Post
by Sally » Fri Feb 26, 2010 9:59 am
I know how hard it is to lose the ones you handfeed, there is a special bond there. But it is a very difficult task, with many failures. This looks like a Cordon Bleu baby, and they are especially difficult to handfeed. They are so tiny when first hatched, that is the first hurdle. It is so hard to get food into their tiny beaks without aspirating them. Then in the wild, they are normally raised on insects alone for about the first week, so we have to give them a very high protein handfeeding formula. You were trying to feed them by crushing seed, but that diet is too low in protein for these babies. Without a commercial handfeeding formula, you can mash the yolk of a hard-boiled egg, then thin it out with water till it is like a very thin cream soup, and try feeding that. Also, using a leg banding tool makes it easier to feed with less chance of aspirating. You just scoop a tiny bit of food in the groove of the tool, hold it upside down, tap the baby's beak till it opens, insert the tool just barely into the beak, and it should lick the food off the tool. And despite early success, you can lose them any time from hatching to fledging.
So don't be discouraged, you took on a daunting task. You did the best you could. I once contacted a woman who is known to do lots of handfeeding, and asked her for tips. The first thing she said was that she had killed lots of babies before she was successful. African waxbills are among the harder species to handfeed, Australian grassfinches are much easier.
That said, welcome to the forum. If you will fill out your profile with your location, it will make it easier to tell you where to get any supplies you might need. And there is a wealth of information at the Finch Information Center, linked at left, including an article on handfeeding.
3 Purple Grenadiers, 1 Goldbreast + 1 cat.
National Finch & Softbill Society -
http://www.nfss.org
.. 
Seeing this baby it looks bloated on the one side of the crop and the body itself. Yeast will cause the crop to bloat like that and if not treated it will kill the baby.