What do you feed baby robin birds

Facts: Baby Robins

Contributed by Ornithologist Laura Erickson

Includes:

physical characteristics
behavior
nestling to fledgling
care of young

Q. How much do newly-hatched robins weigh?

A. 5.5 grams—a little less than a quarter.

Q. How long does it take for a baby robin to hatch from its egg?

A. The first baby hatches 12-14 days after the last egg is laid. Eggs usually hatch a day apart, in the order they were laid.

Q. How do babies hatch from the eggs?

A. Hatching can take all day. Each chick must fight its way out of the egg. First it breaks a hole in the shell with its egg tooth, a hook on its beak. Then the baby pokes, stretches, and struggles inside the egg, with many stops to rest. Finally it breaks free.

Q. How do baby robins eat?

A. For the first four days of a nestling’s life, the parent birds regurgitate partly digested food into each baby’s mouth. By five days of age, the nestlings get earthworms that parents break into small mouthfuls. The babies eat more each day. Soon parents give them whole worms and large insects. Each young robin may eat 14 feet of earthworms in a two-week nest life—and worms are not even their main food!

Q. Who feeds the baby robins?

A. Both parents feed the babies. A robin might make 100 feeding visits to its nest each day. There’s no time to go far on a food hunt. That’s why a good territory is important to robins in spring.

Q. How fast do baby robins grow?

A. Baby robins are helpless at birth but grow fast! They reach the size of their parents after just two weeks!

Q. Who takes care of the babies?

A. Both parents have full-time jobs. They protect the nest, find food, and feed hungry babies. The babies are in the nest for at least 9 days, or as long as 16 days.

Q. When do babies leave the nest?

A. Baby robins jump from their nest when they are about 13 days old. Leaving the nest is called fledging. This is a dangerous time for baby robins. They need time—and safe places—to practice flying. Please keep kitty indoors!

Q. When do robin babies learn how to fly?

A. Baby robins can’t fly well when they leave the nest. They must build up muscles and grow adult feathers to be strong fliers. The babies are capable fliers just 10-15 days after fledging.

Q. When do babies leave the nest?

A. Baby robins are ready to leave the nest when they are about 13 days old. Within 24 hours the nest will be empty.

Q. Are babies independent when they leave the nest?

A. No. Once babies fledge, both parents still feed them for a few days. Mom soon leaves to lay a new clutch of eggs. The fledglings will need to learn from other robins when Dad leaves to help with new nestlings.

Q. How do baby robins recognize their parents?

A. When they first hatch, they probably don’t! They know the parents have arrived with food by the “bounce” they feel on the nest, and on a sunny day by the shadow their parents make over them. This is their signal to pop up with their mouths open. Little by little, they start learning the sounds their parents make, too. By the time their eyes open, they already know their parents’ voices.

Q. How do baby robins keep their nest clean?

A. Baby robins produce their poop in fecal sacs, encased in strong membranes so they don’t leak. To learn more, see our Fecal Sac Lesson.

Q. When do young robins learn to fly?

A. Baby robins jump from their nest when they are about 13 days old. It takes them another 10-15 days to become strong fliers and independent birds.

Q. What three things does a baby robin know as soon as it hatches?

A. The nestling knows to sit very still when its parents are away, to pop up and open its mouth to beg for food the moment its parents return, and to poop as soon as it swallows some food.

Q. How do baby robins recognize their parents?

Q. How do baby robins keep their nest clean?

A. They produce their poop in fecal sacs, encased in strong membranes so they don’t leak.

Q. What should I do if I find an injured or abandoned a baby robin?

A. It is against state and federal laws in the United States to possess any wild native American bird in captivity. Raising a wild bird is only legally entrusted to licensed rehabilitators. It is impossible to save every injured or abandoned bird. The most important thing to remember is to get it to a licensed rehabilitation center as soon as possible.

