Urgent - Storing eggfood?

[Jon]

My society pair decided it would be nice to start a clutch exactly two weeks before I leave for Christmas vacation. The eggs are due to hatch 2 days after I leave, and I will be gone for about 11-12 days. I have a pet sitter that comes everyday, however he's not going to prepare egg food for me unless I were to pay him more. (Of course, I'm not doing that!) I believe a fresh batch will only last about 4-6 days, correct me if I'm wrong? I was wondering if I could make two batches, one for the first 5 days, and another for 5 days. Obviously, the second would go bad by the time the first is finished, so could I freeze the 2nd batch of egg food (Which is just mashed boiled egg with birdy vitamins) so that it won't go bad? I don't see why I can't, but I'd like to consult the experts before I do. About how many tablespoons of egg food should I instruct my petsitter to place out everyday? There are 5 fertile eggs.

[Sally]

When I have gone out of town with babies in the nest, I have eggfood in the freezer for the pet sitter. My pet sitter comes once a day. You could set up daily servings in little containers or ziploc snack bags. When you leave, you put one serving in the refrigerator to thaw, and the others stay in the freezer. Each day, your pet sitter takes the eggfood out of the refrigerator to feed to the birds and then takes one serving out of the freezer and puts in into the refrigerator to thaw till tomorrow. This way, the birds have fresh eggfood each day, with no worries about food going bad. I personally would put about 1/4 cup of eggfood in each serving container. The nice thing about Societies is that they will also feed seed and don't freak if the eggfood gets low. I like to place spray millet in the cage too, as many of my birds will feed this to their babies.

You will have to decide what to tell your pet sitter about any possible tossed babies. If he would be comfortable doing so, you could tell him to place any live babies found on the floor back into the nest and throw away any dead babies. With Societies, the chances of tosslings are slim, but I like to prepare my pet sitter for any possibilities so she doesn't worry when confronted by any problems.

So enjoy your vacation--as long as you have a pet sitter, your birds should be fine. It is always a little disconcerting to me to realize that none of my birds missed me while I was gone!

[Jon]

Perfect, thank you!!!

[gsjohnson]

That's good information...

[cindy]

you could use dried eggfood like Higgins ProTeen 25 eggfood, you can leave it down and have the sitter replentish it as needed. No worries about leaving it out to long...it will not spoil like fresh eggfood. Is the sitter replacing the eggfood every few hours...I personally do not recommend it being left our more than a few hours at a time especially if it is only being removed and replace once a day.

[Sally]

Commercial eggfood is fine if your birds are used to it. With Societies, it may not be a problem, but my waxbills are too picky to be satisfied with only commercial eggfood. I do make my eggfood quite dry (2 to 2-1/2 cups dry material such as nestling food/commercial eggfood to 12 mashed hardboiled eggs), and I leave it out all day without problems. In the heat of summer, it might be different, but my eggfood tends to dry out during the day.

[debbie276]

I also leave my egg food (dried somewhat with hand feeding formula) out all day spread thinly on a dish. It's usually gone fairly quickly but any left over gets dried out during the day.

[gsjohnson]

Same here as I leave the egg food out all day as well. It's always gone by the time I get home from work. My dilema has always been how long before I should dispose of the stored egg food in the fridge. I usually chuck it at around 7 days, but it appears maybe that's too long by what I'm reading here. Always a worrysome issue for me.

[debbie276]

I only make enough for 3 to 4 days and keep it refrigerated. If I had to make a larger batch I think I'd try freezing it like I've heard others do here.

[ac12]

If it starts to smell or get slimy, TOSS it.
For me that starts to happen about day 5.

[Sally]

I make up big batches of eggfood, boiling three to six dozen eggs at a time, and then put it up in containers in the freezer. My birds eat the thawed eggfood just fine. Once I get a container out of the freezer, it is normally used up in 1-2 days, 3 at most. I don't think I would keep fresh or thawed eggfood around for more than 4 days, and it is probably pushing it at 4 days.