ANSWERS: 3
  • I do know that you have to have a very sterile environment when you hand feed birds. I'm so sorry you lost all your babies.
  • I can't quite figure out from your description what their crops looked like but I can make a guess that it might have been crop burn. If you fed the formula too hot, even just a little, it could burn the crop from the inside with redness, blisters, and even making a wound to the outside of the crop with scabs and more oozing. Does that sound like a possibility? Or possibly it could have been a punctured crop but unless you were very rough I don't see that happening to more than one. They could have died from other causes, unrelated to the crop growth. Did you always wash your hands before feeding, mix the formula in glass only and never plastic? Did you use a separate syringe for each chick and never double dip into the formula bowl? Things really need to be clean and sterile to handfeed birds. So many things can become a fertile place for mold, yeasts, and bacteria.
  • I would tend to agree with the possibility of crop burn. I personally dont take my tiels out until they reach at least 3 weeks old so they have more immunity from the parents as its so difficult to get things exact for babies. The temp has to be correct, too hot you will burn them too cold you will cause crop problems (slow crop) the formula has to be the correct consistancy, the brooder temp needs to be correct for the age of the bird, and everything needs to be sterile. Ive lost a fair few too when i first started out and each one is heartbreaking, even when you do everything right you can still lose babies for no apparant reason.

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