because he weighs the same today as he did yesterday. Why isn't he gaining weight?


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## LuvaBun

*SnowyShiloh wrote:*


> Go go toe control!


 That made me smile.

Glad to hear things atre continuing to go well. Don't know why he isn't putting on wweight, but he has been up til now nad at least he isn't losing any 

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

Phoenix and I are getting the hang of handfeeding! So far, after 2 1/2 whole days (ha), it's going pretty well. His poop is plentiful and of good color and texture. He's eating exactly 28 CCs of formula each day. Every 5 hours during the day and then an 8 hour stretch at night. His feeding response is getting better with each feeding and he's hissing at me less. 

I reallllly hope he's gained some weight when I weigh him in a few hours. We may need to add in another feeding, which would bring him up to 35 CCs per day. I would just add it in, but there's the whole crop emptying issue so I'm waiting to hear from someone who knows more about cockatiel chicks than me. If I get permission to give him another feeding (which I hope I do, I'd rather have to feed him more often and have him gain weight!), hopefully that will help fatten him up. I keep telling myself that he's doing well- even after 3 days of not gaining weight, he still weighs as much as most chicks who are several days older.

My friend arrived from Austria today to stay with us until the wedding. She loves birds and has raised some baby geese, so of course she just about flipped her lid over how adorable Phoenix is. Her job is to hold him and cuddle him and keep him warm while I make his food  Unfortunately I have to feed him during the night and she's sleeping in the living room, so she gets woken up by his screaming, but that's just how it is. I bought her some ear plugs


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## kherrmann3

*SnowyShiloh wrote: *


> Her job is to hold him and cuddle him and keep him warm while I make his food  Unfortunately I have to feed him during the night and she's sleeping in the living room, so she gets woken up by his screaming, but that's just how it is. I bought her some ear plugs


She must be _soo _upset!  Nothing wrong with cuddling babeh birdehs!  

I showed my mum the picture of Phoenix sporting his little spiky crest, and she about died! It reminded her of when her Sweetie-bird was in "retarded-chicken mode" (as she likes to call it). That little close-up of his face is now the wallpaper on her computer! Just thought I'd share.


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## SnowyShiloh

Phoenix's crop did not empty completely during the night :bawl: It should empty completely in the 8 hours between the night and morning feedings. There are about 2 CCs left in there. This is the main indication of sour crop. WHY is this happening to my birds?! His crop emptied yesterday morning and Monday morning and Sunday morning. I don't know what to do. I ordered some syringes with long flexible tips to use to empty his crop if necessary, and I paid for extra fast shipping (which cost twice as much as the actual syringes), but they haven't arrived yet.

I don't think I can go through with another sick baby bird. ESPECIALLY since I will be out of town from tomorrow through Tuesday so it will be Paul having to deal with it.

I actually dreamed last night that this happened 

:bawl:


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## kherrmann3

:hug:


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## mistyjr

Please read this website... Its a website for sour crop
http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww61ev.htm


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## SnowyShiloh

Yeah I've seen that article, thanks for looking for more info for me though!

Phoenix is no better. His poop has turned green with green urine. That means it's spending a lot of time in his digestive system after leaving the crop and that there's bacteria in there. I don't know what to do. I have to leave tomorrow for 5 days! I don't know how Paul is going to take care of a sick baby bird, he has to work. I fear Phoenix will either die while I'm gone, or worse, he'll still be alive but be very sick and dehydrated and have lost a lot of weight by the time I get home. I'd prefer he die quickly than linger and suffer. 

Poppet laid an egg today.


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## Nela

I'm sorry about Phoenix not doing well


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## SnowyShiloh

I don't think Phoenix is going to make it. Terrible timing of him getting sick right before I leave! I really don't think I did anything to make him sick either, I was soooo careful. I feel so sorry for both him and Paul because he is suffering (not too greatly yet, he's mostly just hungry I think) and Paul doesn't even like the birds but has to deal with a sick one.

I'm still trying to decide what to do with that egg. I'm sure it has a baby in it. Part of me thinks maybe it will be fine, part of me is very afraid that the same thing will happen to that baby and any others that may come along and that isn't fair at all. I may have Paul remove the eggs one at a time as they are laid and put them in the freezer for an hour to kill the embryo, then let it go back to room temperature before returning it to the nest. If I wait to do it until I get home, there will be little heartbeats visible inside the eggs and I don't know if I could bring myself to kill them. I know they wouldn't feel any pain since they'd just be tiny embryos, but still. Blah. I wish they'd just taken care of Phoenix like they were supposed to instead of ditching him to make more eggs!

I'm going to be sure to get some cute pictures of Phoenix in the morning because I think there's a good chance he'll die while I'm gone or else be too sad to photograph when I get back  He's so cute! It's been a couple days and he recognizes me as mommy now.


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## kherrmann3

I'm sorry that he's not doing well. I know how heartbreaking it is to lose a brood (in my case, hamster litters). :hug: I hope everything works out in the end!


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## landi

poor little pheonix and when everything was looking up
hope he pulls through


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## LuvaBun

Oh No!  This sucks Big time. He seemed to be doing so good. I am hoping with all my heart that he makes it!

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

I'm leaving for the airport in half an hour  Phoenix has been fed. He lost 8 grams since yesterday and is getting dehydrated as evidenced by his poop. My poor baby. Paul's going to care for him as best he can... I tried putting him back in the nest box on the advice of my breeder friend, but Arthur attacked him and Poppet pecked at him. He was going up to them and begging for food. It was SO SAD. My poor little baby, he is definitely my baby now. The parents have 2 new eggs as of today.

I took a bunch of pictures of Phoenix this afternoon in case I don't ever get any more


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## JadeIcing

I am so sorry.


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## kirbyultra

Oh shiloh, I'm so sorry the timing is so bad and things just keep going wrong for your chicks. do try and enjoy your trip though.

Praying that phoenix picks up and recovers!!


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## kherrmann3

Just remember, Paul will take care of him. Guys always pull through for us in our time(s) of need! Try to enjoy your trip! :hug:


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## Starlight Rabbitry

Your Pheonix will be in my thoughts. I hope he pulls through. Hope you are having a safe trip too.


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## SnowyShiloh

Phoenix is still hanging in there. To tell the truth, Paul isn't doing a great job of caring for Phoenix. Basically, he is not an animal person and it's hard to devote so much time and energy to something you don't really have an interest in. He is trying some though and I'm glad for that. I think he's torn between wanting to please me and resenting all the time and money the chicks have sucked up  I do feel for him but want Phoenix to survive!


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## TinysMom

I was so scared to open up this thread - I was so afraid you'd say he'd passed away.

Kudos to Paul for loving you so much that he's helping.


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## irishbunny

I wonder is it something to do with hand feeding that causes the problems with the crops? I hope he makes it


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## LuvaBun

Hang in there, Phoenix. We are all rooting for you ray:

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

Grace, problems with handfeeding can cause crop issues, but the first 3 chicks were fed exclusively by their parents until they got so sick that being fed by their parents would have killed them. Then I took over.

Baby Phoenix is still alive. Paul sent me some pictures. His poop looks terrible, but Phoenix himself is really cute and has feathered out even more. Tomorrow he will be 3 weeks old. I really hope he hangs in there until I get home in 2 1/2 days. Maybe I can turn him around. Hopefully before the wedding, I don't think it would work well to be feeding a chick every 3 hours through my wedding day and honeymoon.


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## hartleybun

ray: hang on in there phoenix!



should you and paul have children then you will know exactly what to expect with regards to feeding and sleepless nights!! keep the faith xx


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## SnowyShiloh

Donna, that's what I was thinking too- I asked my mom about it and she agreed, but she pointed out that the difference is that usually your baby isn't dying when you're up all night with it.

There's something wrong with me. I have the worst sore throat I've ever had- it started on Thursday and has gotten so bad that I can't sleep. I am, of course, exhausted. I feel so pathetic, sitting here crying because my throat hurts and I can't sleep. Incidentally, that makes it hurt more. I have to get up in a couple hours to take my friend shopping and I can't think of anything I would like to do less. The friend is from out of the country and this is her first time in the US and we'll only be here in Seattle a couple more days. I've got like 3 hours of sleep each night for the past 2 1/2 weeks. I can't even go cry in bed because I have to share my bed with my friend and will wake her up, so I'm stuck sitting here I guess until I get so exhausted I can't keep my eyes open. I'm sure that will happen about 5 minutes before everyone else wakes up well rested and ready to go. I think the stress build up over the past couple weeks is making me sick or has weakened my immune system. Symptoms: severe sore throat that hurts especially when swallowing, no other traditional cold symptoms except I can feel some mucus dripping down the back of my throat.

There are 3 eggs now. Paul has to kill them by boiling them, which seems soooo mean. Baby Phoenix is down to 52 grams :bawl:


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## Mrs. PBJ

Get some allergy meds it sound like allergies.


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## LuvaBun

You have to get some rest, hon. It's no good you getting ill as well. 

Hopefully, little Phoenix will fool us all, and come through this, but your birdies and bunnies (and Paul) need you to be well :feelbetter:

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

I'm still sick and have sprouted 2 canker sores. Ugh. I'm about to go to bed. 

Phoenix's weight for Sunday is 53 grams at exactly 3 weeks. That's 1 up from yesterday. I'm not going to put too much stock in him gaining weight since it may be nothing, but the point is he hasn't lost more... Hopefully he can hang in there for another day and a half until I get home and can give him lots of care!


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## Nela

Try and take care of yourself Shiloh. They tell firemen and mothers to first maintain their own oxygen so that they can have the energy to help others. Same goes for you. You have to take care of yourself. I hope things are going okay with the wedding. I'm sorry to hear about your concerns with Phoenix. To be honest, I'm dreading this thread but I do peek in. I'd make you some awesome meatball soup if I could... Tea with a hint of honey can do your throat lots of good.