Q. Why has the mother stopped sitting on the nest at night?

A. By the time the babies are about a week old, the nest is getting crowded, and the babies are capable of keeping themselves warm, all snuggled together. At this point the mother robin starts sleeping on a tree branch again. If she is a wary mother, you might not see her feeding the young because robins are so fearful of alerting predators that they simply don’t go near the nest if they notice anyone observing them.

Q. When a nestling falls from the nest, can I put it back?

After a big windstorm, I found two very small baby robins on the ground under their nest. I’m afraid if I pick them up, the smell of my hands will make their parents abandon them. Can I handle them with gloves?

A. Robins identify their babies the way we humans recognize ours-by sight and sound, not by smell. So if you can safely put the babies back in the nest, go ahead!

Q. What do baby robins look like when they hatch from eggs?

A. Baby robins are colorful. Their skin in bright light may appear yellowish, and is transparent enough that it’s possible to see a baby robin’s green gall bladder, purplish-red liver, and orange yolk sac right through the skin! A newly-hatched robin has only a few tufts of fluff. The down feathers grow in quickly. This layer of soft feathers makes the nestling look fluffy and helps keep it warm when mother is away. How do body feathers grow? Each feather looks like a miniature straw at first. Then, that smooth outer case—the sheath—crumbles and allows the developing feather to open. In about 14 days the baby robin is covered with body feathers. Baby robins are born with their eyes closed. Eyes remain shut for about five days.

Q. Why are baby robins ugly at first?

Yesterday the beautiful blue eggs hatched, and when my children saw the babies, they were surprised at how ugly they are! They’ve seen fluffy baby ducks and chickens but these robins don’t look anything like that!

A. The reason ducklings and chicks are cuter than newly hatched robins is that they are actually older than robins when they hatch out! Most mother ducks and birds related to chickens nest on the ground, and lay a dozen or so eggs. If those babies hatched out helpless like robins, their calls and movements could quickly attract predators. It’s much easier and safer for the female to quietly enter and leave the nest alone, and incubate for a few weeks longer, until the babies are strong enough to follow her out of the nest as soon as they hatch. It would be very difficult for a mother duck or chicken to find and bring enough food for so many babies all by herself, and male ducks and roosters simply don’t know how to help care for babies. So upon hatching, ducklings and chicks, which are precocial species, immediately fluff out and follow their mother, who leads them to food and teaches them where to hide when danger approaches. They are developed enough to eat by themselves right from the start.

Songbirds are smaller than chickens and ducks, and mothers expend relatively more energy incubating their eggs. They have fewer babies in a brood, so it is easier for them to successfully feed their four or five babies than it would be for a mother duck or hen to feed a dozen (and most father songbirds, including robins, help with this task). It simply works better for them if their babies hatch while still very undeveloped. Birds with helpless young like this are altricial species.

Baby robins may be undeveloped, with very few feathers and bulging eyes at first, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Their parents think they’re the most beautiful, wonderful babies in the world! And looking at them, you can learn a lot about birds. The first few days, you can see how enormous bird eyes actually are beneath their transparent skin and translucent skull. When their feathers grow in, we see only a tiny bit of those huge eyes.

Baby bird skin is clear enough to allow us to see some of their internal organs. You can see the greenish gall bladder (which holds bile produced in the liver to help them digest fat juicy worms!) the purplish-red liver, and the orange yolk-sac. As that grows smaller and the nestling grows bigger, you might notice some bright yellow areas here and there, those are fat deposits. Down feathers grow in fairly quickly to make the nestlings a little fluffy, so they can stay warm when their mother isn’t incubating. Watch how their body feathers grow in. Each one appears to be a very tiny cylinder at first, like a tiny drinking straw, but that smooth outer case, called the “sheath,” crumbles to allow the developing feather to open up. It takes only fourteen days or so for these tiny, unformed little creatures to grow a full body covering of feathers, with bright and sparkling eyes, able to hop and flutter their wings. Enjoy watching this amazing transformation!

