Found baby bird - help?

[Chirpy]

First - I already know about the legalities of having a wild bird. It's the weekend so there's nobody to contact until Monday.

Ok - two days ago my puppy brought a fully feathered baby bird (possibly a sparrow?) to the house. He has a soft mouth so I don't believe there is any internal damage but, it's certainly possible. It appeared to be ok except for a possible leg injury. It won't put any weight on it's left leg but it's wings seem to be ok. I spend some time looking through posts here and through google to get info on what to do with it. Since we had no idea where my dog found it we couldn't put it back near it's nest. So, I finally decided to take it across the road and put it under a tree thinking that was far enough away that my dog wouldn't find it again. That is probably only 200 yards from our house but it's also the only good tree around.

Last night, my puppy brought it back to the house again! Argh! It was too late to make phone calls so we brought it in and put it in a shoebox with some pine shavings and put a towel over the top. We've been feeding it grasshoppers ... it gulps them down and cheaps for more. I'm afraid we're over feeding it. The info I got on line was that it should be getting enough moisture from the grasshoppers to not need extra water. But??? I'm questioning that.

Any one here raise wild birds?

 

[lleighmay]

Back when I did rehab (lo these many years ago) we had good luck using a quality canned dog food (basic beef or chicken, not stew) which we could roll into little balls according to the size of the baby and drop into their mouths. We would supplement this with insects, worms, and whatever other natural food available, though we generally stayed away from "crunchy" bugs if the baby was very small. As with chicks it's important to keep them warm, so if you have a heating pad you can put on low under part of the box so much the better. Good luck with your baby!