Mourning dove fledging

[Cream]

2 days ago, my dauschand lab came to me with a gift: what I thought at first was a woodpecker fledgling was indeed a mourning dove. The thing looked terribly shaken up, so I prepared a cardboard box filled with tissue as a makeshift nest, left it a bottle cap of water and a pinch of mealworms, and kept it in my porch gazebo for the night.

The following morning, I placed the box at the edge of my wooded backyard where the dog had gotten to it. A few hours later, it was gone. Dumb move on me, because this morning, Cheyenne came in with another surprise; the same bird.

So I'm at loss right now. My area is hawk-heavy and this little bird isn't at flying age. I'm not even sure if it's at solid food age, either. Currently it's on my sheltered porch again. Tomorrow I'm picking up some formula.

Clearly you all know better than me.. What on earth should I do with it? Earlier I had it on the ground of my porch and the thing ran up close to me and crawled in my hand. I'm sorry to say I'm getting attached .. But I need to know what's in the birds best interest. An idea of its age would be great

Thank you very much

 

[Birdlover 13]

All I can say is that pigeons once nested in our chimney and one day the nest broke and two chicks fell down. The one broke its neck when it fell and died but the other one survived. We fed the surviving chick with sugar free cereal (pronutro) mixed with lukewarm water using a syringe. The pigeon grew up hand reared but it lived free outside the house and we occasionally put seeds out for it. It survived well on its own and always came back to the garden every once in awhile.

I'd say the dove is maybe just under 2 weeks old

Good luck

 

[DustyDawgy]

I raised two King Pigeons from 10 days old, and from my experience, feeding Kaytee Exact parrot formula worked very well. Because a syringe seemed too invasive, I fed the birds from a bottle. I used a plastic water bottle, like the kind that you normally recycle, and used rubber bands to secure a facecloth with a slit in it to the bottle. Once the pigeons realized what was in the bottle, they drank on their own! All I had to do was hold the bottle up. Good luck to you!

P.S. I began feeding the birds boiled peas and corn once they were 20 days old, and moved on to hard food at 35 days old. I bought a pre-made mixture of hard peas, corn kernals, and many other types of seeds and legumes.