FINCHforum

Happy Days!!! My Waterslager hen has hatched 4 new babies and they are doing very well.
I do have a question about the male he constanly chases her when she is out of the nest to eat or drink.
He has never feed her or sat in the nest to give her a break so I am wondering if I should remove him from
the cage or not. She is taking very good care of her babies.
What do you all think?

You mentioned that he has never sat on the nest or fed her, but does he at least feed his offspring? What does he do that is productive to the welfare of the chicks?

You can remove him, if you'd like, but if he's helping with the babies in anyway, I would keep him in the cage.

Well since they have hatched I haven't seen him feed the chicks at all. I will try and keep an eye tomorrow to see if he does f not
I'll remove him. He tries to mate with her soon as she leaves the nest and she doesn't like it at all.

Yikes, he seems a little too frisky and not very focused on raising his chicks. A lot of canary breeders use the breeder cages with a split divider. If you are using one of those kinds of cages, perhaps you can split him off to the side and see if he improves his behavior after some time of separation. Otherwise, rest assured that mother canary will do well just on her own. It is obviously more tolling on the body to have to raise four chicks as a single mom, but it isn't unheard of in the canary breeding world. It happens and it is in fact possible to raise the chicks as a single parent. Good luck on the babies and congratulations!

If he's not helping at all then he is a problem and problem males will usually end up with dead young. She eats and feeds young by herself then remove him either by a divider or completely out of the cage your choice. On the flip side I have to also seen hens that were in a similar situation to have enough of the males bossiness and actually attacked him.

remove the male. I raised about 80 young this season with about 30% of those raised by hens alone with no problem. Unfocused males can be a real problem. If possible keep him in a cage next to her where she can see him.this reduced the risk of her not feeding the chicks