BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Birds Hand rearing, time for the dive!

hi all, hope all your birds are great:)

i have been wanting to hand rear cockatiels for a while now and now i have some chicks im taking the plunge

i have two 5 week old cockatiels now, but need some advice...

right so im gonna take them from the nest...

do they need and incubator or are they ok at room temp at this age?

how many times do i have 2 feed them a day at 5 weeks?

and what temp and consistency does the formula have 2 be at this age?

any advice would be great

Mike

This prob isn't the new's you want but.. At 5 week's old you are going to have ALOT of trouble with them accepting to be feed from the spoon or syringe... You really had to have taken them out at 2-3 weeks..

I agree with Phillip on this one Mike. At 5 weeks, they are pretty much fully feathered and should be starting to try other foods on their own. They will not recognize formula from you as food and will fight taking it. This could cause asperation if a drop goes down the wrong way.

It would be better to leave them with the parents at this stage and to just handle them frequently so they will be tame. Start learning now how to handfeed and be ready to take the babies earlier next time. Three weeks is about the maximum age to start handfeeding, so I would normally take the whole clutch when the oldest is 3 weeks.

It CAN be done at 5 weeks but is MUCH more difficult than starting them younger.

Handling them daily for as long as 20min's will ensure they will tame up ok. Then once weaned, remove them from their parent's and handle them as much as possible.