Cockatiel Egg and Chick Thread

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Hooray! Our little bird family is complete :D

I present you with Phoenix! Nela and I named him together. He has a very special name. He's named after her bunny Ashton who passed away a couple years ago, my Skyler (whose middle name was Ashton after her bunny), and her bunny Ashlynn who just died. Also back when Arthur and Michaela tried to have babies but Michaela ended up dying, I named one of the chicks Phoenix. When the mythical phoenix dies, it's reborn out if its ashes (hence the connection to the bunnies with Ash in their names). It seems like a good name for our last chick. Hooray for new life!



In the video, Phoenix is under Arthur's wing but his head pops out partway through :) You can see how protective daddy is. Poppet is protective too, but Arthur is really protective. No one messes with his babies! Something funny happened a couple of hours ago- Arthur and Poppet were out of the nest box so they could eat, and I decided to put more clean litter in the box. Took the babies out of the nest box and put them in a bowl so they'd be safe. As I was sprinkling in the clean bedding, Arthur poked his head in the nest box and screamed really loudly. I think he thought I was burying his babies! He calmed down once I showed him the chicks and put them back in the box :D

Also, you can see that Kieran's eyes are starting to open! How cute is that?! A mere 2 hours ago, his eyes were quite shut! Way to go baby! His development is right on target :) He looks like Mondo Bird next to Phoenix.
 
Jan, Teddy is doing well! He seems to be digesting just fine now and he's growing like a weed :) Everyone is doing well. I'm going to check on them again in an hour or so to see if Phoenix has been fed yet. Since he's the youngest chick and so much smaller than the others, he's the most at risk for being neglected. The parents feed the loudest chick first.
 
Shiloh,

I can't thank you enough. Phoenix will always have a special place in my heart. I'm glad they are all doing well, especially Teddy. I think it's exciting to be able to follow them through your posts and pics.:biggrin:I think Smores agrees, he's binkying up a storm. :shock:
 
Nela, I can tell Phoenix is going to be a feisty bird- he's very chirpy! I got some cute photos of him with Kieran and of all the chickies together.

I'm worried about my little Teddy Bird again. His crop seems to have air in it, which isn't a good thing. I've contacted the nice cockatiel breeder about it. It's odd because in spite of the air in his crop, he's developing really quickly- as you can see in the photo of all 4 babies, his eyes are opening today! 2 days ahead of schedule, and he's also already hissing and begging for food and getting gray feathers. He's ahead of schedule as far as those things go. I hope he'll be okay!

Here are all 4 chicks together tonight:

Phoenix is in front, Neeja is behind him, then Kieran, and Teddy on the end (his eyes are opened a tiny bit in the second picture!)
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And Kieran and Phoenix being adorable:

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Good news! It's okay for Teddy to have a little air in his crop! They get it when they gulp air when begging for food :) Phew! Do I sound like a worried first time mother or what? Also, I checked him 10 minutes ago and he didn't have any air in his crop then so he must have burped or something :D

A bad thing is that I just watched Poppet pluck about 5 feathers from the back of Arthur's head. She's been plucking her legs and belly a bit too since before the chicks hatched. This is a concern because she may end up plucking the chicks. If that happens, she can't be with them anymore because she could seriously damage them... Arthur and I will have to raise them! I'm optimistic though and we'll just see what happens. I like to know what to look out for.

Oh and the breeder looked at Teddy and said she thought he may end up being a pied rather than a normal grey. That would be pretty cool because pied is my favorite mutation! I assumed all the chicks would be grey like Arthur because of how cockatiel genetics work, but if he has some pied genes lurking in there, Teddy could be pied. We will find out soon enough and I'll love him just as much if he's grey :)
 
Your pics are brill congrats on your chicks we have 2 that are now 8 weeks old if i suss out how to upload pics i will
we are now waiting on the next lot to hatch should be any day now. I was reading your comments and you said that you was told by a breeder how to tell if the chick was dead in shell we have 2 eggs going dark i know it could be a chick inside growing it also could be DIS could you let me know please
 
SnowyShiloh wrote:
A bad thing is that I just watched Poppet pluck about 5 feathers from the back of Arthur's head. She's been plucking her legs and belly a bit too since before the chicks hatched. This is a concern because she may end up plucking the chicks. If that happens, she can't be with them anymore because she could seriously damage them... Arthur and I will have to raise them! I'm optimistic though and we'll just see what happens. I like to know what to look out for.
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this may be a stupid question but is this for nesting? :?
 
My little babies are doing well today! Everyone is growing. Teddy and Kieran are getting more feathery. I'll take pictures tonight, the camera batteries died and I need to get some more!

Hartleybun, it's probably not for nesting- cockatiels don't usually pull feathers to put in the nest. We're going to take her to the vet after the chicks grow up. She's plucked her little legs naked and a bit under one wing and her belly. Plucking feather off of Arthur is definitely not normal though. I thought maybe she was itchy so I've been giving her showers (spraying her with a spray bottle full of water), but that doesn't explain her pulling feathers off of Arthur. So far she hasn't plucked any of the babies' feathers, I'm keeping a close eye on them! I really hope she doesn't decide to do it because I'll have to take her out of the cage then. You can't leave a plucking parent with the chicks because they'll pluck the poor things naked and it's very bad for the chicks' development. Plus the chicks learn to pluck! Hopefully everything will be fine :)
 
Okay... know what's adorable? A 7 day old chick nibbling your fingers and then preening his "feathers." He's growing up so fast!
 
Yep, he's growing like crazy! He weighs 7 times as much as the chick that hatched yesterday. Wow!
 
Okay, here is Kieran (aka Mondo) today! His 7 day birthday. He can open his eyes more than he's showing in the pictures, he was getting sleepy. He's a lot bigger than he was when he hatched, but he can't stay awake for much longer! You can see he has feathers growing on his wings and his chest and he has the tiniest bit of a hairdo growing. It looks like he's going to be a normal grey just like daddy, but he could surprise us and end up being a pearl. We'll know once those feathers come out of their sheaths!

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compared to 7 days ago:

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He weighs about half as much as his parents now. I bought a gram scale yesterday so I can monitor their weight gain, but I need batteries!

So, Peg, do ya think he's cute yet? :D Paul thinks he's cute now because his eyes are opening and he's getting feathers. His eyes should be all the way open in about 3 days. Also I took the pictures before cleaning him up- twice a day I clean any food or poop off of them with wet Q tips and cotton balls. It's kind of hard to get everything off of their down but they're way cleaner than they would be if I didn't do it!
 
Little Phoenix is suffering from some dehydration. I'm doing what I can for him, let's hope he'll be okay! He's so tiny! For some reason he just grabbed my heart as soon as he hatched, he seems even cuter to me than the others even though they all looked the same when they hatched.
 
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