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## landi

Take care of yourself you got a big day coming up


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## SnowyShiloh

Thought I should update! I got home yesterday afternoon. Phoenix looks so different- he has all his feathers now! They're still growing longer, but they're almost all out of their sheaths. He looks like a mini cockatiel! SO cute! His feathers are very, very soft  He has quite a good grip and is good at holding onto fingers. He's still sick, but is improving somewhat. The weight loss stopped. He maintained a weight of 52 grams for 2 days, was 53 grams yesterday morning, and 57 grams this morning! So he's putting back on some weight. Hopefully that will continue! His crop is emptying faster than it was when I left and his poop is sort of looking better- it changes between starting to look better and looking the same. Baby steps, huh?

I'll post pictures of him tonight  He is very cute and he loves his mommy (me). I'm working on getting him well socialized by petting him all over his body and exposing him to things so he isn't afraid of them later.

I know he's still sick, but if he survived Paul's care and is actually gaining weight, I can't help but think he'll recover. He's 24 days old now and the older a baby bird is, the less delicate they are.


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## hartleybun

:highfive::hugsquish::bunnydance:some good news!well done to paultoo! will look forward tobaby bird pics and more cutenessray:


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## TinysMom

I. Was. So. Scared. To. Open. This. Thread.


SO HAPPY NOW!!! 

WOO HOO!!!!


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## LuvaBun

*TinysMom wrote: *


> I. Was. So. Scared. To. Open. This. Thread.
> 
> 
> SO HAPPY NOW!!!
> 
> WOO HOO!!!!


Me too!!

WTG Phoenix (and well done to Paul)

This is such good news, and I'm looking forward to seeing pictures of our 'Feathered Friend' . 

How are You doing?

Jan


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## Myia09

Yaaay!


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## JadeIcing

Awesome! How you feeling?


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## dixonsrabbitry1

Would this help? I was wondering if you could use baytril for sour crop and came across that instead. 

http://www.acstiels.com/Articles/Health/sourcrop.htm

I used to raise cockatiels. thankfully i never had to deal with sour crop. Wish I could help more. 

If you do decide to continue to breed cockatiels, don't let this get you down.  It could be just a fluke. Its very hard to lose birds when raising them and it sucks when it happens. I never lost a tiel. But I have lost a few baby pigeons I have tried to save.  Sometimes you will have good hatches, and sometimes you have bad. A few times you have issues after they have hatched. i lost my first couple of baby pigeons a few years ago because the parents fed them peas from the pigeon feed, and it was sad.  I ended up switching to pelleted feed because of it. 

Good luck. I hope he makes it, and grows into a beautiful adult bird. They are cute little guys when they hit the feather stage. Sorry about the others. 

I still have my firstbaby hatched in about 1997. No longer have his mom or dad.


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## SnowyShiloh

I'm very happy Phoenix seems to be on the mend. Slowly but surely! He is 59 grams as of tonight. Here are pictures of him and a video- sorry it's sideways, my friend took it sideways. We'll try again tomorrow.

























As for me... I'm not doing great. I got a very strange cold (severe sore throat, no other symptoms) that I think is stress induced. I have now lost my voice and cannot speak in more than a whisper. Only 10 days until the wedding so hopefully I'll be healthy then!


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## hartleybun

:inlovehmy! the grandmaster of cute! wow!now you can concentrate on yourself!


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## JadeIcing

Oh he looks perfect! *kisses to him*

You relax and enjoy the days leading to your wedding. You deserve a wonderful blessed day. *hugs*


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## mistyjr

Wow!! They grow up pretty fast dont they!! Hes a cutie,


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## GoinBackToCali

I held my breath when I opened this thread..


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## dixonsrabbitry1

Aww. He is c ute.


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## SOOOSKA

OMG he's so cute and grown so much.

Does he hang out with his parents?

Susan


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## irishbunny

He looks like a proper birdie now  So cute


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## SnowyShiloh

Isn't he a cutie? He can lift his crest up but didn't want to do it for the pictures. He gained 2 grams since yesterday morning. His crop did not empty completely overnight (it still had just a little in it), but hopefully it's normal for them to kind of waffle back and forth when they're getting better. He was fed the same amount yesterday afternoon and his crop emptied in 6 1/2 hours. 

He's going to be flying soon! Amazing. This morning he started flapping his wings, which they do to build up the muscles so they can fly. As you can imagine, I'm quite nervous about him flying because he could fly into a wall or something and be killed. One of my previous tiels who was good at flying died when she flew into a wall. I could theoretically clip his wings now so he can't fly, but learning to fly is an important developmental milestone so I'm going to let him take a few flights so he learns how to do it and then clip him. Also if he flies with a full crop and bumps into something, the food could go into his throat and he could breathe it in and die so we don't want that!

He's actually a little young to be doing the wing flapping, but that is fine with me. He's precocious even if he is little! Unfortunately, along with learning to fly they stop gaining weight or lose weight for a few days. It's completely normal, but I really want to fatten him up before he decides to stop gaining or lose! Also, I had my breeder friend look at him and she says he looks very healthy. Birds who have not received proper nutrition get funny looking tail feathers and his look perfect, so that's good.


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## LuvaBun

Oh wow! What a difference a few days makes. He looks awesome 

Parts of the video when he was close up to the camera with his beak open made me think of a horror movie, especially with the noise he was making .

Hope your sore throat gets better and your voice recovers soon, or else you could be signing your vows instead of saying them 

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

Jan, I hadn't thought of that! Too funny!

Phoenix is still the same. Crop emptying slowly but not ridiculously so. I forgot to weigh him this morning (remembered when I'd already given him medicine which weighs some) but last night he weighed 60 grams. He's still underweight for sure, but at least 60 is better than 52. He's flapping his wings all the time now to strengthen the muscles. I usually put him in a small bucket while I get his food ready, and this morning he figured out how to pull himself up the side with his beak and perch on top, then kind of hop/flutter/stumble down the towel to the table so he can waddle around while I make the food. His development is fantastic and you wouldn't think anything was wrong with him by looking at him or watching what he does!

Last night we had our first real snuggle. I cuddled him against my chest with one hand wrapped around him and the other petting his head. He stopped begging for food and actually was quiet for about 10 minutes or only making chirps, and closed his eyes for a while. It was sweet!


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## Myia09

Oh my gosh he is so cute! Congrats on you!


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## SnowyShiloh

So my baby Phoenix is probably a little girl! There's a sexing method that has you look at the feathers under the wings that are closest to the body. Girls have spots, boys don't. Phoenix's feathers look exactly like the girl picture. I'm going to get him DNA sexed here in the next couple days so we'll know for sure soon, but it's kind of fun to speculate.

Paul and my friend keep joking that we need to change the name to Phoenicia if Phoenix is a girl (pronounced like Felicia with an n instead of a c) but Phoenix will remain the name! I may change the spelling to Phoenyx if I'm feeling fancy but nothing else.


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## SnowyShiloh

I think Phoenix is getting interested in eating real food! When I went to give him his late night feeding, I was somewhat horrified to find poop on his beak. They learn to peck at things on the bottom of the cage and I suspect he saw the poop so pecked at that. Ew, and I hope he doesn't get sick from it (I cleaned out his mouth before feeding him), but I think it's a good developmental sign. I've been changing the paper in the nest box 3 times a day but I'm going to have to do it more often and also start using dish towels under the paper towels instead of aspen shavings because it wouldn't be good if he ate aspen shavings.

He's been flapping his wings so much! And climbing everything he can climb. I think he will take his first flight in the next few days. He's a bit of an early bloomer developmentally, which is interesting since he's ill and underweight. 

I read about another baby tiel who has had crop problems his whole life. He's 7 weeks old and only 52 grams. Phoenix will be 4 weeks old on Sunday and is 63 grams. The other bird didn't take his first flight until yesterday and he doesn't even have all his feathers in yet and he has stress marks on his feathers. Phoenix seems much healthier than the other bird. Poor thing. Having said that, I hope Phoenix doesn't randomly die!!


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## hartleybun

the gender fairy is busy again! must make a change from all those bunnies! it's nice to open this thread and read good news.


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## landi

Aww bless i've not been in for a couple of days and was dreading what i might read but he/she is looking great they change so quickly would love to put a pic up putdont know how to add to this page so added to menu pics


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## SnowyShiloh

Oh, the little things that are exciting to a bird mom! I'm about to sprinkle some bird seed in the brooder for the first time for Phoenix to pick at


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## JadeIcing

Yay!


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## missyscove

Wow he finally looks like a real bird! 
I'm glad to see he's doing so well.


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## SnowyShiloh

Phoenix lost 4 grams in 12 hours today! Is he TRYING to give me an ulcer? Also today is the last day I can safely give him his medicine. It's been 11 days and he's only supposed to get it 10 days.


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## LuvaBun

Oh no! How is he doing otherwise? Is he still active? 

ray: Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

Well, the little turd gained back 2 of those grams overnight! Don't know what in the world he's doing. He's acting fine and pooping fine and everything. In fact... he took his first flight this afternoon  I'm SO proud! He was waddling around on the coffee table and flapping his wings and my friend and I encouraged him by flapping our arms. Then, off he went! I let him take 4 little flights then put him back in the brooder to rest. We were so excited, it was like watching your child take his first steps. I'm proud because he's only 4 weeks and 1 day old today and took his first flight a little on the young side!


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## LuvaBun

*SnowyShiloh wrote:*


> flapping his wings and my friend and I encouraged him by flapping our arms.


 LOL. Now _*that*_ would have been a sight to see 

Glad to hear he's doing OK 

Jan


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## hartleybun

*LuvaBun wrote: *


> *SnowyShiloh wrote:*
> 
> 
> 
> flapping his wings and my friend and I encouraged him by flapping our arms.
> 
> 
> 
> LOL. Now _*that*_ would have been a sight to see
> 
> Glad to hear he's doing OK
> 
> Jan
Click to expand...


ditto! please post a pic of this!!!:biggrin:

way to go phoenix - keep flapping!


