Translated by Nick R
It is believed that raising birds from babies contributes to creating a stronger bond between them and their owners. However, many experts don’t recommend this practice because poor bird care can cause long-term problems, such as difficulties in adapting to the instinctive habits taught by the parents, and musculoskeletal and beak malformations.
Here you’ll learn everything you need to take efficient care of a baby bird or chick. Let me anticipate that the most important thing you must have is enough time to take care of it and a lot of attention to its health condition.
Table of Contents
How to identify a baby bird?
The first days of a bird are very characteristic due to the short time it takes them to grow. It takes them between 5 to 6 weeks to be able to fend for themselves, especially when it comes to feeding, although these conditions depend on the species you adopt.
Stages of growth of a bird
Chick
Newly hatched chicks have no plumage and their eyes are closed, and they have difficulty moving only to raise their heads and chirp for food.
Plumage growth
After 5 to 6 weeks (in some birds), the chick will have fully developed its plumage; at this stage, the bird is able to move, leave the nest and eat on its own.
Sexual dimorphisms, which are the features that distinguish males and females in some species, may take a little longer to be noticed as they are linked to sexual maturity.
When can I start hand-raising a chick?
Make sure that the chick you adopt is at least 20 to 25 days old since by this time it will have new plumage growth and it is the time indicated for weaning the young without harming them and getting them accustomed to our care.
Remember to adopt them in pairs so that they can keep each other company once they have grown to sexual maturity and can interact with other birds of the same species.
Why have a baby bird?
Although it is not recommended to adopt a baby bird if the parents can take care of it, some of the reasons for people to do so are:
- To create a much closer bond with their owners from a young age.
- To facilitate breeding outside the cage.
- Ease of teaching the bird tricks from a young age.
If you are considering it, put the bird’s welfare before your recreational interests.
Steps to take care of a baby bird
1. Fitting the nest for baby birds
The place where the chick will stay in the growing days must be well suited and neat, as birds are much more sensitive at this stage of their life.
What you need to make the nest suitable is:
- Cardboard or wooden box
- Torn newspaper
- Thermal lamp or thermal blanket
- Thermometer
- Coconut fiber or goat hair
Inside the box, place torn newspaper and lay the coconut or goat hair or fiber in the shape of a cup, which will be easy to make by molding a piece of the material, similar to the way you would mold a cotton ball.
The nest will help avoid mobility problems or malformations.
Nest temperature
Most of the materials on the list are for keeping your bird’s nest warm, between 25° and 35° C, so you will need an external thermometer to check the temperature. In any case, a helpful tip to know the condition of the chick is to see if it is shivering and if you have several of them, they will try to get together to keep each other warm. Both of these are signs that you need to increase the temperature.
If you are using a heat lamp you must be careful to place it where the chick cannot get burned or be directly exposed to it, but if you prefer to use a thermal blanket, you must make sure to wrap it in a towel and place it under the nest to avoid burning the bird due to the high temperature.
Nest humidity
Another measurement to keep in mind in your bird’s nest is the humidity, which should be between 50 and 60%.
To measure the humidity you can use a bimetallic hygrometer placed inside the nest.
Ways to maintain the ideal humidity
The humidity is controlled to a great extent by the climatic conditions you are in and the humidity level. Remember that the higher the temperature, the lower the humidity, and the lower the temperature, the higher the humidity.
You can maintain the humidity of the nest using:
- An air humidifier near the place where the nest is located.
- Coarse salt near or a little inside the nest to absorb the humidity (remember to change it in case there is too much humidity in it).
2. Cleaning the baby bird nest
Cleaning the nest constantly will be good for the bird’s health because we prevent the accumulation of bacteria in the waste.
This procedure is to be done every 2 days, replacing all the newspaper with a new one, in the case of the coconut or goat hair nest you can replace it with a new one.
Remember to clean any traces of moisture or residue left on the bottom of the box and not to use any cleaning products with chemicals or strong odors.
3. Proper food for nurturing baby birds
The third important step in the care of a baby bird is feeding. Here you can use bird food mixes sold in pet stores, which will have all the necessary components for the good development of your bird and it is the most recommended by experts, or you can prepare them by yourself with a mixture of:
- Fruits
- Vegetables, especially carrots for their high vitamin A content.
- Warm egg
- Calcium, cuttlefish bone, or eggshell.
