# Help with a few food questions?



## Prizm (Jun 28, 2006)

I've never owned a pigeon or dove before, and I was wondering...:

1) How many syringes filled with formula should be fed each feeding to a pidgie who has all it's feathers with with only a few tiney yellow hairs poking out here and there?

2)How often do they need to be fed? (Someone said 3 times a day? That doesn't sound right.)

3)When should I expect him to start weaning?

4)If he eats some seeds, will he choke or be harmed if he doesn't think of eating the grit too?


----------



## Pidgey (May 20, 2005)

At this age, they're actually eating wetted seeds from their parents when all's normal. Their parents regurgitate the stuff up to the back of their throats and the young reach in with their own beaks and start gobbling it down--including wet (and expanded) corn, peas, milo, wheat, grass seed, buckwheat, safflower seeds, sunflower seeds... you get the idea.

When you're feeding one formula at this stage, you really do usually give them three feedings a day and you do usually try to shoot for 10 to 15% of their body weight per meal. Sure, they can live on less and they can eat more. Those are just suggested numbers. We usually weigh a bird on a small kitchen scale that reads in grams. If the bird weighs 300 grams at this stage (quite possible for your bird unless it's too thin), then I'd give him a 30 cc load of mixed formula, three times a day. That's exactly what I'm doing with The Vulture (a pigeon chick the same size as you're describing that was given to a licensed songbird rehabber in my town lately) right now. It's working fine. 

However, I don't have the time to take the more laborious method that you're utilizing so I'm feeding him with the tube that I showed you and it takes about 5 seconds to do the entire feeding per se and I'm not kidding. It actually takes me longer to get him calmed down beforehand because he's always screaming and waving his wings at me to hurry up and feed him.

He also eats seeds on his own but he'd been eating almost pure millet for at least a week before I got him and his growth was stunted. As such, I'm supplementing him with the Kaytee Exact Hand Feeding Formula to get him caught up nutritionally so that his bones will get a little longer and bigger before it's too late.

Pidgey


----------



## Prizm (Jun 28, 2006)

You know, when I got him, his crop did feel as if it was filled with seeds (it felt like a sand-bag) If he can reach into mama's throat and pick up seeds, why can't he eat the ones scattered on the cage floor? He picks them up but can't seem to get them in his throat, silly bird. The food I'm feeding him doesn't weigh much and he isn't at all excited about eating like your young ones are. I'll see about finding some electrical heat-shrink tubing as soon as I possibly can. I'm a little worried about putting it down the right hole though because I don't have anyone else to help me hold him as I pry his beak open. I'm managing to hold his head with one hand while using my index and thumb to brace it open while I point the syringe behind his toung with my other hand. It's not easy for me to see back there. The hole I want is located above the resperitory opening, right?

Oh, also, what is a cc?


----------



## Prizm (Jun 28, 2006)

Umm, and one more question: How often are they supposed to poop? I owned a parakeet who pumped out a great many every half hour, but the pidgie is only going occasionally. Is that an abnormal sign of something?


----------



## Skyeking (Jan 17, 2003)

You know, when I got him, his crop did feel as if it was filled with seeds (it felt like a sand-bag) If he can reach into mama's throat and pick up seeds, why can't he eat the ones scattered on the cage floor? 

*When mama regurgitates the seed to him he just has to swallow. Learning to pick up and actually move the seed to the back of the tongue requires learning to use different muscles in the tongue, which they aren't mature enough to do and don't have an interest until they are old enough to be weaned. However, you can generate an interest and leave a small dish of seeds for him once he is 3 weeks old.*

I'm a little worried about putting it down the right hole though because I don't have anyone else to help me hold him as I pry his beak open. I'm managing to hold his head with one hand while using my index and thumb to brace it open while I point the syringe behind his toung with my other hand. It's not easy for me to see back there. The hole I want is located above the resperitory opening, right?


