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Parrots

The four month old macaw pictured below, right is my first baby. Those are her "baby" pictures on the left. I hand fed her using Pretty Bird hand feeding formula. We have had her parents for 6 years and this is their first chick. I discovered the baby in the nest box when she was 5 weeks old. I enjoyed explaining to my veterinarian how that happened. I suspected my pair had laid, their behavior was so different, aggressive, but I thought she left the nest after 10 days. When we closed them in for the winter I had no need to leave the nest box accessible so I couldn't look in to see what was going on. I know now that there were several signs that the chick had hatched, but I didn't know that then. I went out to feed one day and there was this extra little head (beak) in there. So I opened up the box and pulled her out. Having no idea what I was doing, I began to handfeed her.

2 week old baby macaws

4 month old macaw

She did very well, and tamed right down. She did lose three toes to constrictive toe syndrome, which is caused from low humidity in the nest box. My pair laid around January 1, and hatched around February 1, so it was mid winter and we have no humidity in winter. Being so early in the season, the pair subsequently went back to nest and the two week old babies pictured above are what they produced the second clutch. There was also an infertile egg in the nest box at the time we removed the babies. Both of those chicks were quite healthy.

We also have a double yellow headed amazon parrot, but at this time I don't have a picture to put up of him, when I get one I'll post it.

December 2000

I closed my birds in again in mid November, the female went to nest mid December. The first week in January I lost the power to my heat lamps for approximately 24 hours due to a short in the vaporizer. Got everything fixed and replaced and am just holding my breath to see if the female managed to keep the eggs warm enough for them to go ahead and hatch. The temperature only dipped to about 29 degrees that night, so fingers crossed.

January 12, 2001, I believe I hear baby chick noises coming from the nest box, so sometime around the end of the month, if we get a warm enough day, I'll open it up and see what I have inside, this is better than Christmas.

July 2002

Sold my parent pair so no more babies for me;-) The last two winters had too many close calls with ice and the electricity so I opted to sell them to someone with a better setup. But we still have the very noisy baby;-)

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