What Do Baby Robins Eat? and How to Feed One! a How-To Guide

Either you found a baby robin that’s fallen from its nest, or perhaps you’re just curious and asking what do baby robins eat?

Well, here’s the guide on what baby robins eat, and if the need arises then how to feed one. So first let’s give you the quick answers, then we’ll get into more details…

How do baby robins eat? During the first week, the parents regurgitate partly digested food into the baby’s mouth. As they grow they eat a variety of food from earthworms, to whole worms and large insects, and even berries until they fledge to finally fend for themselves.

How do you feed a baby Robin? To feed a baby robin you can use a dropper, clean hands, or let the babies feed themselves when they become independent enough. Once released they will naturally be able to hunt for food and feed themselves.

Ranger Planet

Please enable JavaScript

Ranger Planet

Read on, or watch the video below from the Ranger Planet Youtube Channel.

What do baby robins eat and when

Baby robins are just that – babies, at first, and depend wholly on their parents for food.

However, what baby robins eat during the very first few days and onward changes as time goes by – and fairly quickly too.

Here’s the list of what baby robins eat at each growth stage. But if you’re looking to protect your baby robin, then be sure to check what eats robins to know what might want to prey on them. You might also be interested to know if it’s legal to keep a robin as a pet?

1 – 7 Days – baby robins eat…

When baby robins are with their parents, the parent robins forage for food for themselves, but also gather enough to feed their young.

The parent regurgitates this partly digested food into the baby’s mouth. This is the only way that baby robins eat and are fed during the first week from birth.

This includes partly digested insects, beetles, worms, berries, and seeds

7-14 days – baby robins eat…

Around this time, the parents pass larger portions of food or break up larger ones such as earthworms and deliver into the baby robin’s mouth.

From here onwards the baby robins start eating more with each passing day.

Whole versions of insects, beetles, worms, berries and seeds.

After a period of this, the parents begin to let the baby robins eat the whole worm and other large insects on their own.

By this time a baby robin will be able to eat the equivalent of 14 feet of earthworms during its two-week nest life.

14 days plus – baby robins eat…

From this point, more often than not baby robins are able to eat food provided to them by the parents that are just placed in the nest. The baby robin is old enough to find and eat the food themselves within the nest.

In general, baby robins depend on the parents fully for their daily dose of food, until they are independent enough and can fledge the nest and fly away.

On average, the parent robins can make up to 100 visits a day to feed their young ones – that just shows how often the baby robins eat to grow up.

This is also why robins are very picky in choosing a territory to create their nest. They need to ensure they live close to adequate food sources to make the hunt for food and feeding visits often and easy.chicks in a nest

How to feed a baby robin?

If you’re in the situation where you have a baby robin you need to take care of and hand rear, perhaps one that fell from the nest or lost its parents. Then naturally, there are plenty of things you will have to know about feeding baby robins – let us give you some guidance.

There are, thankfully, many ways and methods that have worked to feed baby robins, below are three safe methods to feed a baby robin.

1. Using a syringe to feed a baby robin

You can use a syringe, like this one, or an eyedropper to feed baby robins. For this method, the best food would be to get a baby bird formula mix.

With this formula, use the syringe and simply follow the instructions for feeding.

Alternatives to baby bird formula

Instead of a bird formula mix, you could even use baby formula or wheat cereal like farina. Or at a push, you might be able to soak dried dog food which has been known to feed baby robins quite well.

However, when feeding these products be sure to still use the syringe or dropper. Try to make sure the products are mushed down enough to pass through the dropper without getting blocked.

At first, one or two full droppers will almost certainly fill the baby robin, but as they grow they’ll likely need more of it – and potentially more often. Being a robin parent is a demanding job!

The baby robin will let you know when it’s full, usually when it’s hungry or wants more food it opens its mouth automatically.

Be aware of this too, do not try to feed the robin when it is not asking, as you can easily overfeed them, which is just as risky as not feeding them.

