Help! Our school found a very TINY featherless baby bird. No idea what species. He's under a heat lamp but needs food. Our nature center is worthless so thats no option. The nest is entirly to high up and I won't let him die if I can help it. How much should I feed him and how many times? I have a nutra bird formula and a dropper. Reply ASAP!
It is very difficult to try and hand-raise a wild baby bird. It is usually best to put the hatchling back into the nest. Sometimes the mother bird will push extra or unhealthy chicks out of the nest so that the remaining babies have a better chance. Have an adult use a ladder to put the chick back in its nest.
i just looked up aboute bird today and i raise some birds so i think i can help.if you dont put it back in the nest then find it some worms to eat.and water to drink of course but you might want to put jsut a little jsut a little bit of water in.so hope that will help good luck!
First of all, the problem with worms is that the baby will not be able to digest them. The mother bird usually first eats the worms herself (if they are apart of her diet) and then regurgitates them after they've been partially digested. A baby bird is not capable of eating regular worms.
Second, a baby bird doesn't drink water. They get their moisture from the food its mother regurgitates to it. If you try to give a baby bird water, they can aspirate it (inhale it) and die.
Do you happen to know what kind of bird this is? Certain birds need more of a meat based diet while others need a grain based diet. To be on the safe side, I would use both for this bird. The grain can be provided by chick starter mix combined with water to get a mush about oatmeal consistency or with prepared malt o meal. The meat should be provided through canned, ground dog food. I would mix it about 2 parts grain to 1 part meat. Make sure that the mixture is about the consistency of oatmeal if not a tiny bit thicker.
To feed the baby, you need a feeding utinsil....Popsicle sticks work great for this. For smaller birds, you can get a plastic straw and cut a slit on opposite sides of the stra about a quarter inch up to make a tab, then cut the tab off so your left with like half a straw. That makes a great little spoon for small birds.
To encourage the baby bird to gape (open its mouth widely), you can tap it's head or tap around the box you have it in. Once it opens, put a little food into it's mouth with the feeding utinsil.
As the baby gets old enough to tell what it is, then you can adjust the feeding formula. Birds that need a formula based more off of meat (so 2 parts meat, 1 part grain) would be birds like mocking birds, blue jays and starlings. Sparrows do fine with the grain formula.
If you have a dove or a pigeon, then thats a whole different story. Doves and pigeons need only a grain formula, so malt o meal works (I've handfed a pet dove with malt o meal). If your baby is less than 3 days old, then you'll need to invest in some kind of pigeon milk replacer formula. Pigeons and doves are both fed a special kind of super high protein substance that the parents secrete from a gland in their throat and it's called pigeon milk. The babies are fed this for the first 2 to 3 days of life and because of this, most pigeons or doves that are younger than that do not survive. They also have to be fed differently. Instead of gaping, they stick their beaks into their parents mouth to get their food. This can be simulated by putting the food in a plastic ziplock baggie and then cutting a hole in the corner just big enough for the baby to stick it's beak in. It's a long, hard process however and you would be better off finding an avian vet to show you how to tube feed the baby.
Same thing happened at my school, but my principal let me and my brother take it home. it is moving and breathing. so we have a droplet ( Dropper ) and its heating under a lamp. Anything else need to be done?
I just commented on another post about finding wild baby birds. This post is probably too late, but in case other find themselves in this situation...I do not recommend trying to raise the baby bird yourself. It is really hard to do without the proper materials, and the baby will probably just die. First, try to find the nest to put the baby back in. This is the best chance for survival. (Some people think that birds can smell if you touched their babies, but this isn't true...birds reall have no sense of taste or smell). If you can't find a nest, leave the baby where it is and monitor it to make sure that nothing gets around it. (Dogs, cats, children, etc). Be quiet and usually the parents will take the baby home again. If you find the baby out of the nest again, it is probably for a reason. Either the mother kicked the baby out, or maybe the siblings (although this is rare at this young of age), or perhaps another bird has placed its own babies in the nest and kicked out the older babies (birds will do this to get another bird to care for their young. Sucks, but that's life). If you can't find the nest, or the baby is a "reject," try to call a wildlife center to see if they will take in the bird. They have incubators and materials to feed the bird and know what to feed the bird. This will give the bird a 50/50 chance of making it. If there isn't a center in your area, try looking one up. They can help you. DO NOT FEED THE BABY OR WATER IT UNTIL YOU HAVE CONTACTED A CENTER! Avoid handling it too much. What you should do is gently grab the baby and place them in a box padded with soft material. Don't disturb it. Call the center, and see what can be done. A bird with no feathers is a hatchling and requires a constant body temperature and needs to be fed every 15 minutes. You cannot care for this age of bird by yourself (or really any babay bird that hasn't been weaned). Remember, these birds are wild and it is illegal to keep them. This is for a reason...you aren't a mama bird. Feeding this bird on your own will be a guessing process, since there is no way to determine the species, and you will probably just end up killing it. If you really want to save the bird, call a center. If you want to be a mama bird and try to care for it on your own...alright...but I can promise you that it will be short lived.
