Abstract
I was invited to speak at a large bird mart recently. During the two-day affair I was privileged to meet with many wonderful pet owners and hobby breeders. But I also saw firsthand a number of small-bodied pet psittacines. Many of these were incubator-hatched chicks fed from day one, macaws being the most common.
At the bird mart I also discovered a large-scale breeder with three 14-day old Amazon chicks with bright red skin, protruding backbones and toothpick wings and legs. He said they were on 2- lOcc feedings every two hours with a pipette. Though I tried to politely explain the birds were not getting enough calories to grow plump and healthy, this breeder was not particularly receptive to instruction or perceived criticism .. I have little hope for those chicks .... Oh, they may well survive all right. Psittacines are excellent survivors. Any experienced breeder knows that. But they will not flourish.
The redness in the skin, the protruding back bone and toothpick wings and feet are very early stunting signs that rise from not giving enough food, period! The thin wings and feet are from not having enough fluid in
the total body. A protruding backbone should he an immediate warning that something is not right. These are signs the baby is not getting enough food. The redness is from a malnourished baby that is kept in a brooder that is too hot. Keeping a small baby parrot in too hot an environment rapidly dehydrates the baby, resulting in its being bright red. A normal baby should he plump and when you pinch its skin, the skin will smooth hack into place when you let go. The skin of a wrinkled, red baby does not spring hack to normal. This type of baby needs more fluids along with more calories.
Other signs of stunting are the large, bulbous, oversized-looking head of a baby. This can especially he seen in
macaws whether it is at seven days or seven weeks. A very young macaw will also show a bulbous protrusion at its cere or just above the upper mandible. In serious cases there is actually a depression or saddle appearance between this knob on its nose and the cranium. Around the six to eight week period of time, the feathers do not appear to grow correctly on the top of the head of a stunted macaw. The newly-bloomed feathers often appear as a "cow-lick" on the top of its head. These new feathers may not all go in the same direction, or do not have the smooth look of the head feathers of a correctly-fed young
macaw.
This same month, hack at home, a good friend and fellow breeder purchased an incubator and pulled his cockatoo and macaw eggs for incubation, since the parents had not yet been taught to care for their clutches.
Ten days after he succeeded in hatching a Blue and Gold Macaw and a Moluccan Cockatoo, I drove up to visit him and to see the chicks. Both were underfed, undersized and one had developed curved-in toes on its feet. These were sign_s of malnutrition and stunting.
I spent the next few hours instructing and showing this hobbyist professional handfeeding techniques, correct formula thickness, required amounts, time schedules, etc.
Stunting one's birds comes from lack of experience in proper handfeeding techniques. The three main mechanical reasons for early stunting are:
• Not feeding enough formula per feeding. The crop should he full.
• Feeding too thin a formula. The parents feed food that is very thick, almost whole.
• Not feeding enough times in a day. Birds within the first week can often he fed 7 to 9 times a day. Too often breeders reduce the feeding times to three per day much too early in the young chick's life.
This well intentioned and innocent breeder had absolutely no idea the damage was doing to his beloved birds. Happily, the problems were caught early enough that the two baby parrots recouped the early poor weight gains and developed in a most excellent manner.
With the help of published weight charts (Aviculture Institute - 19985/'86 and Joanne Abramson's The Large Macaws - 1996) and a daily scale record, this aviculturist began to learn how to keep his chicks on an optimum growth curve.
The tremendous amount of written material about incubation procedures and neonate husbandry has done worlds of good for captive psittacine breeding. So many fortunate baby parrots are correctly hatched and raised today-chicks that would not have survived using the predominant meth-
ods of 15 years ago.
The difficulties arise when novice or totally inexperienced bird breeders decide that an incubator is the solution to their problems of chicks not surviving with their parents (often YOUNG parents who also need to learn what it means to tend a clutch). A man called me the other day and expressed chagrin at not being able to successfully raise babies with his Sun Conure pair. His hope was to purchase an incubator and hatch and feed the young from this, his only pair of "expensive birds." I counseled him not to buy the incubator-nighttime feeding every hour, potential power failures and vet hills could change his avicultural life. I mean, if a breeder has trouble getting the prolific and devoted pair of Sun Conures to hatch their own eggs, there is really something wrong.
Probably the most prevalent mistake made by the impatient beginner is to forgo daily weight-ins and the use of record charts. It is not unusual for a birdkeeper who has raised a Blue and Gold or Green-winged Macaw to assume they have the expertise to raise a Hyacinthine Macaw. This is precisely why one sees so many stunted dayone handfed Hyacinthine Macaw pets on the market these days. Huge head, huge feet, small chest and muscular build. If one feeds and weans a Hyacinthine as they would a Blue and Gold Macaw, that is a likely outcome. The best Hyacinthine formulas are nutritionally different.
Even though I had fed dozens of Scarlet, Blue and Gold, and Greenwinged Macaws before I (and Darlene Parker, of Feathered Friends Pet Store in New Mexico) committed to the first baby Hyacinthine chick we nevertheless had phone numbers of four expert Hyacinthine aviculturists for ready consultation. And did we use them! Baby "Huey" turned out huge, beautiful, friendly and able to fly; but it was the advice and help we received that made the difference.
A good rule of thumb is: ff you have not raised a baby of a certain species qf psittacine, then when the time comes for you to feed one, ask for help and advice from another breeder experienced with that species.