Baby Green Cheeks and Hand Feeding

[Wolf]

Just as in larger animals there appear to be some antibiotic properties to at least the first few feedings by the parents although I don't know for how long. If they are not rejecting the baby then perhaps you can figure a way to hold mom back enough for dad to try to feed baby. I would try to do it in such a manner that she is still present and gets to see dad try to feed baby. It may not be possible but it may be worth an attempt.
You may want to wait to give them the chance to feed the baby all on their own, but I would definitely watch to see if they try to but I don't think that I would wait longer than an hour before making sure that baby get food. He doesn't have the yolk sac to help him at this point. They have 4 to 6 hours from hatch time before they have to eat. but then it is at least every 2 hrs. for a while. You should be able to hear them when they are hungry as they will be rather insistent until they eat.
That is about all I have right now, I have to do some more reading to get more information, if I am going to do you any good.

[Pajarita]

Could you gently remove the mother from the nest and keep her away to see if the father does manage to feed the baby and then put her back when he is done? I know of a case where the parents were not feeding a baby lovebird that had been born days after his siblings but they started doing it when he was five days old and got a little bigger and more demanding of his food (the owner hand-fed him in the meantime).

Parent birds act more out of instinct than actual learning from their parents when it comes to feeding their babies BUT good parents produce babies that will grow up to be good parents themselves so there is an 'in the nest' learning factor there as well as a learning curve (first time parents not been as good at parenting as parents with previous experience). Also, parents that are too young don't do as well as more mature (settled down) ones. I hope your birds are both older than 3 or, at least, 2 because that's the age to start them breeding. They do mature sexually earlier but then, girls are physically able to become pregnant at 12 years of age or younger but that doesn't mean they make good mothers that young.

[RhaewynsMom]

We lost the little one this morning. I think I thickened up the formula too much and possibly over-fed causing aspiration. I know it happens and it's been a long time since I've done this.

I was able to get the male to feed the baby once in a four hour period. I fed the baby, two hours later, I gave the male some yogurt and candied carrots as a treat, and took him and the baby to the kitchen. It took a few minutes, but he ended up feeding the baby!! And the crop got full. This caused stress with the female (she was extremely irritated and was flapping around like crazy in the cage--not in the nesting box). I had been taking her into the kitchen so she could watch what I was doing. I put them both back, and in two hours, the baby had not been fed. I waited another half hour, but the female was not letting the father feed the baby--only her. I tried to replicate what I had done, but this time the father wanted to stay with the mother and would not go with me. So I did the hand feeding-- thickening the formula a bit more--I probably should have stayed with the consistency I was doing before. It didn't seem like it ate much and it's crop wasn't as big as in previous feedings so I tried to give it just a bit more and it seemed to bob and take it but some came out it's nose. I stopped and waited. It seemed okay after a few seconds. I still waited a bit and he was moving around as normal, didn't seem different than normal so I put him back with the parents and the mother immediately got him right under her wing. Two hours later he was gone. I'm not sure if anything else happened with the parents--if they were upset that I was feeding the baby.

The male is 3 and the mother is 2. I tried keeping them away from each other last year and that did not go over well. They became super-stressed and tried to get back to each other--often ending up on the ground or would hide together under the couch. Keeping them locked up seemed cruel. All I was told by people how to not keep them from mating is that I shouldn't have got a male and female. We had the male originally and the female (we didn't know until she laid eggs), was a gift from my father-in-law. I'm not really sure how to prevent the breeding. They certainly are quite the pair though. They are really stuck on one another. Do you have any suggestions?

So, far no other eggs have hatched. One doesn't look fertile. Two are dark. I couldn't check the other two that are left as the mother had enough of me prodding and wanted to sit on them.

[Wolf]

Since they are a mated pair it would most definitely be cruel to try and separate them and I do not no of any humane way to keep them from breeding. Their breeding is controlled by availability of food, weather and light and I do not think that any of us know enough about exactly how these things come together to trigger the beginning of breeding season or what the timing of these things would be. The only things that I know that we can do responsibly is to allow them to breed and lay their eggs and then let them keep them until such time as they either hatch or the parent birds lose interest in them, at which time we can safely remove them. If we don't do it in this manner then we run the risk of causing the female to be a chronic egg layer which is not good for her.
I am sorry that you lost the baby bird.

[RhaewynsMom]

You make a very good point, Wolf. Someone told us last year not to remove the eggs right away because it can cause constant egg-laying. Last year it was March into April. This year it was May into June. So, I get that a number of factors could be at play. I actually thought it was going to be a consistent timing sort of thing--boy was I wrong!

My fiancé actually thinks I'm cold because I wasn't a total mess over this. He named the baby and tried to get attached. I just have to be realistic and know that things are the way they are. I mean, I am sad, but I can't let it consume me where I have a family to think about--birds included! I have to be realistic about myself and expectations. I'm certainly not a bird expert nor am I a bird. I am just doing the best that I can. Honestly, I am more concerned with my birds' emotional well being through this. Making sure they have a lot of love and comfort. I mean, maybe they look at it differently, but maybe they do feel sad too? I'm glad they seem to be doing okay for the most part.

[Wolf]

Well I guess that some people would color me nuts, but birds have emotions and they feel things much the way that we do. Some will wig out over the smallest thing and other don't. I presently have an Amazon who is still mourning the loss of 3 other birds that she watched die over a year ago and before I got her.
My Lady get upset over the loss of an animal and it takes years before she quits talking about it, while I just keep putting one foot in front of the other. I know I feel the loss as much as she does but I don't focus on it the way that she does. In the end we all just do the best we can and hope to stay out of our own way.

[JaydeParrot]

You can buy fake parakeet eggs off ebay, replace the bird's eggs with these fake eggs, the birds will incubate them for a while and then give up waiting for them to hatch. If you use the fake eggs enough times they may stopping trying to mate.

[Pajarita]

Jaydeparrot is right, allowing them to incubate fertile eggs is not the way to go when you don't have enough knowledge and experience in breeding birds so switching the real eggs as they are laid with fake ones is the best thing to do - and I am not even going into the fact that GCCs are now on CL almost as much as cockatiels which gives you a pretty good idea that they are now in overpopulation and that finding them good homes is not easy. Please consider doing this in the future.

[Wolf]

The reason that I did not suggest changing out the real eggs for the fake ones was that the OP had stated in first post that she had problems with doing this.

[RhaewynsMom]

If that is truly the only way, I will give it a try then!

Yeah I do understand the overpopulation issue. It's honestly from a personal issue when I was pregnant with my daughter. Planned Parenthood was the only place that had first time parent classes. Well, I picked the day that people were petitioning against the place and I was called all sorts of names, followed down the street to my car, told I had no rights making decisions over my body... They didn't even care that I went there for the class and probably thought I was lying to get them off my back. It was just a really bad and overwhelming situation as a first-time mother and I had to call the police which didn't help any. I mean, I shouldn't relate it to that, but they are like my family and I try to treat them as unique individuals because they are. So that whole situation has made it incredibly weird for me on an emotional level. :-/