Night Incubation

[lovezebs]

hanabi

By the way, your Silver girl is lovely.

[debbie276]

debbie276

Are Silver's, considered Blue's as well?

Yes "silvers" are Pastel Blues, meaning they have 2 pastel genes and 2 blue genes

[lovezebs]

debbie276

Thank you.

[MiaCarter]

lovezebs - Exactly. First-time probably won't feed if they won't incubate properly. I'd guess their instincts aren't fully developed.

I remember your little baby who had the damaged wing who had to be given to the societies. Poor little one

[lovezebs]

MiaCarter

The Societies, raised three out of that clutch.
The infant with the damaged wing, actually didn't survive .

[hanabi]

My worry would be that if you artificially incubated and planned to return the babies to the parents who are already showing that their instincts aren't all that well developed, then chances are they would lose at least a couple (or more) due to the learning curve.

My thoughts exactly. Besides the fact they are inexperienced and may not adequately care for any hachlings that might emerge, they already have a new clutch of eggs, so the timing would be way off if I returned the eggs or new hachlings to them (i.e. hachlings a week earlier than they expect).

Thanks MiaCarter.

[hanabi]

Beautiful. Have you bred silver with blue before?

Hi Madcat,

To tell you the truth I haven't bred any finches before, so I'm a complete newbie I knew when I purchased this pair that the combination was not ideal genetically, and that blue+blue parents are not the best at chick-raising either, but purchasing finches here in Japan is quite difficult so I went ahead with the purchase anyway. I may split the pair next season and pair with normals.

[hanabi]

hanabi

I am very curious to know, what your plans are for the eggs in your incubator , if and when they hatch (?)

Are you planning on hand feeding the babies? Good luck.

Hi Elana,

I've been mulling over this very question since prior to the rescue; no use rescuing if you don't have a game plan

I knew my local breeder/mentor has a boatload of societies that he could sell me, so after discussing the situation with him I came home with no less than 12 societies (of unknown sex I might add). By coincidence I had just finished making five breeding cases so in they went in twos and threes, with some final partner-swapping after the males showed their true colours

Figuring I had about a week before the first Gouldian egg hatched, and given the reputation of societies, I thought I'd have some nests built and society eggs laid within the week. Note that I'm using externally-mounted nest boxes by the way, and I'm adding false eggs to the nests each day. Three days pass and there is absolutely no interest in the next boxes; not even a peak inside. Realising these societies have never seen a wooden next box before (almost never used here apparently), I quickly added the commonly-used urn-shaped grass (bamboo leaf?) nests to each cage, but no hangers were at hand so they had to sit on the floor of the cage. Another two days pass and still no activity. Ok so these guys are either fussy or not in the mood for nest building yet. As a last resort I purchased a third type of nest (like an upside-down hat), and fortunately that seemed to please three of the society pairs; they've built nests to varying degrees, but no eggs as yet unfortunately, and they are not sitting continuously on the false eggs either.

So at this stage I think I have a few options. If a pair or more of the societies lay eggs and incubate adequately I'll replace society eggs with my rescued Gouldian eggs. If not, and the Gouldian eggs begin to hatch I'll have to move on to plan B

Plan B will be to warm the room up to say 32(?) degrees C and sneak one (or several?) Gouldian chicks into the cage of the society pair that look the most promising, i.e., the pair that are sitting on the nest the longest. And then observe from a distance with my fingers crossed. If they don't start feeding the chick within X minutes (where X is currently undefined but I hope you guys can suggest a suitable time considering the chick will slowly be getting cold) I'll rescue the chick, give it a feed myself, and place it back in the incubator to warm up again. I'll then repeat the process but try a different pair of societies until I find a pair that will adopt the chick(s). If "worse comes to worst" I'll hand feed and raise the chick(s), but that is really a last resort because night feeding every few hours will kill me

Any comments or advice on the above would be gratefully received.

Cheers.

[hanabi]

Well, in theory, you could give them to a foster or even the bio parents after hatching.

Good to know. This will be plan C, the plan before I take full ownership (I'll try almost anything to avoid night feeding ). I will keep an evil-eye on the parents to ensure they don't harm the chicks as Elana mentioned.

[MiaCarter]

My worry would be that if you artificially incubated and planned to return the babies to the parents who are already showing that their instincts aren't all that well developed, then chances are they would lose at least a couple (or more) due to the learning curve.

My thoughts exactly. Besides the fact they are inexperienced and may not adequately care for any hachlings that might emerge, they already have a new clutch of eggs, so the timing would be way off if I returned the eggs or new hachlings to them (i.e. hachlings a week earlier than they expect).

Thanks MiaCarter.

That new clutch definitely complicates matters.

Though I did want to note that once you get beyond about 7 days, the length of time on eggs doesn't seem to have a whole lot of impact in terms of whether they accept the babies. (Especially for first time parents who wouldn't necessarily know they were a week early since they have no point of reference.)

.....but then you've got a problem when the second clutch hatches a week down the road amidst a bunch of big, clumsy nestlings!

With fostering, I've successfully had parents accept the babies several days early. I had one case where I had a sick mama. I had a society foster, but she'd only been on eggs for a few days (Maybe 4-6 days?) But the society did foster the baby and she wasn't all that experienced. I think she'd raised 1 or 2 babies previously.

So my point is that in some cases, they may accept babies a few days ahead of schedule without issue. (I've even heard some very experienced societies will accept babies without any sort of preparation!)