sickly baby

[Tammy]

o.k. here is goes. I have one pair green singing finches. they had 2 babies. the one baby is healty, the other is sickly. puffy feathers, labored breathing. to make a long story short. I had to seperate my babies because the male(dad) kept going after the healthy baby. so mom and healthy baby are in one cage and dad and sickly baby are in the other cage(with heat lamp). I took the sickly finch to the vet and the vet said he was underweight and really didn't know what was wrong gave him antibotics and treated him for asm. my question is now the male(dad) will sometimes go after the sickly baby. he still feeds him too but I caught him twice going after the baby. the babies are only 4 weeks old at the most. so they still may be to young to seperate them from the parents right???? what do I do. - tammy

[Sally]

If Dad is the one going after the baby, why not put both babies with Mom? Are they eating and/or drinking on their own yet? Dad may be wanting to breed again, so he becomes aggressive with the babies, wanting to force them away. If these babies are starting to wean, this is a very stressful time for them, and the one may have trouble handling the transition from being a baby to being a juvenile.

[Tammy]

I had both babies with mom but she didn't want to feed the sickly baby, just the healthy one and the dad would feed the sickly one which is why I kept the sickly baby with the dad but now he is starting to becoming aggressive and pickin at the baby. please help. he is doing it right now