So it’s important to observe if the bird is full or not before trying to encourage them to eat further.

2. Using your hands to feed a baby robin

Hands can also be used to feed baby robins. Moistened duck or chicken feed that are processed well with an even texture can also make some good reasonable food baby robin food.

When using the hands it’s important to be hygienic. Not only when feeding but also while making the food using the hands or when handling the bird.

To feed a baby robin using your hands, take a tiny pinch of food and stick it to the tip of the finger and all you have to do is touch the corner of the bird’s mouth.

The baby robins will automatically open their mouth and you shouldn’t have any trouble passing it into their beaks.

Another great thing about using hands to feed baby robins is that you will get a good sense of when to stop because the baby robin will stop opening their mouth when they feel full, unlike droppers which can be inserted into the mouth anyway – even if the bird is already full.

3. Allow the baby robin to feed on its own

If you get to this point then congratulations, or if the bird already has some plumage and appears to be an older chick.

This method works mostly when the baby robin is a little more grown-up and can handle the food on their own.

This is a method that allows the baby robins to feed themselves by placing the food on the ground next to them.

For this, offering small berries, or using mealworms, earthworms, or grubs near the ground next to where they rest will work fine.

This will also allow the birds to come and feed whenever they feel hungry. On average baby, robins may have to be fed every 5-10 minutes at peak times.

When feeding baby robins, make sure that…

The food is at room temperature. Even if the food is refrigerated, it’s important to make sure the food is at room temperature when feeding the baby robins.
Make sure the food is not spoilt, has no fungus or bacteria when feeding.
The food should have a fine texture and even toward slushy, but smooth enough to get through the delicate throats of baby robins.
Up to three weeks old, the baby robins will be grown up enough to find their food. So by this time, it’s good to allow the baby robins to eat of its own accord and just make sure food is available.

Then one day, they will fledge and fly away. And you can smile in the knowledge you probably just saved a wild bird’s life. If the baby robin does not survive, then it was never meant to be, and at least you provided it with some comfort and the best chance of survival.

So finally…

We hope this has been useful in answering the question – what do baby robins eat? And hope you’ve been able to put the help on how to feed one to good use.

How to feed the found chick, how many times a day

If you find a chick, the first thing you need to do is determine its species. Feeding granivorous, insectivorous and predatory chicks have their own differences. But in the early stages of feeding, you can use the same feeding methods, and then, after finding out what kind of bird you found, transfer the chick to the appropriate feeding.

Here is one of the most common feeding options for granivorous and insectivorous chicks. This nutrient mixture is well used for feeding for chicks and fledglings from the passerine family. To prepare our mixture, we need the following products: Boiled egg, low-fat cottage cheese, raw carrots, meat (beef, chicken, turkey), greens (lettuce, dandelion leaves, wood lice), hamarus and daphnia, Calcium gluconate (shell from boiled eggs) glycerophosphate , children's dry dairy-free porridge or boiled millet (without salt and fat on the water).

Action one. Boil the egg, free from the shell. We free the shell from the shell film. Grind the egg as much as possible, you can use a grater with small holes.

Second step. Boiled meat, it is better to take the pulp from the breast of a turkey or chicken and also chop or divide into fibers. The mixture will require meat 40 (for granivorous) and 60 grams (for insectivorous).

Third step. Take washed carrots of a small size, grate them on a fine grater, then squeeze the juice and we will use the remaining pulp.

Fourth step. We take not sour and not fatty cottage cheese. Cottage cheese should have 0% fat content, anything above is considered fat for poultry. We need 90-110 grams of cottage cheese. Sour cottage cheese must be boiled twice changing the water and then it will be suitable.

Step five. You can use greens to add the mixture, but you can do without it for the chicks. And so you can take the greens listed above, chop and add 1.5 teaspoons to the mixture.

Action six. To the above ingredients, add 1.5 -2 tsp. dairy-free porridge or boiled millet (well boiled, without salt and fat in the water).