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## SnowyShiloh

Phoenix update! He's still doing pretty well and has flown some more. He hasn't gained any weight but it's normal for them to stop gaining or lose up to 15 percent of their weight when they start to fly so I'm not tooooo worried about it. My father and his wife arrived yesterday so they can go to our wedding in 4 days and they were really surprised by how big Phoenix is. Dad's wife saw Phoenix and thought it was Arthur. She had a hard time understanding that a bird that to her looked like an adult still needs to be kept warm and can't eat on his own yet.

I'm going to try to start lowering the heat in the brooder some. He's fully feathered now so should be able to manage his body temperature more, but it's in the mid 60s in the house and that's definitely too cold for him. On the drive down to Valdez for the honeymoon we won't be able to have his brooder plugged in so I want him to be ready for temperatures in the mid 70s (he's in the low to mid 80s right now). I plan to bring the Snuggle Safe too and heat it before we leave so he can use it if necessary, and we can always roll up the windows and turn on the heater if we have to. Romantic, eh?

Oh I forgot to say. Remember the whole egg business? We didn't want them to hatch out of fear of Arthur and Poppet possibly spreading an infection to them (if that's what made these chicks sick), and the eggs were going to hatch right before the wedding and during the honeymoon when we'll be gone. Plus I didn't feel like I could go through this again. So Paul "killed" the 3 eggs. Poppet laid 2 more though and they are scheduled to hatch sometime between right before we get back from the honeymoon and right after we get back. This may have been a poor decision, but I didn't have the heart to kill the eggs in case everything turns out okay for them. I candled both eggs and they are both fertile. I just couldn't take away their chance at living since it is reasonable to think they could survive. This time around, I am much better equipped because I know HOW to recognize slow crop and have the tools and experience necessary to take care of the chicks if they need it. I won't have to go back to school until they're 3 weeks old and that's old enough for them not to need constant care. I'm not looking forward to possibly raising chicks again, but I just couldn't take their lives. So Phoenix may have some baby siblings soon.


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## SnowyShiloh

Baby Phoenix is still doing his thing! This afternoon he finally started eating seed for the first time! I was so excited  Then this evening I was worried because he'd eaten so much seed that he wasn't hungry for formula. That's all well and fine, but he can't drink water on his own yet so the water in the formula is very important. I had to force feed 3 CCs of formula  I removed the millet from the brooder so hopefully his crop will empty completely in a few hours and he'll be hungry for more formula.

Phoenix is going to have a weird few days because our wedding is tomorrow and his feeding schedule is already getting fairly odd because of it!


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## landi

Wishing you and Paul all the very best for your wedding 
Many Congratulations


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## SnowyShiloh

Well, we're back from the "birdymoon"! Which is what I've been calling the honeymoon. Ned is grumpy that we didn't bring him too and have a bunnymoon.

Baby Phoenix is doing well. He's 6 weeks old now! He's all nice and healthy now and I'm sure glad to be home after a week on the road. He's been SUCH a pain to feed lately- he's refusing formula but not eating real food properly so I have to practically force feed him.

Baby Phoenix is now a big brother! The two eggs hatched while we were gone. I asked the pet sitter not to look in the nest box, but one of the eggs looked like it was only a day or so away from hatching when we left on the honeymoon. Of course the first thing I did when we got back from the trip was run and look in the nest box. The two little fuzzies are looking pretty good, I think the older one is about 5 days old and the younger about 2. They both look a little pale but I don't know what to do about that. 

As you can imagine, I'm very disillusioned with the baby bird thing since I let myself fall in love with Kieran, Teddy and Neeja, just to lose them after trying so hard. I'm going to do my best to remain distant emotionally from the new chicks, until they're at least 2 weeks old. Of course I'll do what I can to help them, but no freaking out over everything. What happens, happens. That being said, do you guys think we should name the new babies? Paul wants to name them all after tanks because tanks are big and strong and maybe the babies will be that way too if we give them tank names.


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## TinysMom

Wait a minute...you took the Phoenix on your HONEYMOON?

SERIOUSLY?

I'm dying laughing - that is probably something I would do.

Welcome back!


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## SnowyShiloh

Yep Peg, Phoenix crashed our honeymoon! We stayed at 2 bed and breakfasts down in Valdez and the owners of both fell in love with him. He's a very charming little guy. I have a fantastic picture I took of him too that I'll share here in the next couple of days.

We stayed at a hotel for 2 nights also and they don't allow pets, so we had to sneak him in. Paul casually carried the brooder in wrapped up in a blanket while I had Phoenix in my jacket. He of course let out a really loud chirp right when we were passing the front desk, but we acted like we didn't hear anything and no one stopped us. It all worked out just fine!


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## kirbyultra

LOL!!!!!!!! I didn't realize you took the chick with you on your honeymoon! Bless your hubby for being so supportive and understanding! I am so glad Phoenix is doing well though. Congrats on your wedding, and congrats on the 2 new chicks.


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## JadeIcing

To funny!! Love it!!


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## SnowyShiloh

Here are some pictures of my little dude from the honeymoon!


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## TinysMom

Oh my - he got huge!


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## kirbyultra

He's so charming!! What a big boy. You did a great job!


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## LuvaBun

*TinysMom wrote: *


> Oh my - he got huge!


That was my thought too :shock:. He's all growed up :biggrin:

Had to smile about him going on Honeymoon - hope he didn't ' cramp your style' 

Welcome back, and congrats on the 2 new additions. I think naming them after tanks is a great idea 

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

Here are pictures of the new little ones. I'm only checking on them once a day (versus 3-4 times per day with the previous clutch) because I want to leave Arthur and Poppet to do their thing without intervening too much unless it looks like something is going wrong. I'm trying VERY hard not to get attached, but it's hard because they're all tiny and fuzzy. The bigger chick's toes are starting to turn gray and I can see gray on his wings and he was hissing at me. Based on their weights and how they look, I'm guessing they're 2 and 4 days old. The younger chick is 13 grams and the older is 22. Phoenix is 70, for comparison. They grow fast!

They have food on their faces, I cleaned them up after taking the pictures.






















Any name suggestions for them? Tanks or dinosaurs maybe, or other strong things... They sound very much like little dinosaurs! I was thinking Rex after the T-Rex (and Rex from Toy Story) for one and Adler for the other. Adler is the German word for Eagle. We like Kevin too after the bird from Up (and Phoenix, Adler and Kevin would be pretty funny, all named after other birds) but I don't know if it's tough enough. Just plain Tank could be a good name, too!


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## missyscove

*SnowyShiloh wrote:*


> Adler is the German word for Eagle.


But Igel is the German word for hedgehog, which I find hilarious


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## SnowyShiloh

Christina, isn't it funny? I had thought of Adler and Igel for them already. I may actually have to do it. When I was an exchange student in Austria, a friend of my host family who was a pastry chef made me an "American Igel" cake for my birthday- it was the cutest hedgehog cake ever!

Edit- okay, talked to Paul. He loves Adler and Igel. Igel is pronounced like "eagle" in case anyone was wondering. Now, which chick should get which name? It may be funny to have the bigger chick be Igel and the smaller chick Adler. I donno.


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## SnowyShiloh

On second thought, we've decided not to name the chicks until they're 14 days old and are more likely to survive. They'll just be Big Chick and Little Chick or something until then. They're both doing fine and are approximately 4 and 6 days old today.


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## kirbyultra

You just made me laugh. From "Eagle" and Igel to Big Chick, Little Chick. Well, I like Big Chick and Little Chick too. It would be a kicker if you named the little one "Big Chick" and the bigger one "Lil Chick". For now anyway.


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## hartleybun

im finally able to log on and catch up with this thread - birdymoon!:biggrin: that is priceless. im so glad things are working out for this little bird - perhaps now you can relax a little and enjoy married life


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## SnowyShiloh

Baby update! The big baby is doing well. I think he's going to be weaned within a week! Way to go, Phoenix! The little babies are doing well, too. They are 5 and 7 days old now. They both have their eyes open to varying degrees and the older chick has a nice little hairdo going and a good number of pinfeathers. Their weights are right on target for their ages (assuming I guessed their ages right- been weighing them for 4 days though and their weights gain has been very steady and matches the ideal weights for chicks those ages) and no sign of illness yet. Arthur and Poppet are being good parents still. I'm hoping they will continue to be good parents for at least another week, then I can step in to hand raise them if necessary. If I have to start hand raising them before then, that's okay- they're old enough now that they'll need to be fed about 6 times a day. If they make it to 14 days before needing to be hand raised, they'll need to be fed 4 times a day. That's not so bad. I start school at the beginning of the semester and my schedule is actually great this time around, I'll only be gone about 5 hours per day so it won't interfere with their feeding schedule much. Also Paul and I decided to get this brooder topper if we have to hand raise them: http://www.avitec.com/Aquarium-Brooder-Tops-p/avq.htm

They're expensive, but breeders love the things because they do an excellent job at keeping the temperature steady and have a thermostat built in. Heating pads can be pretty hard to regulate and I'm always afraid it will start a fire! And being gone for 5-6 hours a day for school I would worry constantly about the chicks overheating or getting too cold. The brooder topper will mean I won't need to worry.

After all that, I'm STILL trying not to get too excited about these chicks. Things can still go south. Little Kieran, Teddy and Neeja all started showing signs of sour crop at 9 days old and appeared fine before then. I won't breathe a sigh of relief until they reach 2 weeks. Even then, Phoenix got sick at 2 1/2 weeks! I have an Excel spread sheet of all their weights though and these two new chicks weigh more than the first round of chicks did at their ages- this was before I even knew the other chicks were sick. Big Chick even weighs a little more than Phoenix did, who was perfectly healthy at the time.


