Well, long story short, my pigeons abandoned thier egg and since they had set on for a while I figured I would try to finish the incubation....and it JUST HATCHED!!! I am thrilled, but I have never dealt with a pigeon at such a young age and know nothing about how to care for such a young baby. I have a lot of experience with handfeeding so I am set there. I need to know how often to feed it and if I should supplement anything to replace the pigeon milk it should be having? I will be handfeeding with Exact baby bird formula...that is what I use for my cockatiels. Any other information is very much appreciated and ASAP would be even better! I have a hungery squeeker on my hands! Thank you so much! Crystalchik
You are supposed to feed it every 2 hours, I think, round the clock until it is about 2 weeks old. You can just feed it that baby bird formula...it has everything in it a baby bird needs. That is all I know. I tried raising 2 baby pigeons and they both ended up dying. I hope that you luck is alot better then mine!
Is your newly hatched pigeon doing OK? I'm going to add to the advice, use a tiny bit of baby food meat like chicken, Stage 1 (the itty bitty jar), a tiny bit of acidophilus (I ground the capsules into powder and used a miniscule pinch at each feeding to add to the formula) and just a tiny bit of calcium. You want to duplicate the crop milk as closely as possible. Google to see if there's anything else you can add. Make a fresh batch at each feeding, about 1 oz., every 2 hours - I raised a newly hatched morning dove (Frances) on this after the mother abandoned her nest ahead of Hurricane Frances and I put the remaining egg in the incubator that Saturday Tuesday there was a tiny blind fuzzball waiting to be hand reared! I did stay in touch with a local wildlife rehabilitator, and she weighed the chick weekly and advised me on its feeding. I found the tiny, curved, hard rubber tip for hand feeding on the tiniest syringe they make, the best for that small a bird. The other lady used the latex nipples for her various bird babies. Good luck and let us know how it's going.