Step seven. To the mixture we add the shell from the boiled egg, which must first be ground in a coffee grinder, plus one fourth of the crushed tablet of glycerophosphate. If it is not possible to find glycerophosphate, then you can purchase bone meal and add one fourth tsp. in powder form. At the very least, the shells are enough for now.

Step eight. We take chopped hamarus and daphnia and add about 1 tsp to the resulting mixture. Then we mix everything, it turns out a very thick, crumbly porridge, it should not stick to the fingers. If the mixture is sticky, you can add dairy-free porridge or powdered cereals.

From the resulting mixture we roll small balls no larger than a small pea, focus on the size of the chick's beak. You can feed 2-5 balls at a time and after each feeding drink plain water from an insulin syringe with a removable needle (without a needle) 4-6 drops. A week-old chick should be fed every 1-1.5 hours, older than two weeks of age every 2-4 hours, at three and four weeks of age you can feed 3-4 times a day. Do not forget that the chick is growing and, accordingly, one-time portions of food are growing. A very important point, do not forget to warm the chicks, because at their age they themselves cannot maintain normal body temperature. Warming up promotes better assimilation of feed. Don't forget to control your chick's weight. If possible, show the chick to a specialist. To control the work of the intestines, you can take the litter from the chick for a coprogram, this is an analysis of the digestibility of the feed.

Take care and love your feathered friends and they will love you back.

Veterinarian ornithologist
Chuguevsky VV

Veterinary clinic Bambi.

You can ask an ornithologist on the forum.

How to save a chick that has fallen out of the nest | Encyclopedia of Animals

With the advent of warm weather, our forests and gardens are filled with bird songs, and people, in turn, try to spend as much time as possible outdoors. During outdoor recreation, helpless chicks are often found. Naturally, there is a desire to save the life of a baby, but not everyone knows how to save a chick that has fallen out of the nest. Let's see how we can help him.

To save or not to save - that is the question

The first thought that arises when looking at a fledgling and flightless chick is “fell out of the nest”, “lost” and even “parents abandoned and forgot”. In fact, the chick is alone, no brothers, sisters, or adult birds are visible nearby, and it also screams loudly. How can you help here? But the fact of the matter is that help in 95% of cases in such situations is not needed.

The fact is that in many birds (primarily small passerines) chicks leave the nest as half-fledged fledglings. During this period of life, they still do not know how to fly, but they are already actively exploring the surrounding space - they climb branches, clumsily flit. It is these rather active chicks that fall into the field of human vision. It is easy to determine the fledgling in appearance: it is feathered or covered with rudiments of unopened feathers; the chick is quite large (about 50-70% of the size of a sparrow), it is often active, that is, it opens its mouth and asks for food. Parents did not abandon this chick, but simply flew away for food. Of course, while you are standing next to the chick, they will not make themselves felt. And if you stay too long, then there is a chance that the parents will leave him out of concern.

Even if the chick looks too small and helpless, don't rush to classify it as an orphan. Birds such as warblers, warblers, larks, wagtails nest on the ground, their chicks spend their entire childhood on the grass. Your presence in this situation is also undesirable because magpies and crows track human behavior. Smart birds can check after you leave what you saw there, find and kill the chick. Hence the conclusion: do not "save" everything that catches your eye. If the chick is dry, warm, active, well feathered, then he does not need help.

What if the situation causes concern? Perhaps the chick is too weak or obviously fell out of the nest from a great height and cannot be returned to its parents. In this case, you can try to save him, but keep in mind that the likelihood of success will be directly proportional to your diligence, and you will have to put in a lot of work.