*If you enable the formula to be dropped behind the tongue it will not go into the airhole and will go down his throat and into his crop to begin digestion, that is, if the pathway is clear.*


Oh, also, what is a cc?

*One cc = 1 ml. *


----------



## Pidgey (May 20, 2005)

Picking seeds off the floor is a bit different from picking seeds out of the back of a parent's throat for more reasons than one. Reason #1 is that they often don't recognize the food laying on the floor AS food initially, seeing as how food has ALWAYS come from the back of their parents' throats. They usually pick up on the fact that it IS food by way of watching other pigeons (or their parents) eating that way. Sometimes, you have to use a pencil or your finger to simulate pecking at seeds on the floor (or in a bowl) to help them get the idea. If they're starving and they "get it", then Katy bar the door!

Reason #2 is that picking dry seeds off the floor is a different position and technique than getting loaded up the other way. I'm not sure, but they may be just swallowing as the parent regurgitates. It sounds pretty funny, sometimes.

Well, you ought to just take a minute to hold him steady, pry his beak all the way open and study what's "down there" so that you'll be familiar with the topography. The airway is a vertical slit on the bottom side of the major throat passageway and just behind the tongue. You can't really see that the rather huge (by comparison) area behind there is all throat because the tubing that leads down is somewhat collapsed together. That bird could hurk down a french fry if he wanted to (birds on here have before, but they finally had to upchuck 'em). Anyhow, you just can't see it, but it's there, believe me. It's just about like you looking down your own throat in the mirror with a flashlight--it's hard to tell that the top of the back of your tongue isn't actually pressed against the back of your throat so that you can't tell there's a pretty good-sized pipe back there.

A "cc" means "a cubic centimeter" and is exactly the same thing as a "ml" or "milliliter" which means one thousandth of a liter and is the same as the weight measure of a gram, which was originally defined as the weight of one cubic centimeter of water (at a specific temperature that's about room temperature). A thousand grams is one kilogram which is also the weight of one liter (a tad more than a quart) of water.

How much they poop depends mostly on what's going through them and how their health is. If he's pooping very little, it might just mean that he's not getting enough through. If it's fairly dry, it means that he's REALLY trying to conserve water.

Pidgey


----------



## Prizm (Jun 28, 2006)

Okay..well I've been feeding him 20 ML's/ CC's per feeding then. (is that ok?) His poops are fairly wet, but not watery. On the first day he was with me, I kept him in a shoebox with towles in it which I kept in a quiet locker in my job's break room. At the end of the day, the bottom of the box was mysteriously wet, yet there were few poops ??? (they can't urinate, right?) I noticed he'd "go" when I took him out of the box, but I thought that perhaps he wanted to keep his "nest" clean. Someone said they only poop once an hour. Is that right?

Seeds & Water
He's living in a very temporary cage that's too tiny for a pigeon, so I implemented these vertical feeders since there isn't any room for a larger water bowl. A post on Starling Talk sugested using a bowl for water instead because he didn't think the bird's beak could fit deep enough into the openingn of the waterer, but I tried it out and he seems to be taking little tiny sips of it ocasionally. Also, I've seen him drink when I dip his beak into a bowl of water, but he only takes a few sips so I assumed he wasn't too thirsty. (?) The waterer is still there just in case though, and I think he likes the seed feeder, maybe because the opening is similar in shape to a beak? He's pecking at stuff on the floor right now by the way. He also preens, sleeps, stretches, flaps his wings, and is alert but doesn't seem too energetic. I'm hoping those are healthy observations.

*updates* 
I just added a cup of water and surounded it with a towel to hopefully keep it from tipping. I dipped his beak in it too, just to make sure he knew there was H20 in there but he just blinked at looked at me.


----------



## Pidgey (May 20, 2005)

Yes, they can urinate. Normally, urine flows retrograde into what passes for the large intestine in us. The water is absorbed there as a conservation effort. However, they can dump the water that's in the urodeum (similar to our bladder but the eggs pass through there as well) at any time, especially if they're surprised or nervous.