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## luvthempigs

Awesome pictures :thumbup

I love that you took your baby with you on your honeymoon. Sounds like something I would do :biggrin2:


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## Nancy McClelland

glad to hear things are better.


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## SnowyShiloh

Phoenix was kind of alarmed by how loud his baby siblings are!


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## LuvaBun

Lol! It looks like he doesn't know what to make of them 

He looks so handsome now 

Jan


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## Nela

Well, I have gone and gotten my hopes up already! They're too adorable! It's sucha shame that I am so allergic or I might threaten you with popping up in Alaska :biggrin2:


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## SnowyShiloh

Well, the babies' weight gain has slowed some. Just checked on them and neither of them have full crops and the parents were not in the nest, but they went in after I put the babies back and are feeding the chicks some.

Before they abandoned Phoenix at 14 days, they did this too- they would leave him alone and then only feed him when I dug around in the nest box. Hopefully they aren't thinking about abandoning these chicks. If they do, the good thing is I feel comfortable hand raising the babies from this point. Normally you don't pull for handfeeding until 2-3 weeks and they're 8 and 10 days, but they're big enough now that it would be okay especially since I have experience. Even the younger chick weighs a full 20 grams more than poor Kieran did the day he died 

Hopefully everything will be fine though! I'm not really worried, just inwardly groaning at the idea of starting over with handfeeding since Phoenix just weaned yesterday  They would need to be fed 5 times a day at this point. At least it would be with an 8 hour gap overnight so I could get decent sleep! I'd rather have to handfeed the chicks starting right now and have them survive to adulthood though! And I'm sure handfeeding them would be like 100 times easier than Phoenix because even though he only had to be fed twice a day for the past 2 1/2 weeks (then once a day, then nunce a day as of a couple days ago), he was SO hard to feed and it was so frustrating and took so long. A pair of eager babies would be much easier.


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## kirbyultra

You're such an angel, Shiloh!   Phoenix is very, very handsome.


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## SnowyShiloh

Hehe, I'm not an angel! I feel bad now for having Paul dispatch the first 3 eggs in the clutch  They died before they started to develop, but maybe everything would have been fine for them since these chicks are fine. I'm glad (so far, that could change if these babies get deathly ill and suffer terribly) I didn't have the heart to kill these two eggs and was hopeful enough to let them develop. I had Paul kill the first 3 eggs out of love- I was afraid the babies would get sick and suffer and die, or that Arthur and Poppet would ditch the babies and they'd starve to death while we were on the honeymoon. These last 2 eggs weren't even supposed to hatch until after the honeymoon but they hatched early. If all 5 eggs HAD hatched, chances are they wouldn't have all made it though (that's a lot of babies!) and actually these 2 youngest chicks would have been most disadvantaged and most likely to die because they would have been smaller and weaker than their siblings.

Anyway, the 2 chicks are doing well today. They have full crops and are little chunkers! The older one is 11 days today and 61 grams- only 10 less than Phoenix! Phoenix is small though. He's doing well, but he's small. The younger chick is 9 days and 52 grams. They are up 9 and 12 grams since yesterday, which is great. Yesterday their crops weren't full when I weighed them.

My plan is to leave them with Mom and Dad for as long as they'll care for the babies, then hand raise them if the parents stop feeding them or pluck their feathers or flat out reject them (like Arthur did to poor Phoenix).


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## SnowyShiloh

Phoenix got his wings clipped tonight! We clipped the first 3 feathers on each wing. It makes it so he flies slower and can't gain as much altitude. We let/made him fly around a couple times like that, and then tomorrow night we will clip a couple more feathers. I prefer having my birds clipped because there's no risk of them flying into walls or windows that way or otherwise getting hurt (Arthur's first mate was good at flying and died after she flew into a wall). Phoenix also got some fresh spinach tonight and spent a good hour caring around the leaves and chewing on them. So cute! Cockatiels are notoriously picky and skeptical of new foods, so I'm trying to introduce him to lots of foods while he's still a little guy.

We're thinking of naming the chickies again now that they're a bit older. I don't know that we'll go with Adler and Igel after all. Any suggestions?


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## landi

So please that the new chicks are doing well and pheonix is looking good will have to try and get some of my latest pics on
ours are named Cookie Jaffa and Chalky 



Parents are Cheeky & 'Charlie


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## SnowyShiloh

Oh gosh! I heard the babies making weird sounds, looked in the nest box, and I think Arthur attacked the older chick because he has a bleeding wound on his back! I am getting the brooder all warmed up because I'm going to hand raise them now. Poor little baby. Some of his feathers have been plucked too and he hasn't gained any weight since yesterday. His younger sibling is unharmed. Thankfully the wound is small enough that I don't think he'll have any problems from it:






Waiting to hear back from the cockatiel breeder and then I'll most likely go along with the hand raising and take down the nest box so hopefully the parents won't lay more eggs. Their baby privileges have been revoked!


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## luvthempigs

Aww, That sore looks like it hurts 

I had no idea it was so hard to raise baby birds.


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## LuvaBun

Poor little thing - and just when things were going so well! What would cause Arthur to do that ?

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

Jan, my breeder friend thinks the wound could actually be from a toe nail- I clipped Arthur's and Poppet's nails before the babies hatched though so they aren't sharp. I suppose the younger chick could have done it though. I'm not convinced it wasn't intentional, based on how Arthur attacked Phoenix as a chick. He could have done serious damage to the babies so I'm glad I was here to intervene both times. With Phoenix, he was about 16 days old and had already been out of the nest box for 2 days. That shouldn't have been long enough for Arthur to forget who he was though! Poppet had already laid more eggs, and I think Arthur thought Phoenix was a threat to the new eggs.

This time around, if it was Arthur who attacked the baby, I suspect it was because Arthur is jealous of the chicks. It's not THAT uncommon for males to hurt the chicks because they take all the female's time. Arthur is very prone to jealousy I've learned! Even if the wound was not intentional, I don't feel too bad about taking the chicks because the older one also has had several feathers plucked and I looked closely at the younger chick and he's had several plucked too. It isn't healthy for them to remain with parents who are plucking them, especially since I have the time, equipment and knowledge to hand raise them myself.


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## SnowyShiloh

I can't believe it- I took the chicks from their parents 6 1/2 hours ago and their crops STILL have not emptied. I do not want to deal with sour crop again  At least I know what to do this time around. Hopefully the little ones will make it anyway. I'll need another prescription for Nystatin (an antifungal), but other than that, I have everything I need.


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## SnowyShiloh

The little ones are doing poorly  It's been 24 1/2 hours since I removed them from the nest box and their crops are STILL not empty! The younger one's crop is almost empty, but the older one's is still half full. That's really bad- worse than Kieran, Teddy and Neeja. And it doesn't help that these two chicks are the same ages and look the same as Teddy and Neeja. They're both heavier thank goodness (since they got sick later), but ugh. 

I have some hope for the younger chick, but not for the older one. Poor little guys.


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## luvthempigs

I'm sorry about your little guys...:hug:

ray:


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## SnowyShiloh

Luvthempigs, I'm hoping they will somehow be okay! I'm determined to stick with them as long as it seems hopeful. This time around I have MUCH less going on in my life. School starts up again in 2 weeks, but 2 weeks is a long time for these guys so by then they should either be dead (I hope not...) or getting better.

We named the younger chick Isidore. If he turns out to be a girl, we'll change it to Isadora. His nickname is Izzy  I'm working on a name for the older chick. I was tempted to use Theodore, but Teddy was theoretically short for Theodore (though I never called him that) and I'm afraid to curse him or something by calling him that.


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## SnowyShiloh

So we named the older chick. His name is Nico! I think it's so cute and seems to fit him  I had already been thinking of Nico and we watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding tonight- Toula's brother is named Nico in the movie, along with half of her cousins. A good Greek name to go with the Greek Phoenix and Isidore!

I fed Nico and Izzy an hour ago. It took Nico's crop 37 hours to empty. 37! Wow! Poor guy. It took Izzy 10 1/2 hours to empty 3 CCs, normally it should take about 2 hours. The good thing at least is that both babies figured out how to eat from the syringe VERY quickly, unlike some baby birds I know (*cough cough Phoenix*). Tomorrow/later today (it's not tomorrow until I've gone to bed!) I want to get the babies started on an antifungal medication. Hopefully they will get better with the help of the medicine...


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## Nela

Remember my Teako? LOL @ them eating quickly vs Phoenix. Heh, I really hope they will be ok. 37 hours is a really long time :expressionless


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## SnowyShiloh

What about Teako, Nela?

Well, I'm falling for Izzy. He's just so cute and sweet. His temperament seems very sweet. He doesn't hiss at me or anything anymore. I just want to cuddle him. He's easy to tell apart from Nico because he has a single yellow feather growing at the back of his crest! 

I started Izzy on medication this morning right before he was fed again. Hopefully it will help- it's an antifungal so it should help prevent yeast (which is the #1 killer of baby cockatiels, it is what killed his siblings in the end) from growing in his crop. So if we can keep yeast from growing and his digestion to speed up, we'll be good. That's a tall order though, especially considering it took him 9 1/2 hours to empty 3 CCs of formula- it should only take about 2 hours!

Poor Nico was fed 3 CCs at the same time as Izzy but still has about half of it in his crop almost 10 hours later. Poor little one. I'll do what I can for him, but I'm not too hopeful. I haven't given him medicine yet because it's best to do when their crops are empty, but I have the feeling I'll be giving him some in a few minutes anyway because better for him to have a partly effective dose of medicine than NO dose of medicine.