What to do first

Quickly and carefully inspect the place where you found the chick, remember how it looks. In some cases, this will help determine the type of bird.
Pick up the chick (don't squeeze too hard!) and bring him home as soon as possible.
On the way, inspect the chick for damage. If the bird has clearly visible fractures of the paws, wings, concussion (how to define it a little lower), then you can’t do without a veterinarian. It is highly desirable to seek help from a veterinarian who specializes specifically in the treatment of birds (unfortunately, such specialists are extremely rare). If there are no obvious signs of a fracture, and the general condition of the chick is satisfactory, then it is better not to torment him, but simply to provide good conditions - nature will do its job and he will recover.
Providing a chick with food as soon as possible is even more important than furnishing a home for it.

Now a few words on how to define contusion. Usually, chicks get severe bruises either from hitting the ground or when they collide with cars. At the same time, the bird has no wounds on the outside, but a concussion is observed. True signs of this condition are bleeding from the nostrils, paralysis of both legs or paralysis of half of the body (paw and wing on one side), closure of one eye, or unequal degree of pupillary dilation on the injured and healthy side of the body.

What to feed

You may think that feeding a chick is easy - crumble bread and crumble. But here you will find disappointment number 2. Chicks do not eat bread, crackers, porridge, cereals, seeds. They don't eat at all. Even the chicks of granivorous birds do not take dry food at first. And the reason is that the growing organism needs proteins, therefore, in nature, even granivorous birds feed their offspring with animal food and exceptionally soft food. You will have to do the same. Pigeons are the only exception. They feed the chicks with goiter secretions - bird's milk, and then with semi-digested grains. If you picked up a pigeon chick, then you can feed it with unsalted porridge, gradually reducing the degree of cooking. In other cases, the best food for the chick is mealworms, cockroaches, crickets, darkling larvae - zoophobus (all these foods are sold in pet stores), earthworms (you can dig up), caterpillars (you will have to collect), a boiled egg (only as an additional food, and not a substitute for anything and everything). Even if you have provided the chick with the listed food, it is recommended to periodically catch bugs, grasshoppers, butterflies, flies, mosquitoes and give these insects to him, because the more varied the diet, the healthier your ward will grow. Very weak chicks should be given glucose-sweetened water (not sugar syrup!), instead of solid food, for the first few hours.

What not to feed the chicks

dead insects - no matter what species they belong to and wherever you find them. In nature, insects almost never live to old age, rather someone will eat them. If you find a dead cockroach behind the stove or a dead locust in the garden - do not rush to rejoice. Most likely, this individual died from an insecticide, which means that the poison from the feed can enter the body of the chick and greatly harm its already poor health;
Colorado potato beetles - adults, larvae and eggs are poisonous in this species. They are not eaten by any species of birds, so this easily accessible resource will have to be forgotten;
ladybugs - they secrete a moderately toxic liquid, in nature a bird that catches such a bug by mistake will spit it out. In captivity, especially in the case of force-feeding the chick, he does not have the opportunity to refuse harmful food, so he can get poisoned;
hairy caterpillars - firstly, they can be poisonous, and secondly, the villi during feeding can clog the chick's goiter and it will die. Although cuckoos and orioles can eat in the temperate hairy strip, it is still better to play it safe and not use this food;
brightly colored bugs - in nature, many birds willingly peck at such insects, but this mainly concerns nondescript turtle bugs. The back of the bug, decorated with bright spots or stripes, is of a warning nature - "do not eat me, it will be worse for you." For safety net, it is not necessary to catch such specimens for the chick.

How to feed

The main thing you should know from the very beginning is that birds have a very high metabolism, and small chicks have a huge metabolic rate. Any food eaten by the chicks is digested very quickly and they need to be fed again and again. In nature, parents jointly feed the brood 100-500 times a day! This means that every 10-15 minutes the chick needs to be fed. And don't expect to overtrain him! A chick deprived of food instantly weakens, a couple of hours of hunger is enough for it to die. You will have to provide the baby with constant supervision, feed him at first every 15 minutes, and when he grows up a little, after 20-30. But you need to take a break at night, but start the first feeding no later than 6 o'clock in the morning! Evening feeding is completed around sunset, that is, around 22.00.