Often when they're young and in unfamiliar surroundings (the box that you rescued them in) they wet their pants (figuratively) and can get the bottom of a box wet. There are a lot more possibilities but I don't see any need to go into that right now seeing as how that particular problem isn't continuing.

If he's preening, stretching and flapping his wings, I think we don't need to worry overmuch about him being deathly ill. 

20 mls per feeding isn't that bad--he's not starving. That, by the way, is another reason he may not be screaming in starvation--he might really be feeling fine. You never did answer whether you could pinch his breastbone or not. If he's been starved up to the point of you feeding him, he may actually need to slowly increase his intake to match what his organs are capable of processing in proportion to how skinny he's gotten.

Pidgey


----------



## Prizm (Jun 28, 2006)

OO, I have another update! I just picked him up out of his cage and he flapped his wings for a stretch and pooped a REALLY wet one! I'd say the ratio of water to solids in that one was at least 3 to one.  (Oh God, parents of human children do this, right?)


----------



## Prizm (Jun 28, 2006)

Pidgey said:


> Yes, they can urinate. Normally, urine flows retrograde into what passes for the large intestine in us. The water is absorbed there as a conservation effort. However, they can dump the water that's in the urodeum (similar to our bladder but the eggs pass through there as well) at any time, especially if they're surprised or nervous.
> 
> Often when they're young and in unfamiliar surroundings (the box that you rescued them in) they wet their pants (figuratively) and can get the bottom of a box wet. There are a lot more possibilities but I don't see any need to go into that right now seeing as how that particular problem isn't continuing.
> 
> ...


I can't get a firm enough of a grasp on his breastbone (it's verticle, right?) but it does not have any meat overlapping it either. It feels boney from the top of his breast to the bottom.


----------



## Pidgey (May 20, 2005)

It shouldn't be completely covered with fat (no muscles actually go over it--they connect to the sides of it and go up to the wings) so you should always be able to feel it. When a bird gets truly emaciated, the bone is so prominent that you can just pinch it and even hold the bird by it. Skin, residual muscle fibers and all might only be 1/8 of an inch thick or so.

Usually, what you want is for the muscles to slope gently away from it like the prow of a speedboat. If they look like a tugboat, they're too fat and if they look like an aircraft carrier, they're too thin. Feathers tend to hide what it looks like though.

Pidgey


----------



## Prizm (Jun 28, 2006)

He isn't fat, but I'm sure I couldn't grasp him by it. It feels ever so slightly cushioned against the skin though.
He also just let me hear the first pigeon "peep" by the way  *aaawe.*


----------



## Pidgey (May 20, 2005)

Well, now you're beginning to make some progress, then. I gotta' tell ya' that they've each got their own personalities and some of them are very quiet, shy and stand-offish and others figure they own you, will yell at you constantly for attention and are generally little devils. Give it time, doesn't sound like he's in imminent danger of dying. You might try working with him several times a day, pecking with your finger into a small bowl of birdseed. He's not far off of weaning. I've certainly seen much younger birds that had already figured it out (because they had to).

Pidgey


----------



## Prizm (Jun 28, 2006)

Do you think he'd be "ok" if I was only able to hand-feed him twice a day? I think bringing him to work with me and keeping him in a shoe box during an 8 to 9 hour stretch must be stressful. At home, he can watch TV in a more stable environment with seeds to pick on while I'm away.


----------



## Prizm (Jun 28, 2006)

Oh, by the way, he hasn't pooped since 3:15 and it's 3:58 now


----------



## Pidgey (May 20, 2005)

I'm feeding The Vulture that way--giving him seeds to eat for lunch and he eats 'em, too, probably about a tablespoon.

As to the TV, gotta' be careful what you let 'em watch--some soap operas will positively RUIN a kid.

They can certainly poop more than that but they can also go longer, as well. I wouldn't read anything into that at this point. If he'd gone 24 hours and only pooped four small poops the size of M&Ms, you'd really have something to worry about.

Pidgey


----------