- Insectivorous pasta (only for insect-eating birds)
- Cooked brown rice
- Whole wheat bread
Remember that the mixture must be as uniform and homogeneous as possible, without any lumps or large pieces of food, so you must grate or grind each ingredient depending on its composition and mix them all with boiled water or warm mineral water.
The crushed eggshell must be properly treated (boiled) and given once a week due to its high calcium content, the same applies to supplements such as calcium or cuttlefish bone.
Consistency of the porridge
The feed must have a paste consistency, moist enough for the chicks, but not too watery because it can cause diarrhea, and not too dry because it can make ingestion and digestion difficult.
The temperature of the porridge
Be very careful, the temperature of the food must always be lukewarm as there is a common condition in chicks called crop burn in which the high temperature of the food causes damage to the mucous membrane and the skin covering it.
Avoid using the microwave to heat the food since it can happen that the food does not heat up uniformly and you’ll have a false sense of the temperature of the food.
How do I feed my bird the porridge?
You can feed your chick in two ways:
- The first is by using a syringe without a needle, with the tip in the shape of a small tube or cone and without a piston (the black part that some syringes have on the plunger) so that the food doesn’t crystallize. This type of syringe makes it easier for the bird to receive food but remember to remove any air left in the tip before giving it to the bird. You can get these syringes in any store.
- On the other hand, you can use a toothpick without a tip, although this technique will depend on the consistency of the food, you will take a portion of it with the toothpick and give it to your baby birds.
How do I know when to feed the chick?
It’s recommended to feed 4 to 5 times a day, in mornings, afternoons, evenings, and between meals, although there are signs that may indicate that your chick is hungry, especially when it chirps.
Remember to always feed at exact times of the day as birds have an instinctive schedule for their daily activities.
If you adopted the bird at the suggested time (25 to 30 days), between 5ml to 7ml of food is sufficient for each of the 5 servings per day. However, when the bird has already fledged and is able to leave the nest, you need to reduce the amount of food per day and leave soft seeds such as canary-seed and breadfruit for the bird to get used to eating them, this process should be gradual.
How to know when they are full?
Although there are measures to ration the food, you must pay attention to the appearance of the bird’s crop. It will swell every time it feeds and take on the color of the mush you feed the chick, this way you will know that it has been enough and you will have to wait for the next meal.
4. Factors to consider for the welfare of the chicks
- Place the nest in a quiet place free of loud noises.
- Don’t expose the nest to direct sunlight, the best place should be cool and dry, as humidity helps the proliferation of bacteria and parasites.
- When the bird is completely feathered, it will start to explore the cage or the place where it is; accessories can help you in this type of task to encourage activity.
- Don’t leave the bird alone with older birds when it has feathered because it may be attacked, especially if it is a territorial bird and is with a mate.
5. Health Conditions and Warning Signs in Chicks
It may sometimes happen that we don’t take proper care of our baby birds so we must be alert to any warning signs that indicate that the bird is not in good health.
| Disease | Warning signs | Treatment |
| Crop stasis | It happens when food doesn’t go down from the crop to the stomach. It can happen due to:∙ Giving large amounts of food.∙ Bacterial infections∙ Burns ∙ Cold porridges ∙ Environment with inadequate temperatures | It’s necessary to visit a veterinarian or zootechnician who will define the cause and will hospitalize the bird to make up for the deficiency of hydration and nutrition. Some treatments can lead to compressive bandaging of the crop, surgery, or crop lavage. |
| Musculoskeletal malformations | Among the most frequent signs of malformation is splay leg, in which one or two of the legs are totally stretched out to the side. | You can find homemade treatments online in which you use a cloth to adapt the bird’s legs to the position they should be in; however, it is best to go to an expert who can help the treatment without harming the bird due to the fragility of its bones. |
| Aspiration pneumonia | It’s caused by the inhalation of large amounts of food when eating. Signs are: ∙ Agitation∙ Difficulty breathing∙ Low appetite | The diagnosis, although evident, can be complemented with radiographs. The treatments to help the bird are oxygen therapy, nebulizations, heat, anti-inflammatory medicine, and antifungal and antimicrobial agents. |
Warning
The care of baby birds is recommended only to experts in the subject due to the high level of difficulty involved in their upbringing and the number of accidents to which they are exposed due to bad practices.
All the care that you read above are only suggestions of what should be good care but not an absolute guide of how to do it, I recommend you to consult with your trusted veterinarian, who can be very helpful in learning how to take care of birds at this stage.
