In October 2014 I got a pair of society finches, the male (Tweety Bird or TB) loved building and rebuilding the nest for his mate (named R). She would lay a clutch of eggs and every time they would stop sitting on the eggs halfway through incubation and start rebuilding their nest.
Incubation:
In early January when they quit their nest again there was one live egg that looked like it was only a couple days from hatching so I decided to incubate it myself. I put the egg in a small 'nest' lined with tissues in my incubator with the temp set at 99.5 degrees F and filled one water trough to get the humidity to 50%. After four days the baby pipped and was out in about 20 minutes from pip to zip!
1 day old, soo tiny!
Starting Feeding:
A couple hours after he hatched I fed him a tiny amount of sugar water using a toothpick and being VERY careful not to get any down his trachea. About 45 minutes later I fed him a mix of Kaytee exact hand feeding formula and ground up ans soaked Kaytee eggfood because the rice-based Nutri-start hand feeding formula I'd ordered hadn't come in yet. Rice-based formulas are supposedly easier for baby finches to digest. Fed him every hour from 7:30am to 10:30 pm, each feeding had to be fast because it only took one minute for him to get too cold. Small incubators (mine was a Mini Advance) are GREAT because they heat up fast so frequent opening isn't a problem. The temperature the first day was 98 degrees F with 50% humidity. Amazingly he survived the night so I started a feeding schedule. The new hand feeding formula came in so I started mixing it in to the Kaytee exact.
Daily Feeding Schedule:
Every morning I weighed him before feeding and fed the formula at about 95-100 degrees so that it wouldn't chill or burn him.
Day 2: Weight = 1.1 gram, Brooder = 97 degrees. Fed every hour from 8:00am to 11:00pm.
Day 3: Weight = 1.2 gram, Brooder = 97 degrees. Fed about every hour starting at 8:00am, then at 2:10pm I started a written schedule that I will just post pictures of so I don't have to re-wright it. The time written is when I fed him and sometimes a couple notes about that feeding time.
Feeding him formula using a toothpick. I had to make sure the formula was the right temperature (95-100 degrees F) so that it wouldn't chill or burn him.
Brooder/incubator 97 degrees F
Brooder temp 96 degrees
Brooder temp 95 degrees
Brooder temp 94 degrees
Brooder temp 94 degrees
Brooder temp 94 degrees
Brooder temp 93 degrees F
At this point I was worried he wouldn't survive so I started feeding extra and actually I don't think he was as far behind in growth as I was worried because a new baby later raised (by this baby and his parents) grew at the same rate as this.
Brooder temp 92 degrees
Brooder temp 91 degrees
Brooder temp 90 degrees
Brooder temp 85 degrees
Brooder temp 83 degrees
Now sleeps in a wool sweater instead of the brooder/incubator because he is too active.
Slept in the nest with R and TB
Baby in the nest with his parents a couple days after being fostered under them. From left to right; TB, Mouse (the baby) and R.
Now, almost 9 months later, Mouse helped his parents incubate a new set of eggs, and when they quit the nest again a couple days before it hatched Mouse took over and hatched it himself! Then once the boring work was done they all helped feed the new baby.
This is the new baby that Mouse hatched (named Leonardo da finchy)
Now that he's fully grown, Mouse loves to be held and snuggled.
Here is a couple pictures of all 4 eating millet, they are not very scared of me anymore because Mouse isn't so he would always get extra yummy food and they got jealous so they got over their fear of hands.
Mouse drinking water