It is more convenient to bring food with tweezers. In general, tactile contact should be kept to a minimum, frequent touching is stressful for the tiny creature, and it worsens the condition of down and feathers. If the chick is very small and naked, then it is not necessary to give it a whole large insects. In this case, it is better to cut them with tweezers and feed them in pieces. It is also recommended to remove hard elytra from large beetles, long legs from grasshoppers and locusts. Often the chicks refuse to take any food. This happens because they do not recognize you as their mother, or they are so weak that they have lost their appetite. In this case, you will have to force-feed the ward. To do this, you need to crush the food and fill it with a syringe without a needle (you can add a couple of drops of water to dilute the mixture). Take the bird in your left hand and gently spread its beak with your fingers, insert a syringe into its mouth with your right hand and squeeze out about 1 cm³ of slurry. Do not overdo it! In tiny chicks, the beak is easily broken, and this is already a fatal injury. For greater convenience, a flexible tube can be put on the end of the syringe.

Where to house

If the first difficulties do not dampen your enthusiasm, then you should provide a shelter in your home for the chick. First of all, you need to make a nest.

Take a deep bowl or cardboard box with a rim about 10 cm high. Fill this container with sawdust, dry clean sand, hay, straw, scraps of cloth, make a recess in the middle that imitates the nest tray. Do not fill the container with fresh grass, raw material can cause hypothermia of the chick, because there is no one to warm it in an artificial house. By the way, if you are seriously engaged in rescue, you can buy a small thermal mat at the pet store, it will to some extent replace the mother's warmth for your pupil. Also, cotton wool, yarn, fabrics with a rare weave of threads can be considered dangerous fillers. The paws of a chick are easily tangled in such material, and a tightened thread can even amputate the fingers of a feathered baby. Lay a paper napkin in the tray in 2-3 layers. Chicks defecate as often as they eat; in nature, their parents monitor their hygiene and take the litter out of the nest. You just need to change the napkin after each feeding. So, the nest is ready.

Now we need to think about security. In the house of the savior, stupid children, blind-sighted grandmothers, dogs, cats can live, and there are also curious neighbors who have dropped in for a minute. All these creatures threaten the life of a little chick: children can grab it and squeeze it in a fist (certain death), dogs and cats can arrange a hunt (you won’t even find feathers), a blind grandmother will sit by chance on a box (well, don’t execute the old woman for this), and noisy neighbors can accidentally knock it over (“Tanya, I’ll come to you for a second for salt, oh, it seems that something has fallen here!”). To prevent trouble, it is better to place the nest in a cage or an aquarium covered with gauze. In the cage, do not try to put the chick on the perch, do not place it in closed containers (jars, etc.). Don't nest on high ground. The fact is that a weak chick can get stronger and, unexpectedly for you, will go to explore the surrounding space. He is guaranteed to fall out of his shelter and, unlike the forest and the meadow, it will not be soft grass waiting for him at the bottom, but the floor. You should not put the box with the chick in the sun, so you will not warm it, and the helpless bird is guaranteed to get sunstroke and may die. Drafts are very dangerous.

Do chicks need water?

In nature, chicks of passerines do not need water, as they get enough moisture with food. After all, adult birds do not bring them water in their beaks. At home, you can do without watering the chick if you follow the diet, that is, you give a variety of, and most importantly, “wet” food - earthworms, fatty juicy caterpillars. Flies, cockroaches, crickets (they are most often bought in a store) can be conditionally classified as “dry” food. They do not give the chick enough moisture. In this case, he can instill a few drops of liquid from a pipette, but do this not at every feeding, but a little less often. Please note that shell-shocked chicks should not be given water.

What to do next?

Fortunately, the chicks grow quickly and the period of trouble soon passes, in a week or two your ward may be completely stronger. In order for the feeding process to be completed successfully, do not forget to gradually accustom the chick to adult food.