FINCHforum

My friend has been caring for some finches, and her finches just had some eggs hatch for the first time. Three eggs hatched, to be exact.

That was about two weeks ago. Two days ago, she found that one of the babies was dead, outside of the nest. When she examined its body, she found what she described to me as a pocket on the bird's back, that had burst and was full of seed.

This morning, she noticed that one of the two remaining babies wasn't moving, and that the parents were no longer going into the house to tend to the babies. By this evening, the remaining two babies had died. She examined their bodies, and again found a pocket on each baby. Compared to the first baby, the pocket on each of these two birds was a little smaller, and on the neck rather than the back of the birds. The pockets on the two of them hadn't burst, but were very full, and the skin on them was very tight.

She said that the babies seemed to be developing fine. They were making noise and already starting to get feathers. So what could have caused this? What could have happened to her poor babies? And what can she do next time to ensure that it doesn't happen again?

What type of finches are we talking about here?

The "pocket" your friend is puzzled by is the crop. This is where the seed is stored before it moves into the stomach for digestion. It is unfortunate that your friend is having problems with breeding her birds, but it sounds to me like she needs to study up on BASIC bird keeping before attempting to breed again.

I realize this is not a very timely reply, but it may still provide some things to think about.

There are a number of things that can cause nestling death. In a 12-day old baby which is starting to get its feathers, the parents normally stop brooding but should still return to the nest to feed the young. If the parents had stopped feeding and had truly abandoned the babies (as will often happen when the young are sick and not begging strongly), and the young still had food in their crops, then this indicates that they were not digesting the food as fast as they should have (crop stasis). There are several things to think about when this happens. Usually the cause is a crop infection or another process which leads to intestinal (gut) ileus (lack of function/movement). Most causes of acute nestling death are due to infection (bacterial, fungal, viral, parasitic).

Some parents will remove dead nestlings from the nest ("house cleaning"). Because this baby was so developed and large at the time of its death, it is more likely that the parents traumatized the crop while trying to remove the baby than the crop bursting "on its own."