FINCHforum

My cordon bleu hen is laying eggs. Has anyone had experience raising these? What would you recommend as a food for the parents to feed the young? I read on a web site that cordons could actually go through 100's of meal worms a day when feeding their young. Does that sound right? My hen is rapidly devouring all the mini mealworms I offer her at this point, but 100's a day is sort of mind-boggling! Just wondered if they might also feed egg food to their young. Any advice would be appreciated!

I have never personally owned cordon bleus, as I heard they are high maintance, and I don't enjoy having those types of finches. Although, I have also heard that they devour mealworms, and are actually required, otherwise they may end up abandoning their nest. Do you also provide eggfood and fresh vegetables?

I have two pair of Cordon Bleus. Last year, one pair gave me infertile eggs, the other pair nothing. This year, one pair actually had fertile eggs but they came off the nest and when I candled, the chicks were dead in shell. The other pair nothing. I did some changing around and rearranging, so far neither pair has shown any interest in the nests, though one male sings and hops his heart out. So I can't speak from experience, but I understand they can literally go thru hundreds of mealworms a day when they are feeding young. They are also supposed to like ant eggs and white worms. I haven't tried the ant eggs, but I did have a white worm culture going. My CBs did get to like the white worms, but then my culture crashed, so I am starting over with that. They are very insectivorous when feeding young, and will abandon the young if they don't have the right diet. Mine will eat eggfood, but they still want those worms. Years ago, I had a pair of CBs who hatched out eggs but every time, they tossed the babies out of the nest. Now I know that I wasn't providing them with the proper diet. Some people seem to have better luck with CBs--hope you are in this group!

I have one pair in an indoor aviary that laid 5 eggs and hatched out 4 chicks. 2 died on the second day and this evening (the 4th day) I was in the room as the male carried out the body of the 3rd chick. So far the 4th is doing ok, but the last one that died did not appear to have much food in it's crop. This is thier first clutch so I wan't expecting much, but hopefully there will be at least one survivor. I have been feeding about 25 mealworms a day and fresh homemade eggfood. They are in a large 60" x 36" x 18" flight with 7 Gouldians. The nest they choose is a pagoda-style grass nest and is kind of in the middle of the cage with a lot of activity and disturbance from the Goulds. They like to land on the roof and nibble on the grass. The Cordon Bleu's have been very tolerant of my doing nest checks which supprised me based on what I have read. In fact I only discovered the eggs when I was moving the whole lot of birds from a homemade flight to this one and glanced in the nest as I was moving it. There were 3 eggs. I finished the move and put the nest in about the same location in the new cage and they went right back to it. They laid 2 more eggs then incubated to hatch...
I hope that they will have better survival rates witht the next clutch

Vicki

Wow, that is really something that they went back on the eggs after a move and nest check. They are supposed to be so intolerant of anything--mine will come off the nest at the slightest disturbance. Sounds like you might have a really good breeding pair there.

I hope you are right! So far his morning the 4th baby is still OK...My worry now is that we will be gone for 2 days at Thanksgiving and I won't be here to give live food. The only one who won't be going with us is my daughter and she is too squeamish to put them in a dish for the birds. I may have her just offer the eggfood since they seem to be good with that. I'll be here in the morning on Thursday, and back in the afternoon on Friday so It's really only 2 feedings they will miss. I hope they will be OK! It's going to make my Thanksgiving very stressfull!

I am going to try to post a picture of the parents peering out of the nest but I'm not sure it will work. , so I will also post it in the picture gallery under Adult Finches. It is titled "The proud parents-Blue Capped Cordon Bleu's"

[/img]http://www.finchforum.com/gallery/displ ... =1&pos=253

You don't have to worry about the mealworms. Just put them in small dishes and put in refrigerator. Then your daughter can just take one dish out, and put it in the flight for the birds. The cold slows down the metabolism of the birds, and then once they are taken out and warm up, they will move around and attract the attention of the birds. So your daughter won't even have to touch the worms at all! Best to keep that live food coming.

We use eggfood for feeding ours along with spray millet, seed, and small amounts of meal worms. We have several breeding pairs and all love the egg food. Here's our recipe:

Hard boil and peel 3 eggs (save the eggshell and give it to the birds after it has dried or add it to the mix of charcoal/kelp/oyster shell/mineral powder).
Grate the eggs so they have a "wormy" appearance. A cheese grater works well for this.

To the grated eggs, add:
1 tablespoon Miracle Meal
1 tablespoon yellow corn meal
1/4 teaspoon Feather Fast (or Breeders Blend or Hearty Bird)
pinch of garlic
Mix well. If needed, add more corn meal to increase the mixture's dryness.

Left-overs can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.

Just this week we have had 9 Blue cap babies fledge. You can check out our web site fairestfinches.com to see how healthy our birds are by clicking on the "Our Aviary" tab. The eggfood recipe is on the "Finch Info & Articles" page.

I tried this recipe from fairestfinches, and it is a good one. I didn't have the vitamin supplements listed, so I added Nekton-E to mine. I did add too much cornmeal, so will watch that next time. As with anything new, some of the birds devoured it and others ignored it, but this recipe is a keeper! I will still make my egg bread, but this is a lot easier and less work.