I have a couple health and breeding questions.

[Sally]

Magnificent BirdManYou said you doubt all of them would survive because of ants. If you have an ant problem, you need to correct it, as ants can and will kill babies. It is easy to get rid of the ants, no baby should have to die that way. You can use ant poison away from your birds, or put poison where they are coming in the house.

[Stinch]

They only attack dead babies and only go after eggfood and broken eggs (Which never happened with Baxter and Kirby my society finches).

Unless fire ants or black ants come, ants don't really kill them, it's just some harmless, but annoying ghost ants. I still don't rule them killing chicks though, the ant nests are near the bird cages (About a meter or so/a couple feet.)

But they only come at night to feast on eggfood and other moist/humid foods. I worm my birds every 3 months

Main factor of death are babies that explore when too young (I have to keep moving those babies next to the other babies before they crawl out of the nest and the parents usually toss dead or dying babies out) and when there are too many babies to feed. Which usually mean supplemental hand-feedings, but I rarely have to. Unless they lay 15+ eggs. How can I reduce cltuch size? (I'm pretty sure this is their 3rd clutch)

And for some reason her eggs are tiny, about 1/3 smaller than a young hen or my gouldian finch eggs.

My mom wants to move my finches to a bigger, but more dangerous cage. It's rusty and painted and the paint washes off and is now starting to flake off. Which is really dangerous, plus they are currently nesting. Which is why I'm saving up for a new cage that is about the same size of the rusty cage. It might still have mites from the previous owners birds, I even put mite powder on it and washed it. I'll just make a small flight or just buy a new cage.

What is the safest way to kill ants without harming the birds?

[debbie276]

Just asking here, how many birds can fit in your average budgie or finch nest box without problems? Mostly because there are going to be 6 more birds, I doubt ALL of them will survive because of ants too much work for the parents.

I have had many clutches of 9 chicks and the parents do just fine. The less you fuss over the breeding birds the more successful they will be.

[Stinch]

Jewel stopped laying eggs a couple weeks ago and layed one egg 4 days ago then she stopped. I'll buy some invermiticin to eliminate the Scaly Leg Mites, they both have leg mites now and it's in the early stages. I'll stuff the nest box with bundled cloth to prevent them entering and add the medication when I have it. At least if they don't incubate their 4 day old egg.

[Stinch]

I put a cloth to prevent them from going in their nest.

The gouldian finch chick hatched today at 11:06 AM and a couple hours later I found him on the cage floor with a bloody head and leg.

Tried putting him back, but without success. Then I picked him up and made a temporary brooder and gave him some pedialyte.

About a half hour later I check on him and my mother bought the corn starch (For the wounds) and some baby food (Either there was no hand-feeding formula at the pet store or some other reason).

The baby is alive and I fed him a couple minutes ago, working on blueprints for the society finch flight so I can keep them in without the guilt of keeping them in a small cage. I need about 8 meters of mesh and some wood.

I'm going to buy some Invermiticin for the gouldians because of the mites.

Hope everything goes fine (Unlikely since he was attacked and not that warm. Also raising him from this age with success is unlikely). Going to see if my great aunt has a lamp compatible with the light bulb I have.

[Stinch]

Also, I'm trying to get proper hand feeding formula. While I don't have the actual thing, can I mix baby food with eggfood or homemade eggfood or boiled egg yolk? Or is just baby food while I don't have formula ok?

[Stinch]

It died, it was probably the baby food for his first non-pedialyte meal. Either the store didn't have hand-feeding formula or she forgot and bought baby food instead.

[Sally]

So sorry. It is always a good idea to keep hand feeding formula on hand if you are breeding and you are also comfortable with hand feeding. It keeps for ages in the freezer.

[Stinch]

If I knew that little bit of information I would have 5 kilos of handfeeding formula in the freezer right now.

I'll cease all reproductive activities until all problems are fixed, also the juveniles aren't familiar with chicks. So one of them played with the chciks body and mutilated him... (I found out which one did it)

I only have 3 obivous problems, getting some invermiticin (And maybe some more liquid calcium and all medications that I WILL need just in case) to remove scaly leg mite, getting 3-6 more meters of mesh to make a mini aviary and bringing my birds to the vet. (All of this will be fixed with a maximum time of 2 or 3 weeks)