Bird mom attacks babies

[molinash19350]

So, if you have read my other article you will already know my bird have a breeding problem.
Some people are intrested in buying birds so its all good.
But i have this mother bird who lays only about 4-5 eggs each time and only 2 or 1 ends up hatching.
When the baby learns to leave the nest and starts to eat a little the mother aggressively like poking them away or she pecks them and scares them to go to the bottom of the cage.

Oh, and her babies always seem to come out as girls.?
every single baby was a girl, is this something to be concerned?

[bobbivik]

I'm not sure if this is any help to you, but i breed a few lovebirds and when the babies are ready to leave the nest the parents start picking on the babies like you said. i think its because their old enough
now to live by them selves and start breeding or whatever they do, and the parents now see them as just a pair of adults or adult , so they pick on them because they still want to be at the top of the pecking order. they still want to be boss over this new adult bird or birds, they don't see them as the babies anymore they want to continue their lives.birds can be mean its a bit strange,its all about being the boss, and you do feel sorry for the baby, but once it leaves the nest its no longer part of the family or whatever you want to call it.its normal for only one or two birds to hatch out of a batch of five or six,well its normal for me anyway. i know this is a bit weird but that's how i think works, for me anyway. i'm not sure if this is the reason, i'm not a pro or anything, but i hope this helped in some way.

[liz]

She is not at fault for only having female babies. The males designate what gender they will be.

Usually (in mine anyway) when the parents turn their kids out, others will feed them for a while.

One time a male in the flock took over and was nanny to the babies. He got excited waiting for them to come out of the nest so he could claim them.

[Pajarita]

No, the mothers decide if the egg will be fertilized, when it happens (they can store sperm for up to 90 days) and if the baby will be a girl or a boy. It's something that only birds can do. When there is a gender imbalance (more males than females or more females than males), there is something not quite right. You are getting all females because you are feeding too much protein and giving the mother artificially long days so, because the conditions are way too good for breeding, they end up being bad (less is more with birds) so she breeds all the time and produces only females. She is also attacking the babies because she is, most likely, half-depleted by now. Mother birds do NOT attack their babies -neither do the fathers- BUT this requires that the birds are kept under good husbandry: spacious cage, out of cage time to fly, right diet, healthy endocrine system so the bird only breeds during breeding season, etc. I know that this is not what you wanted and that you are concerned about her but your bird has become a chronic layer, is severely overbred and not in the best of health (her endocrine system is screwed up from the diet and the light schedule) and has a diet way too rich in protein for the species but lacking in nutrients.

Most people think that putting a female and male together in the same cage and giving them food, water and a nest is enough for successful breeding but it's not. I breed canaries (very seldom now) and have been doing it for many, many years but I learned from breeders, watching them, asking questions, reading, doing research, etc. before I even started so I don't have the usual problems people have: no gender imbalance, infertile eggs, dead in shell, pecked babies, eggbound hends, off-season weak babies, etc. Please stop breeding your birds because, if you continue, you are going to end up with a dead mother bird and weak and defective babies (depleted birds cannot produce healthy babies - they just don't have the reserves for it).