Phoenix is doing well. He had a very baby day yesterday. I think he is jealous of his little brothers because he was whining and fussing all day long and even willingly ate 5 CCs of formula, which he hasn't (willingly!) done in over 3 weeks. He's perfectly capable of eating and drinking on his own and hadn't been hand fed in 3 days, but he needed some reassurance I think. He's been spending lots of time with Paul, which I think is so cute. Paul always said before now that he didn't like Phoenix, but now he says he DOES like Phoenix because who wouldn't like a cute little bird that loves to sit on your shoulder and tickle you with his feathers?


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## landi

still not worked it out how to put pic on this page but i have added some of our chick to the gallery


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## SnowyShiloh

I have a kind of good update! Izzy digested 3 CCs of formula in 5 1/2 hours. That's a huge improvement for him. I just fed him again and am hoping he'll digest it just as fast or even faster. It should only take him about 2 1/2 hours to digest that much food, but 5 1/2 hours is much better than the 10 1/2 it was taking him. Poor Nico is still digesting very, verrrrrry slowly though.


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## LuvaBun

Nice to have a happy update 

Still praying for these new babies!

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

Thanks, Jan! Raising baby birds has been such a bumpy road. I think Arthur or Poppet MUST have some sort of low grade infection that they've passed onto their babies. I took down the nest box yesterday (I'd left it up in the off chance I decided to stick the babies back in) and when things with the babies has calmed down, we're going to take Arthur and Poppet to the vet to get checked out. Call me crazy, but I almost want to let them have babies again next year. They like being parents and this is totally selfish, but I would like to experience the happiness of raising healthy babies rather than the fear and worry of nursing sick ones.

Little Nico is doing poorly. He's digesting so slowly- only about 3 CCs per day. Izzy is doing better... It's weird, yesterday it took him 5 1/2 hours for 3 CCs, then 11 hours, then 8 hours. It's so weird. Both chicks are just dropping weight horribly. I'm hopeful that Izzy will somehow survive. Of course I want Nico to survive too, but I don't think he will. Poor babies.

I wonder if it actually is possible for Phoenix to be jealous of the little babies. He's been SO whiny and needy the past couple days! I handfed him again this afternoon. I felt like a mother with multiple small children- I was feeding Nico and Izzy who were both crying, and Phoenix was on my shoulder crying too! Everyone needs me! Thankfully I'm not feeling overwhelmed or anything. Just wishing the babies would get better. I'd do anything for them to be healthy, normal chicks who would grow up and be my little birdies.


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## SnowyShiloh

Poor Nico is the same as yesterday. I'm amazed by his will to live and how strong he is for a little baby bird. It seems like my babies get sick easily (though I think one of the parents must have a low grade infection they passed on, like I said before), but they're all are/were such fighters. 

At 4 am this morning, Izzy breathed in some of his medicine. He coughed for a while and now I'm worried he'll get aspiration pneumonia. Is it ironic to die from your medicine?

Other than the choking, I hesitate to say, but... I think he's improving a little! Unless there's something wrong with my scale, it appears that he's gained 4-5 grams over the past couple of days. Also his poop is looking healthier. Hopefully he will continue to show signs of improvement! I'm sure I'll torture myself by weighing him between every feeding today to look for more gains. It doesn't really help to weigh a baby bird more than once a day (their weight kind of fluctuates throughout the day even with an empty crop, you're supposed to weigh them once a day at the same time) but I'll do it anyway. I really hope he doesn't get aspiration pneumonia now.


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## SnowyShiloh

I'm sad to say that Baby Nico is weakening. This afternoon his eyes are dull and he's less energetic and crying quieter. I don't think he'll be here much longer. I'm going to get some pictures of him tonight. He's such a cute baby. I'm sorry I couldn't save him. I'm sure the best choice would have been to boil his egg back when he was first laid instead of letting him hatch and suffer like this, but how was I to know?


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## LuvaBun

I'm sorry

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

I'm still hopeful Izzy could make it. For some reason if he survives, Nico's suffering will be a little more justified to me because I would have either "killed" both eggs or neither of them. Does that make sense?

Nico is a bit more energetic this evening. I got a video of them yesterday and should upload it! It shows them very worked up over food.


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## landi

Don't know what to say apart from how sorry to hear your news 
does your breeder friend say anything about the parent birds or why this could be happening. I'm not a breeder but could it be something the parents are eating that causes it 
Hoping things work out for you


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## SnowyShiloh

Here are some pictures of the babies.

Izzy:







Nico (love his crazy hairdo):











together (they're very wiggly!):





Phoenix:


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## SnowyShiloh

My baby Nico is fading away. He's losing strength and his cry is quieter. It's breaking my heart. I just fed him and Izzy and Nico got lots of kisses. You aren't really supposed to kiss baby birds but I think he's going to pass away today so it doesn't matter, I'll kiss him if I feel like it. He doesn't deserve to die, he's just an innocent little baby. I get the feeling he would have grown up to be a really sweet bird.

I haven't gone to sleep yet because I was waiting for their crops to empty so I could feed them right when they emptied. I was debating staying awake so I could be with Nico, but I think it would be selfish for me to hold him a lot right now. He's most comfortable in the dark, warm brooder with Izzy, not in my hands. He associates me with food, and lack of food is what's killing him, so he'll just work himself into a frenzy if I hold him and I'd rather him be peaceful. If he's still hanging on when I wake up, I will allow myself to cuddle him for a couple of minutes. I've never really cuddled Nico or Izzy before because I want them to be warm in the brooder when they aren't being fed.


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## JadeIcing

*hugs*


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## SnowyShiloh

Thanks, Alicia!

I put the babies in a bucket while I prepare their formula and food. They stretch very tall when they're hungry so I needed something with high sides and the bucket works well! Izzy is quite good at perching on my finger so I set him on the edge of the bucket  Soon he'll be big and strong enough to pull himself up to the edge of the bucket! Or at least, I hope he will be...


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## SnowyShiloh

Nico is fading away in my hands :bawl:


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## TinysMom

I'm so sorry Shiloh. I understand how hard it is to lose a young one that you've nurtured (even if in my case its been rabbits). 

Hugs to you....


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## hartleybun

:hug2: i am so sorry xx


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## SnowyShiloh

Well, baby Nico is still alive! He was doing so poorly during the night, I thought he was close to death for sure. He was making this quiet trilling sound instead of crying and kept falling over. Then I took a page out of Peg's book and held him against my chest while I had a chat with him. I told him how much I love him and how I'm sorry he's suffering and apologized for making him be born and not being able to save him, and that soon he would be in heaven and feel better. I asked him to tell his brothers to watch over Phoenix and Izzy and to help them grow up big and strong, and particularly to help Izzy get better even if they have to send a petition around heaven.

After our chat, Nico started acting more normal so I gave him kisses and put him back in the brooder. This afternoon he hasn't lost anymore weight and his crop actually emptied in 11 hours, which is incredible for him. He's still very ill and I don't think he's going to survive, but it's interesting.


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## JadeIcing

*hugs* Wish I could do more.


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## SnowyShiloh

Thanks, Alicia! The little ones are still hanging in there. Izzy is up 1 gram from this afternoon. I'm really hoping he starts to improve soon, he was worse today than he was a few days ago which is discouraging. Baby Nico is still hanging in there, he amazes me.

I was feeling terrible Thursday (to me it's still Thursday because I haven't been to bed yet!) and I had an offer from Shutterfly for a free 20 page 8 by 8 inch hardcover photo book. I spent about 5 hours sorting through, editing, arranging, and writing a photo book for Kieran, Teddy, Neeja and Phoenix. It felt good to make the book but was sad too, of course. I ordered it tonight so hopefully it arrives soon. I'm glad I'll have a permanent, physical record of Kieran, Teddy and Neeja. Phoenix is going to get his own photo album that I can add to!

Here is a link to the photo book if anyone would like to see. It was only $15 with the offer (had to pay since it was 38 pages instead of 20, but it would have been $40 if not for the offer) and I got free shipping, which is GOOD because Shutterfly charges ridiculous shipping rates to Alaska (think $35 shipping).

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AbsWTZi0aMmbio


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## TinysMom

I LOVE IT.....what a great book. I should do that with some of my litters. (I may do it with Cyrano if I have enough photos of him).

I'm so glad you were able to enjoy the time you had with them - even though you lost some. 

Baby Nico amazes me too....I think he must not be ready to leave you yet...I think he knows he's loved.


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## LuvaBun

what a lovely book - and a great way to remember the babies 

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

Peg, I'll tell you what the quality is like when the book gets here. You can make ones without a lot of pages if you don't have a ton of pictures of Cyrano, and you can make 1 picture take up an entire page if you want. I did that with my favorite pictures of my birdies.


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## SnowyShiloh

Here is Izzy a few minutes ago  I don't think I've ever posted photos of the chicks being fed. 







The process of hand feeding is:

1) Line feeding spot with paper towels and get out 2 tiny plastic cups, q-tips, gauze pads, and food.

2) Take syringes and thermometers out of disinfecting solution and rinse them as well as the jar they were in well.

3) Put powdered formula and whatever supplements I'm adding into one of the plastic cups (supplements include brewer's yeast, a spice blend that has antibiotic effects, crushed papaya tablets, Benebac powder, baby rice cereal, gentian and capsicum).

4) Pour small amount of bottled water or electrolyte solution into jar and microwave 20 seconds. Stir into formula, mixing with thermometer probes. Add more formula or hot/cold water as necessary to reach a temperature of exactly 107 degrees Fahrenheit. Sometimes I have to put the formula cup into a bigger cup of hot water to bring the temperature up. Usually while the formula is cooling I get the babies out so they're ready to go when the formula reaches the right temperature.

5) Fill first syringe. Set baby on feeding area and hold his wings to his body with my left hand and hold his head in place with the thumb and forefinger of the same hand. Stick syringe in right left side of mouth aiming towards the right side of his throat because the esophagus is on the right side and I don't want to squirt food into his lungs. Wait until he chirps rapidly and bobs his head and flaps his wings (or tries to, my hand is holding his wings in place so he doesn't reel around everywhere), then squirt in formula. Squirt it in slow enough that food does not back up into the baby's mouth. Remove the syringe every few seconds so the baby can breathe. Repeat with other babies if necessary.

