Hi all,

 

Yesterday I found 1 of my males dead on the floor, it had appeared he was in a fight as he had a couple of marks and some blood over his body. He is a dad to 4 babies the oldest being 9 days, I am wanting to know if the female will be able to cope with 4 babies by herself. She has previously only had 1 clutch and 2 babies so she has double the amount of chicks to raise single handedly now. I have looked in the box this morning and none of the babies have been fed, I don't have experience with hand feeding so I have fostered her youngest baby which would be 4 days old into another box with chicks around the same age. This makes the box the baby was fostered to a nest of 5, I have another nest with a really experienced mum, currently on 3 babies around the week old age. Should I place the remaining 3 babies from the nest with the only mum to the nest with the experienced mum?

 

Also when I placed the baby into the other box, I placed it in when the mum was already in the box feeding the babies. Is there a specific way to fostering babies, do you have to have the mum out of the box or is it okay with the mum in the box?

 

Thank you in advance for your help!

Since the babies are not being fed I would put them in with nest of 3 with the experienced mum. It doesn't matter if the hen is in the nest or not. She will accept them either way.

I agree with rachelm. Pop the chicks in with experienced mum. She should be able to manage 6 chicks without any difficulty. Also,whenever I foster chicks out to other nests I keep a closer watch on things for the first day just to make sure all is well.

Hi,

 

Thanks for the replies, I have fostered the 2 youngest chicks of the nest into 2 different nests. Both the fostered babies have a full crop and are sleeping with the other babies. The single mum has been in her box and has fed her remaining 2 babies. Seeming she is feeding them I thought I would leave them in with her, it should be a bit easier raising 2 rather than 4 and I thought the older chicks may be able to demand the food more than the younger ones that I fostered out.

 

I have been keeping a close eye on them to make sure everything goes well. I am able to tell which babies have been fostered out because they are all albinos.

 

This is a mutations question, the mum (single mum) is an albino lacewing and the dad (now passed away) was a blue male. I believe he was split to lacewing as his mother was a lutino lacewing, will the babies be male or will i get females and males? She has 3 albinos and 1 other looking to be a cinnamon pied.

 

Thanks

If the mother is cinnamon ino, (lacewing) and the father is split to it, then yes, you can get male cinnamon ino chicks. And if the crossover occurs, you can get the ino and cinnamon separately, too. All the male chicks will be at least split to the cinnamon ino, whether or not they show one of them visually.

Thanks Finnie,

 

They had 4 babies, I fostered 2 out and kept 2 with the mother. She threw both out one died before the other, I was able to save 1. Of the 2 fostered out 1 of them died through high temperatures, so I now have 2 albino lacewings in the nest almost ready to leave.

Aw, I'm sorry you lost some of them. That's the not-fun part about doing this. Can you tell whether the two survivors are boys or girls?

Hi Finnie,

 

It appears I have both a male and a female, one has a white cere and one has a pinkish one. Birds have just started leaving the nest but still go in there at certain points in the day.

 

Thanks