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Post by princessparrot on Aug 12, 2013 20:55:10 GMT 10
ok, so I had a pair of scarlet chested parrots nesting with the female sitting on eggs and the male feeding her. I just went out to check on them and found the male dead in front of the nesting box. he had died within the past 2hours. so I checked in the nesting box in case there were any chicks that needed emergency hand rearing. there weren't any chicks but im concerned about the female cos he isn't there to feed her anymore. im not sure what to do cos I don't want her to starve or anything. will she figure out/notice by herself or do I need to help her? please anyone who knows anything!!! I just feel really worried about her
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Post by avinet on Aug 12, 2013 22:34:33 GMT 10
ok, so I had a pair of scarlet chested parrots nesting with the female sitting on eggs and the male feeding her. I just went out to check on them and found the male dead in front of the nesting box. he had died within the past 2hours. so I checked in the nesting box in case there were any chicks that needed emergency hand rearing. there weren't any chicks but im concerned about the female cos he isn't there to feed her anymore. im not sure what to do cos I don't want her to starve or anything. will she figure out/notice by herself or do I need to help her? please anyone who knows anything!!! I just feel really worried about her Some questions - any idea why the male died, and is this the first time this female has bred? Also how long has she been incubating the eggs? Two possibilities come to mind. Firstly the female will continue to sit, and will come out periodically to feed before returning to incubate. However once the babies have hatched she will have problems and on her own will struggle to keep the babies with sufficient food to survive. That would leave two alternatives. If she is trying hard you might try giving the babies supplementary hand feeding, say twice a day, and thus ease her workload. Or secondly just take the babies away for hand rearing soon after hatch - a lot of work I might add. The second possibility is that she will just give up incubating them - and this is more likely if it is her first ever clutch. Actually a third possibility occurred to me - if the male died form an infection then there is a possibility that she may also be at risk, especially if she becomes stressed from not having the male around. And even if she does not herself become sick then the babies could catch the infection with their poorly developed initial immune system. All things considered I think if it happened to my birds and the eggs were only recently laid I would just accept it wasn't going to happen and remove the nest from her. If hatching was imminent I might be tempted to leave her with them especially if she had bred successfully before. I don't thing you would have to worry about her starving - self preservation will come before the eggs. However I would make sure the food and water was very close to the nestbox, and the food included high energy foods such as sunflower and sprouted seed so she would be able to get a quick boost before returning to the nest. I haven't has this sort of thing happen with Scarlets, but have with aa couple of other species and the hen has always looked after her food intake. cheers, Mike |
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