FINCHforum

Hello!
I recently bought two zebra finches, female is Kiwi and male is Coco. They bonded immediately and since, laid 4 eggs. In the past few weeks, one egg was dropped from the nest, I was not sure if it was on purpose or an accident. I was not able to see if the eggs hatched but when I checked on them yesterday, I found one of their newly hatched babies floating in their water bowl. Does anyone know why that would happen? They seem happy, I clean their cage and feed them daily so is there anything I can do to prevent that from happening again?

Is the water dish close or below the nest? Depending on how mobile your chicks are they can accidentally get knocked out by other chicks or just get too close to the edge. Falling chicks happens a lot. If a water dish is close it may have simply fallen in and drowned. Maybe when feeding chick stretched out too far and fell out. They fight to be fed first. Survival of the fittest. I've had this happen on several occasions. Next year I plan to locate my nest much closer to the ground. If they fall, it won't be far and a softer landing. Are your food and water dishes away from the nest? Sorry about your loss. It does make one feel sad!! Oops you said newly hatched. Wouldn't move much. Maybe a deeper nest is needed. If this happens a lot I would be concerned. But guessing it was a simple accident.

It can be due to the parents and them maybe not being experienced parents so they have jumped out of the net and not realised how light the chicks are and pulled it ou with them

Also is the nest deep ??

skong

Are you feeding them egg every day? I have a society finch that once tossed and ate one of my clutches. Looking back, I think the dry eggfood dispenser got clogged so she wasn't able to eat out of it; this could have made her think that she didn't have enough protein to rear chicks, leading to her tossing and killing them.

Thank you all for the responses! Those are very helpful suggestions. I recently bought egg food, hopefully it will keep the other two babies alive! I am wondering if I should take out the bird bath? I have heard it’s important for them to have but it also sounds dangerous for when the babies get bigger. They are only a few days old, but just to be safe.

skong wrote: Thank you all for the responses! Those are very helpful suggestions. I recently bought egg food, hopefully it will keep the other two babies alive! I am wondering if I should take out the bird bath? I have heard it’s important for them to have but it also sounds dangerous for when the babies get bigger. They are only a few days old, but just to be safe.

Rather than a bird bath, you can mist spray your adult birds. Just as beneficial. Once chicks are able to fly then a bird bath is safe. I just mist by birds every few days. No need to mist the chicks. I mist my adults quite thoroughly. Make sure no drafts.

By misting, do you mean you use a spray bottle over them? I have never heard of that before.

Thank you!

Correct. Turn the spray nozzle so that it doesn't spray in a stream. More of a finer/broad spray.