MY First Hand Feeding Experience  

These are the beautiful baby gouldians that I handfed. The oldest baby is about twelve days old in this picture.

Well, I must say that hand feeding baby finches was not something that I had planned on doing. One morning I woke up and found the momma dead on the floor. The youngest one was only about two days old. The daddy was feeding them but looked so weary after a couple of days, so we put them in with a couple of pairs of societies that we had just acquired. Not one of the pairs would feed my babies. So instead of allowing them to die, I purchased Kaytee Hand Feeding Formula and made a homemade brooder out of a heating pad and a pet tote, then I began feeding the babies.  I waited until their crops were empty which was about every 2 1/2 to 3 hours, before another feeding. They were sleeping the whole night through. I fed them before I went to bed every night and got up to feed them at 6:00am every morning. They were always ready to eat.  They went on an 8 hour day trip. When I went in the car for any length of time they went with me and I plugged the heating pad into the cigarette lighter of the car. It was very time consuming but I loved every minute of it. The food had to be heated and everything had to be sterilized. I did a lot of studying on the internet to see what in the world I should do.  I had never handfed any thing in my life so this was all new to me. This is the article that I found to be most helpful and complete in my adventure of hand feeding these precious little guys. http://www.feathers.org/library3.htm Unfortunately I did lose two of the babies, so I only had one left. I feel he is my little blessing.  I named him Baby. He was put back into the aviary with the rest of the babies coloring up so he is not tame. My intentions in hand feeding was not to have a tame bird, but to keep these babies alive. It has been said that handfed birds are not good at mating. That remains to be seen. I will let you know of my experience when he gets old enough to have his own wife and babies.

 

 

 

 

 

   June 5, 2005 Baby has three babies of his own that are coloring out in the baby aviary. He also has 5 ity bity babies in the nest. So much for the myth that gouldians that are handfed are not good parents.

Since this web page was originally built I have handfed several tiny finches as well as parrotlets. I usually end up finding a pair of societies that will foster my finch babies until they are old enough to be on their own, but hand feeding is a great alternative to save little lives. 

 

This website created by Tonda

*~*~*~*~*~*  *~*~*~*~*~*

Heart to Heart Aviaries
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*