Hey, my pair of finches laid eggs. And they didn’t hatch. So when they started ignoring them and burying them in the next, I took them out.
THEN, they laid MORE eggs. Right away! Two weeks later, voila! Now I have tiny, tiny baby birds. I can’t believe they are even ALIVE they’re so small. I saw some pictures of hatchlings on line and they were kind of squashed and boogery looking. But these look just like birds except way smaller.
They hatched from eggs the size of jelly beans! There may be a couple of eggs left to hatch. I’m not sure how many eggs/birds are in there and I don’t want to disturb them too much. But I peeked in and saw two tiny open beaks just about big enough for ONE seed to go in them! So tiny!
I smell a paternity suit. Who’s up for DNA testing? Better do it voluntarily before someone makes you. Do you know what it costs to raise tiny Finches to adulthood?
So are you saying I should take the three un-hatched eggs that are in there away? The pet store guy said to just let them be. And I"m afraid to reach into the nest. They look SO fragile! Plus, they’re clearly hungry…they might try to swallow whatever I poke in there.
I raised finches once, well attempted to. I had a small aviary with several pairs but they never really got the hang of it. Once I had a baby finch that the parents stopped paying attention to so I had raised it. It was so tiny I figured it would die, but he survived and got old enough to eat on his own. He was very tame and he would make the beeping noise they make in response to me whenever I talked to him. One day I found out he got out of his cage. I searched for him by calling his name and listening for the beeping. I found him in a flip top garbage can that had been empty except for ashtray contents my dad had dumped in there. I got him out and he seemed okay but within a few days he was sick and he died. I guess he inhaled too many ashes. I was heartbroken to have this tiny delicate bird survive being abandoned by his parents and handraised only to lose him to second-hand smoke.
I eventually sold all mine except for my crippled pair. The male had been in a large aviary that contained cages with other birds in them. He had his leg bitten off by a macaw when he landed on it’s cage. The female had tried to lay an egg that got stuck, broke and caused internal damage. She survived but never laid an egg again. These two paired up because no one else wanted them, but they were the best parents. I’d often give them eggs the other pairs wouldn’t sit on and they’d sit on them and hatch and raise the babies.
I had a couple button quail in the bottom of the aviary. Man were they dumb. They’d get startled and fly up into the air then forget to keep flying and just stop and crash back into the ground. I kept expecting them to kill themselves that way. They didn’t but they also never got the hang of breeding, which was probably a good thing, didn’t need any more crash test dummy birds.
Anyway, good luck with yours and keep them away from ashtrays.
