FINCHforum

Greetings:

I have no experience with baby finches but I have 3 now that are 11 days old. They seem to be doing fine and the parents are taking good care of them but their nest is filthy! It has dried feces everywhere.

I am concerned that the mess in the nest is unhealthy for all the birds but especially the babies.

Can I move the babies to a new clean nest? If so, how can I do so safely without injuring them or causing the parents to reject them? Or, is it OK to let them stay in the dirty nest?

Thanks for any advice you can provide.

Spairifish.

I used to think the same thing when I had my first clutch. There is no need to move them. Let them fledge and give it an extra day or 2 then take it out and clean up. They will be just fine until then and there is no major risk of any illness.

Thanks for the information. I feel better about their situation now.

Depending on the nest you have you may find where they poop interesting.
On my square nest box, the chicks will back up to the sides of the nest and poop there. So the center of the nest where the chicks are, is relatively clean. I've even seen the chick back up to the nest entrance and shoot their poop out of the nest.

After they fledge, if you leave the nest in the cage and if they go back into the nest is when the entire nest gets poopy.

The problem is, you do not know what will cause the parents to abandon the nest. The best intentions are sometimes the worst thing to do. Some birds are amazingly tolerant, and others will abandon at any reason. And yes I made a change that caused the sitting birds to abandon the nest. So my advice is to limit your touching the nest and the cage to the absolute minimum. And if you can avoid touching the nest at all, so much the better.

Great pic Gary. I agree, touching the nest would probably lower your birds' chance of survival drastically as the parents would most likely abandon them. Finches hate it when you mess with the nest. The poop shouldn't do them any harm. Great job getting them to breed by the way.

ac12 wrote: I've even seen the chick back up to the nest entrance and shoot their poop out of the nest.

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Well..... I had my big morning chuckle!!!

dfcauley wrote:

ac12 wrote: I've even seen the chick back up to the nest entrance and shoot their poop out of the nest.
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Well..... I had my big morning chuckle!!!

Not sure why that's funny Donna. Have you never seen this? It's quite amazing... and just a little bit funny.