* You can save a baby wild bird if you have no other choice!!....... I know the best thing to do is get the bird back into its nest or to contact a wildlife center but this is not always possible. We raised a wild sparrow that was about 2 days old and had been pushed out of its nest. We could not put her back into her nest. We took her home and mashed some apricots and added some water to make a very runny consistency (this is all I had at the moment) and gave it some of the mixture with a medicine syringe. I placed it in a shoe box wrapped in washcloth and placed on a town in a warm spot in our home. I fed it the mixture about every 2 hours. She only took a little bit at a time. Then I went to the pet store and got baby bird formula. I mixed it with warm water to a thin/ runny consistency. It was scary to feed her at first because a lot of the time I though she might be chocking. Just go very slow and do not give it more than a few drops at a time. As she grew I thickened the formula a bit and didn't worry so much about the temperature of the water. I do remember (as this was several years ago) that when it did eat I massaged it's gullet (underneath its beak- its neck). Our sparrow that we named Jessie bird lived free in our home for 2 1/2 years. She would only venture into the living-room and kitchen (where we kep a shallow bowl full of bird seed. She nested in one of my plants every night and pooped out the side of one of my other plants. So we kept a paper towel under it and cleaned it several times a day. She ate dinner with us by pulling food off of our plate. The problem with sparrows is that they are ground feeder and she ended up getting stepped on. We were very saddened but had such a wonderful experience with her. She even ended up going outside which was a big worry but every time ended up coming back home. We have just rescued another baby sparrow whose mother was killed by a cat and I hope we are as lucky this time around. It takes a lot of time to raise a wild bird (at first we had to feed her every 2 hours and keep her warm) if you are really not up for the challenge- please call a wild life center!
I completely understand your position but I have tried to find places (aviaries and animal control and others)to take common wild birds and for the most part they say unfortunally they cannot try to save every house bird. They are more interested in the bigger more endangered birds. So I kept our Sparrow and she lived- It was wonderful to have her around and she lived free in our home as one of our family. She even ended up venturing outside and flew around the neighborhood visiting the neighbors and would come home every time. I know that is somewhat unbelievable but it is completely true. She lived for over 2 years with us but ended up getting stepped on (being a ground feeder). We were devastated but love telling our story. I think trying to save the bird was much better that just leaving it to die. And for us it was not short lived! * If you believe and care anything IS possible! families
quote:
Originally posted by shannon8787: I just commented on another post about finding wild baby birds. This post is probably too late, but in case other find themselves in this situation...I do not recommend trying to raise the baby bird yourself. It is really hard to do without the proper materials, and the baby will probably just die. First, try to find the nest to put the baby back in. This is the best chance for survival. (Some people think that birds can smell if you touched their babies, but this isn't true...birds reall have no sense of taste or smell). If you can't find a nest, leave the baby where it is and monitor it to make sure that nothing gets around it. (Dogs, cats, children, etc). Be quiet and usually the parents will take the baby home again. If you find the baby out of the nest again, it is probably for a reason. Either the mother kicked the baby out, or maybe the siblings (although this is rare at this young of age), or perhaps another bird has placed its own babies in the nest and kicked out the older babies (birds will do this to get another bird to care for their young. Sucks, but that's life). If you can't find the nest, or the baby is a "reject," try to call a wildlife center to see if they will take in the bird. They have incubators and materials to feed the bird and know what to feed the bird. This will give the bird a 50/50 chance of making it. If there isn't a center in your area, try looking one up. They can help you. DO NOT FEED THE BABY OR WATER IT UNTIL YOU HAVE CONTACTED A CENTER! Avoid handling it too much. What you should do is gently grab the baby and place them in a box padded with soft material. Don't disturb it. Call the center, and see what can be done. A bird with no feathers is a hatchling and requires a constant body temperature and needs to be fed every 15 minutes. You cannot care for this age of bird by yourself (or really any babay bird that hasn't been weaned). Remember, these birds are wild and it is illegal to keep them. This is for a reason...you aren't a mama bird. Feeding this bird on your own will be a guessing process, since there is no way to determine the species, and you will probably just end up killing it. If you really want to save the bird, call a center. If you want to be a mama bird and try to care for it on your own...alright...but I can promise you that it will be short lived.
Fleabunn, I routinely take in wild birds, and most avian vets do. However, I understand that many people do not have the resources around them (avian vets and wildlife centers). However, I am strongly opposed to interrupting wild animals. Many fledglings are snatched up by people all the time and taken to me, and I tell them that they would have been fine if they had left them alone. The parents of the bird had a plan: teach it to fly. In the case of hatchlings that are separated from the nest, it is tragic and I understand that some people will do all they can to try to care for them, but sometimes this is impossible. I'm glad you have had success. The fact of the matter is that people who are even trying to handfeed baby parrots find problems, let alone trying to save wild baby birds. Thanks to irresponsible breeders selling parrots that are not fully weaned, I have to deal with burned crops and bacterial infections that could have been avoided if people would have known what they were doing. That goes to the breeder and the buyer. So, if I feel that adamantly about baby parrots that have been bred for the purpose of being a pet, I certainly don't condone picking up a wild bird and having a go with it. Let nature run its course. I know some people will disagree with me, and I'm sorry.