6) Pour remaining warm water from jar into other plastic cup. Add 1 drop of grapeseed extract and stir with a Q-tip. Dab excess water off q-tip with paper towel, test temperature on back of hand, and use to swab out baby's mouth. Do until mouth is clean. This is important so bacteria doesn't grow in the mouth since baby birds don't make a lot of spit or swallow often. If rest of face or body has food on it, dampen gauze pad in the water and wipe off baby.

7) Change paper towels in brooder and replace babies. Wash out container of water that's in the brooder for humidity and put it back in. Cover brooder with towel.

8) Wash all syringes and equipment used to feed babies, then make disinfecting solution and put everything in it so it will be clean for next time. Throw away dirty paper towels and Q-tips and everything.

Right now the babies are getting 2 medications 3 times a day so I have extra syringes and everything for that also. The whole process of medicating and feeding them from start to finish takes about 20-30 minutes. I do it whenever one of the babies' crops empties.

And here is Izzy waiting to be fed, his wing span is about 7 inches!


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## SnowyShiloh

I'm pretty sure my little Nico is dying  He keeps closing his eyes and is having major balance issues and isn't crying anymore. He's sooo light. I love my little Nico so much and don't want him to die.

My breeder friend is completely stumped as to what's wrong with them. Well, we know it's digestive issues, but what's causing it? We had been thinking it was probably an infection passed on from the parents, but that may not be it. Considering how little nutrition the chicks have been getting the past week, they should look very stunted and have poor feather growth and severe stress lines on their feathers, and their tail feathers should look different. But they don't! Both chicks look perfect and proportionate with appropriate feathering for their ages. No signs of stunting or malnutrition, except of course that they're very small and skinny. They're like tiny midget birds. The breeder says she's never seen anything like it and she's raised a couple THOUSAND baby cockatiels in her life.


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## SOOOSKA

What a Beautiful book Shiloh.

Prayers for the littles ones.ray:ray:

Susan:nurse:


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## mistyjr

So sorry! I hope the best! ray::hug1


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## Nancy McClelland

were so sorry for all your trials and tribulations. We have Zebra Finches who are really great breeders, so we also know the heartbreak of losing them when they are young. You're all in our prayers. ray:


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## LuvaBun

:shock:OMG How scarey is this!! Would make a great picture for Halloween!

ray: continuing for Nico 

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

Baby Nico died this afternoon  I fell asleep for a while (didn't sleep last night) and when I checked on him after I woke up, he was dead.


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## TinysMom

I am so sorry for your loss - even though you saw it coming.

Could this be a genetic thing with the mama and papa? I know sometimes in rabbits....the parents can be bred to others just fine - but when bred together - they produce babies with problems. I don't know if that makes sense.


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## SnowyShiloh

Peg, my breeder friend and I are thinking that may well be the case with these little ones. She thinks it may be on Poppet's side because she's a Lutino. What terrible luck  I've been over tired and very sad because of the sick babies, but the poor little chicks are the ones who REALLY suffered here. Once everything calms down, I'm very curious to find out if Arthur or Poppet have infections they're passing to the chicks. If it turns out they're both fine, then it must be something genetic.

I know this sounds completely crazy, but now I actually really WANT to get a good, healthy pair of tiels and try my hand at breeding them. I want to experience raising healthy babies just once. I definitely have the experience and knowledge to do it now. Paul and I talked about it and we may do just that a couple of years down the road.

In any case, I feel very lucky to have Phoenix. I hope he grows up healthy! I wonder why he lived and everyone else died (except for Izzy but I don't know what will happen with him). Phoenix is a fussy little bird- most baby cockatiels LOVE their owners and want to be with them all the time, but Phoenix is kind of antisocial. He's very tame, he just doesn't really like being handled or being with us. It's weird. I make him spend time with us and handle him a lot because I do not want him to turn into some hermit of a cockatiel! I'm hopeful that he'll become more social as he grows up. I love him to death anyway and think his quirky little personality is hilarious in spite of my concerns


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## SnowyShiloh

Baby Izzy is 3 weeks old today. 3 weeks old and only 36 grams! That's insane! He weighs as much as a normal 5-6 day old cockatiel. He should weigh over 100 grams. When Phoenix was 3 weeks old, he was sick too and weighed 54 grams. To think I was very distressed about 54 grams, that's so much more than what Izzy weighs. He's my tiny midget baby. Seeing as his health has been stable for the past several days, I have this mental image of him being like 3 months old and 40 grams. He'd be the smallest cockatiel ever. I don't think he can keep going like this- he's either going to start gaining weight (please please please!) or he'll start getting worn down and melt away like Nico did.


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## JadeIcing

*hugs* You make perfect sense in wanting to still breed. *hugs*


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## LuvaBun

I'm sorry about Nico 

Izzy could still defy all the odds - Phoenix did. 

Jan


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## Nela

So sorry Shiloh... I was afraid to look at this thread. Bleh Fly free lil one


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## SnowyShiloh

Thanks, Nela  I miss my baby Nico. I buried him yesterday and need to get something to mark his grave. Poor baby.

I have good news though! Izzy's crop emptied in 5 1/2 hours this afternoon, compared to his regular 9- 9 1/2 hours. The past 3 feedings it took him 7- 7 1/2 hours to empty. I'm really, really hoping the 5 1/2 hours thing isn't a fluke and his crop function continues to improve. The faster his crop empties, the more often he can eat, and the more nutrients he gets so he should start gaining weight! He was actually DOWN a gram this morning.

The past couple of days since Nico died I've been asking God to please either take Izzy quickly so he doesn't suffer or let him start to get better. I also asked Nico more than once to look over Izzy and Phoenix and try to get Izzy healthy.


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## Michaela

Shiloh I've been following this thread for a while now but never posted. 
I'm so sorry about the babies you lost.  You tried so hard for them, can't imagine how it feels.
I really hope Izzy improves. And Phoenix is adorable! I would quite like a Cockatiel at some point I think.


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## SnowyShiloh

Michaela, thank you for posting  I appreciate it! And thanks to everyone else who posts in here, too.

A hand raised cockatiel is a great pet! Make sure you get one that has been hand raised AND seems very tame. A bird can be advertised as hand raised but still be afraid of humans either because they weren't handled much in spite of being hand raised, or as soon as they stopped eating formula they stopped being handled. A cockatiel needs to be eating on its own completely for at least 2 weeks before being sold so that can mean a fair amount of time of them not getting human contact before they're sold.

Phoenix is such a joy. I put him in his little bird diaper and he hangs out with us on the couch for about 2-3 hours every evening. They are messy though- their down feathers disintegrate over time and become this horrible white dust that coats everything. I HATE the dust! That's the worst thing about them I think.

Izzy has me completely confused. We was doing so well with his crop yesterday, but then he went 10 hours between feedings during the night and STILL didn't empty all the way. 10 hours is longer than it took a week ago! But then it took him 6 hours to empty this afternoon. So odd.


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## kherrmann3

I'm sorry to hear about little Nico. I know how frustrating and depressing it is when you loose little ones like that. I used to breed hamsters, so on a smaller scale, I understand the feelings of, "WHY!?" :hug:

On the other hand, I am glad to know that little Phoenix is doing OK. On my flight to Costa Rica, I was telling my mum about him, and she has two cockatiels, so she was rooting for the little guy to make it! In fact, she asked me about him the other day when she called, but I hadn't had the time to come online and read up on him! I'm glad he's doing OK (and grew out of the awkward pokey-feather stage ). Let's hope that Izzy follows in his older brother's footie-prints!


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## SnowyShiloh

Now both my babies are sick! I think Phoenix has a crop infection based on how he's acting, so I'm going to call the vet when they open in a little while. Hopefully this is the last health issue he'll have for a long time.

Izzy has what we think is a wad of yeast in his crop. Yeast is what we battled with the other babies and I was fortunate in that Izzy did not have yeast until a couple days ago. It's one of the top killers of baby cockatiels and his chances of surviving have dropped big time because of it. I don't get mad often, but I am MAD about this darned yeast! It popped up right as he finished a 10 DAY round of anti-yeast medicine, too! Like he had just had his final dose of the medicine. I've tried breaking it up other ways, but it isn't working. I'm going to have to feed him vinegar water and massage the lump to break it up, then stick a syringe with a long, flexible tip down into his crop and try to suck out the yeast, then repeat a couple more times with water and vinegar to flush the crop. I've never done anything like this before and am worried about puncturing his crop, but my breeder friend has told me exactly how to do it. I'm going to need Paul's help. Poor little Izzy.


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## SnowyShiloh

And Kelly, thanks for the reply! Good to know people are thinking of my babies and it's so nice that your mom asked about Phoenix  Tell her Phoenix is a little sick right now but I think he'll recover!


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## kherrmann3

Ugh! Those darn yeasty-beasties! Poor little guy's throat must feel so yucky.  Here's hopin' that he pulls through soon! :clover:


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## SnowyShiloh

Well, we're back from the vet! Phoenix is a brat. He decided to have a miraculous recovery. $150 for nothing. His poop went from being runny and bright green to perfectly normal, and his crop was normal (well, packed with millet but not full of fluid like this morning), and he was bright eyed and didn't make the watery cry. Instead he showed off for the vet big time and asked for me to scratch his head for the first time! She did a fecal gram stain and it came back normal. I'm very glad for that and hope he really IS better. She said if he starts seeming unhealthy again we can bring in a poop sample and she'll test it.

