Parents not feeding....UPDATE

[ToyinPA]

Parents are ASY Male/SY Female. 5 eggs laid, 3 hatched on June 24th...I posted a photo the other day of them newly hatched. I didn't handle them during nest checks due to their age. I touch them to see if they are warm & moving.I do nest checks every day or every other day depending on our schedule & the weather. Won't do them if it's raining. I normally change nests out around 7 days.

Today we found one chick dead. Looks like he hardly grew at all. Another one is undernurished & a bit weak. The last one is fat. It looks like the parents have only been feeding the one chick. So I'm supplementing the weak chick & hoping he makes it.

I also have more eggs being laid in nests that had bad eggs. So far one had 2 eggs to start & laid 5 more. Another nest had 2 eggs to start & has laid 4 more. I have SY's playing house still.

42 eggs laid. 14 hatched/2 died. 17 eggs bad. 11 eggs in nests.

Toy in PA

UPDATE:
Sadly all 3 chicks died. I tried to save them but they were too dehydrated.

Toy in PA

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

This could be weather related, the parents do not have enough food for all of them. It does help if you did some supplemental feeding. Have you had a few days of rain by chance, as that could cause such a situation

Also, SY females sometimes are not good providers, and sometimes the males do not help. Maybe you have hawk pressure? Here again, maybe it would be best to continue to supplementally feed them.

Anytime you see starving babies, the food source is the first place to look, maybe you had weather that was too hot (no bugs flying)

[threelilkids]

Use meal worms and crickets they are easy to get and the martins love them and do well on them. Good luck

[lynnh]

Sorry you are having trouble.....never like to see babies die or eggs not hatch I only do nest checks every 5 days unless I suspect a problem..that way I dont interrupt the feeding or incubation process...We seem to have plenty of insects this season and our birds are very healthy...we have had rain on and off for the past week and in between each rain storm they are out feeding and working hard to feed their babies. Guess we are lucky this year.
Hope your season improves

[ToyinPA]

We've had rain showers, but no all day rain, in the last few weeks. Days have been pretty hot/humid, but nights cool.

I do think it's lack of bugs. Altho other chicks in other nests seem to be doing good.

No hawks. Crows get chased off as soon as they enter airspace, lol. The Grackel's have been keeping the crows in check.

I've feed him crickets twice, will check in the morning & if he's still alive will feed again. Just had 4 new ones hatch late day too. I may have to flip crickets for the colonly due to the lack of bugs.

Toy in PA

[barry resvick]

Hi There!
My colony is farely new and last year i did my first nest change at seven days on the suggestion of one of my mentors.The parents totally abandoned them and the next day we found them dead.We now only do our nest changes after twelve days have past.

[lynnh]

The original nest cup that the female built should not tampered with until they are at least 10 days old unless its nesasary IMO.

[taxidermy lady]

That's great information!

[ToyinPA]

It's 92 here @ noon with 65% humidity. I just flipped crickets for the colony. All the parents were catching & feeding them to their chicks, new borns & older chicks.

I was glad to see the nest with the weak chick getting feed. Saw both parents taking crickets in. I also feed him this morning. He's still a bit weak, but looking a tad better. I checked for blowfly, but saw no evidence of it, so I'm waiting to do a nest change. We're to have 2 more hot/humid days then a cool down.

Toy in PA

[ToyinPA]

UPDATE:
Sadly all 3 chicks died. I tried to save them but they were too dehydrated.

Toy in PA

[Dan G]

I'm sorry to hear the bad news. Do the young normally get water from there diet??

[ToyinPA]

I'm sorry to hear the bad news. Do the young normally get water from there diet??

Dan:

Yes they do. When it's hot & humid often the parents slow down feeding or stop, which sets the chick up for dehydration. It only takes a day or two for chicks to dehydrate in those conditions. Once dehydrated it's hard to pull them back. Add the lack of bugs we seem to have here & it doesn't make very good conditions. I flipped crickets, but missed a day, as we weren't home & that's all it took during bad conditions.

You can tell a chick is dehydrated by the skin on it's abodomen. If it's wrinkled it's dehydrated.

Toy in PA

[terriergal]

I'm sorry to hear the bad news. Do the young normally get water from there diet??

Dan:

Yes they do. When it's hot & humid often the parents slow down feeding or stop, which sets the chick up for dehydration. It only takes a day or two for chicks to dehydrate in those conditions. Once dehydrated it's hard to pull them back. Add the lack of bugs we seem to have here & it doesn't make very good conditions. I flipped crickets, but missed a day, as we weren't home & that's all it took during bad conditions.

You can tell a chick is dehydrated by the skin on it's abodomen. If it's wrinkled it's dehydrated.

Toy in PA

I would think it is also possible that the chicks got sick first and stopped begging. The reason I suggest this is that I don't know of hot weather stopping the insects from flying. They seem rather impervious to it, except for mosquitoes. Also the percentage of dud eggs you mentioned seems high to me, which would lead me to believe some kind of bacteriological thing like salmonella being picked up and carried by the local adult birds. They may be largely immune to it but still can spread to chicks with immature immune systems. The parents would not be able to feed them at all once they stopped begging. Could be anything like that. Did you check their vents for evidence of diarrhea or any other illness?

Seems like everything around this part of the country is exposed to giardia, trichomonas, or coccidia, for example. With coccidia, some chicks are expected to die, while others develop an immunity quicker. Some medicated starter chick feed for chickens of course often has added ingredients to slow down the coccidia so that the chicks can get over it faster and develop their natural immunity.

When I raised exotic finches I had several years where I lost all chicks just prior to fledging. It was highly discouraging. I never did figure out what it was, viral or bacteriological or parasitical but nothing I did seemed to help. I bought a decent microscope and started examining fecal smears for hours on end. The parents were fine, and the chicks seemed hungry but all at once right before fledging the parents would stop feeding and the chicks would fledge early to try and get the parents to pay attention to them - then die fairly quickly no matter what I tried. I would also get the occasional adult that went down though their deaths seemed to linger on a lot longer.

I ran into other long time finch aficionados who were experiencing the same mysterious things. Some of them had given up intervening because it is so hard to get correct dosages for small birds anyway, you end up doing more harm than good. Palliative care was best, hoping the bird would kick whatever it was that was bothering it. I can certainly see their point but it is so hard to just ignore a sick bird...

I had successfully hand reared babies and so taking over for the parents was also tried, but they would still get sick and die. My guess was that they were already sick and the parents knew it and stopped caring for them and let them die, as nature tells them to do. It stinks. Sometimes you never get to figure it out.