FINCHforum

My pair of Red Cheeked Cordon Bleus has sucessfully hatched two clutches so far of about 3 chicks each time. I didn't peak once, I provided plently of mealworms and other suitable food and with no fail they haven't been able to raise a clutch successfuly. I say that the babies are dying about a week old, by the time they're on the floor they're pretty much pecked to death with blood . I'm not sure if the parents are doing this or the other birds once they're on the floor but it makes me sad that they do well for a week then the babies die.

Am I doing something wrong? I can't seem to raise a clutch of anything these days.

Caged birds abandoning their young is unfortunately quite common...If you are really keen to breed from any pair of finches it's best to keep them on their own.

Once you move beyond Zebras and Societies, you will have failures--that's just the way it is. These harder-to-breed species do best either in large breeding boxes (one pair to a box), large walk-in flights, or spacious, well-planted aviaries. Birds abandon for a number of reasons, primary either inexperience, they feel there is something wrong with their babies, or they feel that conditions are not right for their babies to make it.

It's not that you are necessarily doing something wrong, it's just difficult to make the parents comfortable enough to want to raise babies. Many people would envy the fact that you have gotten RCCBs to incubate and hatch out babies.

Paul and Sally have pretty much covered it all. given time they will get it right or you could try fostering the eggs to societies next time.
recently I lost a clutch of 4 rccb's they were about two weeks old and I have no idea as to the cause, parents now have a new nest and are sitting on 3 eggs this time. maybe someone needs to publish a book for us all - a dummies guide to nature

Aw Mick, I'm sorry to hear about the 4 RCCB's!

I just had a 6 day old Gouldian chick die off on me in the nest last week. I knew something wasn't right with it as it was only about 2/3's the size it should have been at that age. It had plenty of food in the crop but just didn't grow. Mother Nature knows best sometimes...