I got the DNA sex results! Phoenix is a boy, just like I thought! Izzy however is not an Isidore- SHE is an Isadora  My little baby girl, awww. I'm thinking of calling her Isadora Belle (say it out loud) but can't decide if that's too cheesy or not. Izzy went to the vet with us and you should have seen all the squealing when the vet techs saw how itty bitty she is. There's no denying she's super cute, but her tinyness is because she's so sick so it's not as cute to me.

I'm about to go try to break up the yeast wad in Izzy's crop and suck it out with a syringe. I'm nervoussss! Wish me luck and that I don't puncture her crop, eek!


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## SnowyShiloh

Oh God, Izzy breathed in vinegar. She's been coughing and I can hear it in her lungs. She's huddled with her eyes closed and is trying to get as close to my face as possible. She isn't dead but I'm crying uncontrollably because I feel like I killed her... Aspiration is a very bad thing, ESPECIALLY with something like vinegar and aspiration pneumonia will probably set in now. It must hurt her so much. I'm so sorry, baby girl! I'll never forgive myself for doing this to you!!


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## kherrmann3

Aww, it's not your fault. :hug: You were just trying to help her out as much as you could. You never know, it could just be stuck at the opening and making the crackling breathing noise. Just remember, you didn't do it on purpose. Just keep her comfy and warm for now. Extra snuggles never hurt. :clover:


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## SnowyShiloh

My breeder friend called me when she read what happened and we talked for 20 minutes. Based on how Izzy is acting and where the crackling sound is coming from, she thinks Izzy just breathed in a little and it's in her sinuses rather than in her lungs. She doesn't think Izzy will die from this but we're going to put her on antibiotics. I really hope she's right and Izzy will not die from this! Her digestion has sped up too so hopefully Izzy will be okay after this incident and the yeast will go away and she'll start gaining weight.


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## missyscove

Shiloh remember no matter what happens that everything good in the lil' birdies lives has been because of you. I'm in awe of all you've done for them - how much you learned in such a short time. 
:hug:


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## JadeIcing

What they said. You are a awesome mommy. They are lucky that they are in your loving hands.


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## SnowyShiloh

Thanks, guys. It really means a lot to me. It's so hard not to blame yourself big time when something like this happens. Isadora is doing okay. She seems to be having trouble chirping and makes a funny sound when she eats so of course I'm worried. If she doesn't die from pneumonia from this time next week, I think she'll be okay. Or at least won't die because of aspiration pneumonia! 

Little baby is 4 weeks old today. Tiniest 4 week old ever! She should be learning to fly here soon and start to peck at real food, but I don't know if that will happen since she's so little. I found a supplement on a website that is very calorie rich and supposed to help sick baby parrots put on weight, my breeder friend agrees it would be good to buy so I'm going to do that. Hopefully it will make a difference! It's very calorie dense. Izzy needs all the help she can get, she's soooo skinny. Based on the weights of her siblings when they died, she has about 10 grams to lose until she reaches the point where she just won't be able to live. She's 35 grams right now and I pray every day that she doesn't lose weight and waste away like poor Nico, Kieran, Teddy and Neeja. They felt practically weightless when they died and the 10 additional grams on Izzy actually feel fairly substantial in comparison.


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## hartleybun

JadeIcing wrote:


> What they said. You are a awesome mommy. They are lucky that they are in your loving hands.



"here here" you are doing the best for your birdies ray:


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## BooLette

Snowy, I just caught up on this thread, and I am so sorry for your losses. 

Phoenix is gorgeous! You must be so proud! I hope that the other babies make it! I'll be rooting for ya'll.ray:


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## SnowyShiloh

Thanks, Boo and Donna!

And, what you guys are REALLY interested in- PICTURES! I hadn't taken any in a few days of the birdies, don't know why. As you can see, Miss Isadora is looking more like a real bird all of a sudden! Isn't she darling? She can perch on fingers too 







Tippy toes!:






from the back:





















And the jealous big brother (his beak is blue because of a new toy):






Aren't my babies cute?! I'm going to try to get some of both of them together tonight so you can see the size difference.

Also, Izzy's chirping better today and her feeding response sounds more normal. Phew! The antibiotics are making her poop kinda green which is disturbing (green is bad) and I'll be happy when she's off of them.


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## Mika77

Oh my! they are so cute:heartbeat: I just love cockatiels, have two of them (actually should be cleaning their cage right now but somehow ended up on the computer, happens sometimes). Have I talked to you on Talk Cockatiels? I have talked to someone on their that also belongs on RO, not sure if it was you. Anyway, all your birds are beautiful and those babies are too cute.


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## kherrmann3

Aww! Those pictures are so sweet! :hearts: And hooray for Izzy's footie-control allowing her to perch on fingers! It cracks me up how "knobby" their little nosies look when they are little. Mr. Phoenix is quite the handsome little boy, isn't he?

:inlove:


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## SnowyShiloh

I got a really cute video of Phoenix and Izzy tonight, but I'm having trouble uploading it, so here's a picture of them together!







They're doing pretty well. Phoenix was less fussy today than normal. Izzy did 2 new things today (both of which are captured in the video!). Very exciting! First of all, she's trying to fly and will flap her wings and get several inches off the ground before landing  She's also starting to EAT SEED! Okay so I haven't felt any in her crop yet, but last night she started pecking at things so I put some millet in the brooder. She hadn't touched it as of this afternoon, but a few hours later when I checked on her, she'd dragged it around the brooder and obviously been nomming on it! I love that she's developing, and even hitting her milestones at a normal rate in spite of her tinyness 

Will post the video as soon as it gets figured out, I promise it's really cute!


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## SnowyShiloh

The video finally showed up in my Photobucket account! Aren't my two little chickens cute?


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## JadeIcing

Aww


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## SnowyShiloh

Can I vent a little bit? There's a person on the bird forum I post on who keeps getting on my nerves. She has raised one baby tiel, and that baby is a couple of weeks younger than Phoenix. She had the good fortune of having a baby bird who is very healthy. Which is great, I don't begrudge her that at all, but she's always handing out REALLY OBVIOUS advice about Phoenix and Izzy as if she's super duper experienced and I'm a moron, even to the point of replying to something I write with a suggestion that I ALREADY said I was doing in the post that she's replying to. As an example, she watched the video and said (paraphrasing here) "the sound Izzy is making is her begging for food. Also she's pecking at the couch and looking for food. You should put seeds and pellets in the brooder." Really??? I had no idea after 9 solid weeks of around the clock baby bird care that this sound is them begging for food! Also in that same post with the video I wrote how excited I was about her pecking around for food and how I had put millet in the brooder for her already AND I'd mentioned the same thing in a previous post. 

I have actually have spent more time raising baby birds at this point. I get the feeling that she thinks she's better than me because her baby bird is healthy and that I've done something to make my babies sick. Also questioning me on things related to their care as if I'm not doing everything I can for them or would intentionally endanger them. 

Condescension combined with poor reading comprehension skills really irks me. I try to be very polite in my replies to her, and I don't dislike her, I just get irritated. She has offered me support to so she's not some mean person, just a bit clueless perhaps and heavy handed with the advice.

Mika77, I would really appreciate it if you didn't try to figure out who I'm talking about and tell them what I wrote. I've been a member of Rabbits Online for going on 3 years now and feel close to a lot of the members on this forum, so venting to them is a natural thing for me to do. Also in the past 3 years I have never vented about anyone before, so it's not like I badmouth people all the time or try to cause trouble. Thank you


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## Nela

*Hugs*


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## kherrmann3

Cute video! One thing I don't miss about baby 'tiels is that begging noise. Mum's bird, Sweetie, did that when we first got him home, and it drove me (and my old 'tiel) nuts! How can something so cute make a noise that "uncute?"  Sorry to hear about your birdy-forum woes. I know how that feels, though. As long as her intent is not malicious, I would just try to let it roll off. Some people just aren't good readers.  :hug:


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## SnowyShiloh

Kelly, it's just hard to have someone criticizing you about things they don't have experience with, even if it wasn't necessarily supposed to be malicious... know what I mean? Also, Nela, thanks for the hug


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## hartleybun

:hug2:thank you for sharing such cute pics - phoenix looks most handsome in his little flight suit!

you have done so well under such difficult circumstances - a real baptism of fire into the world of bird breeding. the other bird forum member is most fortunate to have had things so easy - nature can be so cruel and they have been very lucky. they probably dont know just how lucky they have been.

thanks again for some cute pics - all the birdies seem so grown up


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## TinysMom

You almost make me want a bird - what a GREAT video...


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## SnowyShiloh

Peg, hand raised, tame, friendly cockatiels are GREAT pets. They're full of personality, love being with their owners, are sweet, do lots of funny things... good pets  They aren't as sensitive or prone to behavioral problem as other parrots either. Phoenix and Izzy would make great pets for someone, but they're staying with me since they're my babies! Also their health is delicate like bunnies', but if you take good care of them and they don't die from some freak thing, they can live up to 30 years! These babies' daddy is 11 years old.


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## SnowyShiloh

Haven't updated in a while! That's because there's nothing to update. Izzy is still 35 grams, still trying to fly and eat on her own, still digesting slowly... The yeast in her crop seems to be gone (I hope it stays that way!) and I started supplementing her formula with some stuff that's supposed to help her gain weight but so far nothing.


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## kherrmann3

*SnowyShiloh wrote: *


> Haven't updated in a while! That's because there's nothing to update. Izzy is still 35 grams, still trying to fly and eat on her own, still digesting slowly... *The yeast in her crop seems to be gone* (I hope it stays that way!) and I started supplementing her formula with some stuff that's supposed to help her gain weight but so far nothing.


:yahoo:

Now let's keep it that way, babies! 

I hope they keep getting better (or at least staying stable!)


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## BooLette

Go babies, go! I love this thread so much!


