FEATURE
lay the first egg. Then you can expect chicks to hatch on consecutive days. Other hens delay the start of incubation until they have laid several eggs and then three, four or five chicks can appear on the same days. When six eggs hatch over a period of six days, the last chick to hatch is inevitably much smaller than the first.
This brings the risk of the youngest
being squashed or neglected and so we try to find a foster nest that contains chicks closer to its own size. When choosing a foster nest, it is best to select one in which the parents own chicks will be of a different colour or variety. This makes it easier to maintain accurate records. At one time we experimented with
removing eggs as they were laid and returning them when there was a full clutch – much as many canary breeders do. Eventually we decided that the extra work this involved and the risk of damaging eggs when handling them outweighed any advantages. We also resort to fostering when there is only one chick in the nest. You might expect a single chick to be well fed because it receives all of the hens attention – but this is rarely the case. Some under occupied hens get bored and neglect their duties. Others are so keen to get on with the next breeding round that the lone chick is seen as a nuisance. We have noticed that a single chick
often suffers from leg problems – probably because they have no brothers or sisters to push against when raising themselves to be fed. Moving such a chick to another nest is better for its development and permits the hen to get on with producing another clutch of eggs.
Zebra Finch chicks Once there are chicks in the nest-box we
inspect it every day. One of the main reasons for doing this is to ensure that the chicks have food in their crops. For this reason, we do not usually inspect early in the day, before parental feeding has got properly underway. We normally inspect during the early evening. Having said that, during a recent early morning walk through the bird room a two day old chick was found on the cage floor apparently dead and as cold as ice. Presumably it had inadvertently been carried from the nest by one of its parents. Once the chick had been warmed it ‘came to life’ and is now developing well.
BIRD SCENE 21
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