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## SnowyShiloh

Izzy needs good thoughts! She's lost some weight and is now 33 grams. She was waffling between 35 and 37 for weeks. Her siblings all died once they got down to about 28 grams but since she's bigger (as in taller, not in weight!) I don't know what her minimum possible weight is. She should be over 100 grams so she's so very, very tiny. She will be 7 weeks old on Sunday, I've been raising her from 10 days. If she dies it will be so much worse than the other babies since I hand raised her for over 5 weeks now and only raised them for a couple of days for Kieran, a little less than a week for Teddy and Neeja, and 2 weeks for Nico. My little girl needs to get bigger, not smaller!


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## JadeIcing

*vibes*


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## LuvaBun

Come on Izzy ray:

Jan


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## kherrmann3

I hope she's doing well! ray:


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## Nela

I've been quietly checking in but I toowas wondering if everything is okay...


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## SnowyShiloh

Sorry I haven't checked in for a few days- it's been super crazy here and nothing's changed with her. She's 7 1/2 weeks old now. Her weight has returned to normal for her (about 35 grams) and she still isn't digesting any faster, flying much (she can get off the ground and fly a bit but not far because her wing muscles aren't strong enough), or eating food on her own at all. For reference, Phoenix flew like a champ at 4 weeks and started eating on his own a couple days later, and was in his own cage being weaned at this age.

One thing is that Paul and I decided to stay in Alaska for Christmas. We had planned to go down to Seattle to be with my mom's family because Christmas only feels right down there and I wanted to spend our first married Christmas down there. But Isadora will be 4 1/2 months old then and while that's WAYYYY past when a cockatiel should wean, I have the sneaking suspicion she'll still be getting hand feedings then. I don't want to plan for her to be with a pet sitter if it turns out she still needs to be hand fed, and I'm reluctant to leave her even if she is weaned because she's so little and her health could go down hill very fast. My pets always seem to get sick at Christmas or when I'm about to leave town and I've had SEVERAL trips cancelled or flights changed (which is very expensive, we've probably paid over $1000 at this point) so it seems better not to tempt fate with something that seems likely to happen. So the plan now is to go to Paul's parents in Anchorage for Christmas. It's only a 7 hour drive and we could bring Izzy (and Phoenix just because!). His parents like birds and have a parakeet so I don't think they'll mind. If they don't want the birds there, we'll just stay home.


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## SnowyShiloh

I'm very worried for my Izzy. She's lost weight again and was 31 grams Monday and Sunday. For reference, her siblings all died once they got to 26-28 grams and they were only 10 days-3 weeks old. I got up at 4:30 to feed her and her crop still had a lot of food in it when it should have been empty, and she was acting less energetic. I should try to go back to sleep and then check on her in a couple more hours, but I don't think I can sleep because I'm worried. Please think of my little Isadora! I will be crushed if she dies after all we've been through.


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## JadeIcing

Prayers and vibes. *hugs*


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## hartleybun

ray:ray:


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## kherrmann3

:hug: Sending good vibes your way!


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## SnowyShiloh

Izzy has regained 2 grams and was 33 this morning. This is so nerve wracking. I need my baby girl to get healthy and grow big and strong and live with me for the next 20 years. If only there was a way to get her digestive system working faster. What is it with me and pets I love that get terrible illnesses? Little Bird, a cockatiel I used to have who was very sick his whole life (he was an amazing bird), Tallulah, my sweet baby girl bunny who died from digestive problems at 7 months, Skyler my darling boy bunny who died from e. Cuniculi, and little Izzy with her digestive problems. It seems like the pets I fall for the hardest are the ones who have bad things happen to them.


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## SnowyShiloh

Bird update! Izzy's almost 12 weeks old and is 33 grams. She defies all logic and explanation. Still handfeeding her all the time because she doesn't eat on her own. She's a sweet little baby girl. Phoenix is our little buddy and such a joy


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## kherrmann3

Hooray! I'm glad to hear a positive update!  You've got two little fighters there! I hope that Izzy continues to improve!:yahoo:


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## hartleybun

:hug2::yahoo::clapping:go izzy and phoenix!! go shiloh and paul!!


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## JadeIcing

Yay!


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## SnowyShiloh

Izzy's not improved, unfortunately- she actually weighs less now than she did a few weeks ago. She's just stayed the same, really. She is alive though! We're going to buy her a cage tomorrow and get her out of the brooder, I've been lowering the temperature in the brooder for the past week and a half so she's accustomed to room temperature now.

Phoenix is great  His nicknames are Poofy and Beaker (Beaker because he makes this meeping sound like Beaker the Muppet). He's going to be a bat for Halloween  He loves to have his head scratched and goes up to his favorite toy in his cage with his head down so it will scratch him. It's very funny and a tiny bit sad because of course the toy never obliges!


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## kherrmann3

*SnowyShiloh wrote: *


> Phoenix is great  His nicknames are Poofy and Beaker (Beaker because he makes this meeping sound like Beaker the Muppet).


Oh, geez! I just fell in love all over again!  Beaker is my favorite Muppet, and a little baby birdy (well, not so baby-ish anymore) making that noise would just be too cute too handle!


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## JadeIcing

She sounds like such a fighter.


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## Nela

Sweet kisses to your girl


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## SnowyShiloh

I think my Izzy is fading  She's 12 1/2 weeks old and has been very sick for 11 of those weeks. This morning she wasn't as active as usual when I fed her and was even clumsier than normal, and when I fed her this afternoon she had some thickened formula in her crop (which means her crop drained the liquid out of the formula). Once I got that taken care of, she "threw up" when I was feeding her. I always feel her crop when I feed her and the light amount of pressure on her crop made it all come up. I think that her crop muscles are weak so not churning the formula properly and not holding down the formula when I touch her crop. I'm not taking her to the vet because I don't think there's anything that can be done for her. I'm hopeful that she's just having an off day and will perk up. She's getting lots of rest and I've increased the temperature in the brooder. We were about to move her into the big bird cage we bought on Sunday but I'm going to wait.


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## Nela

ray:Thinking of you guys.


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## LuvaBun

How's Izzy? ray:

Jan


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## SnowyShiloh

My baby girl died in my hands a few minutes ago :bawl: I peeked in on her in the brooder to find her lying on her stomach and gasping. I picked her up, gave her some kisses (I always gave her a kiss after feeding her before I put her back in the brooder), and petted her until she died. She died about a minute and a half after I picked her up. As you can imagine, this is a very sad time for me because she was 13 weeks old today and I raised her by hand since she was 10 days old. I was never certain that she'd survive, but I loved her very much anyway- how could I not?


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## Pipp

Oh Shiloh, I'm so sorry. 

:bigtears:

I was trying not to let myself hope in light of her size and all the challenges, but I was hoping so hard. 

You did a great job allowing her to have these 13 weeks. 



sas :sad:


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## TinysMom

Oh no....I'm so sorry.

I can't think of anything to say.


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## JadeIcing

*hugs* I know how you are feeling. So many hugs your way.


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## SnowyShiloh

It's so strange not having Izzy here. I know she's gone, but keep doing things like she's here. For instance, the baby bird care station (and the brooder) are on a card table in the kitchen and I don't usually turn on the main light so she can rest. I walked into the kitchen and didn't turn on the light because I didn't want to wake her up. This is the first time (other than a break of a day and a half between when Phoenix weaned and when I took the new babies) since the end of June that I haven't had a baby bird to hand feed multiple times a day. It's funny how a task that seemed really complicated at first became second nature. I added it up and I've fed baby birds about 800 times now.

Early this evening we went to a craft fair at the university. We had already planned to go and today was the last day, and I wanted to find something for Izzy. I bought a little Christmas tree ornament of an Alaskan angel holding a heart and the lady wrote "Izzy" on the heart. All my pets have their own personalized ornaments and this one seemed very fitting for her. I also bought a hand carved and painted small wooden box with a chickadee on it that I'm going to put her ashes in once she's cremated. It's very sweet and I'm glad I found these two things at craft fair. I'll post pictures later.

I have so many things going through my head about her and will type more later.

Do you guys think I should make a Rainbow Bridge announcement for her?


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## missyscove

I'm so sorry Shiloh. You did so much for her! I think you should absolutely make a rainbow bridge announcement for her. I know this thread really touched me and I'm sure others must feel the same.


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## TinysMom

Izzy might not have been a bunny - but she won our hearts. For all these weeks we followed her story - OF COURSE she deserves a RB thread - please write it when you're ready.


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## kherrmann3

Oh no... I am so sorry, Shiloh. :hug: You did everything you could for her, and she did win my hearts (me, Will, and my mum!) She deserves a rainbow bridge thread. She was a very special little birdie, and you gave her a longer life than she would have had on her own. Plus, she got to be spoiled, snuggled, kissed and petted on a daily basis, which a lot of other birdies don't get. You are an excellent birdie (and bunny) mom, don't forget it!

Fly free at the bridge, little girl :rainbow:


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## JadeIcing

Agreed you should make her an RB thread.


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## TinysMom

*SnowyShiloh wrote: *


> My baby girl died in my hands a few minutes ago :bawl: I peeked in on her in the brooder to find her lying on her stomach and gasping. I picked her up, gave her some kisses (I always gave her a kiss after feeding her before I put her back in the brooder), and petted her until she died. She died about a minute and a half after I picked her up. As you can imagine, this is a very sad time for me because she was 13 weeks old today and I raised her by hand since she was 10 days old. I was never certain that she'd survive, but I loved her very much anyway- how could I not?


I hope this doesn't come out wrong....I pray it doesn't. But I've lost enough animals to observe certain things.

I reread this a couple of times and found myself wondering if she was waiting for you and hoping for you to come by.

I say that because you kissed her and she passed away so soon - as if that was what she needed to release her from the bonds of earth...

Crazy I know...but I know she knew she was loved and it meant a lot to her.


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## hartleybun

:rainbow: fly free at the bridge little izzy:bigtears:


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