# Death in the nest . . . is this cause common?



## RoderickGI (Jun 6, 2010)

I introduced Chooky (male) and Chicky (female), both rescued feral pigeons over in this thread: http://www.pigeons.biz/forums/f6/introducing-chook-the-pigeon-45224.html









That's Chooky on the left, Chicky on the right, sharing an outdoor bath.

I thought it best to start a thread in the correct forum to ask my next question.

These two didn't get on so well at first, with Chooky being a bit too enthusiastic in his pursuit of Chicky. However after a while he settled down, and Chicky got used to him and her new home, so we allowed them to cohabit instead of keeping them in separate areas.

Well nature took its course, and during the evening of May 26th Chicky laid an egg. It was well looked after, with Chooky taking a six to eight hour shift each day on the nest around 12 ~ 2pm until 6 ~ 8pm. He may have done a night shift, but we never saw that. Chicky seemed to like spending most of her time on the nest. The baby hatched at precisely eighteen days, as is expected, on the evening of Monday June 13th.









Little Pecker, probably within hours of hatching.

The birds continued to sit on the nest as usual, but I was a little concerned when I saw chicky stand on the baby, since named Pecker, especially as she has particularly long claws at the moment. I should have acted straight away and clipped those claws, but I wanted my partner to help, and we were going out Tuesday night so it would have to wait until Wednesday night.









Chicky's long claws. Maybe she is getting too much calcium in her diet...

After all, birds raise young in the wild all the time. Chooky was very good in the nest, even though his claws have grown quite a bit since the last clipping. I never saw him stand on the baby, and he is bigger and heavier. Surely Chicky would be careful, and it was just because I was looking into the nest that she stood on him, right. Wrong I'm afraid. I should have done the claws immediately.

You see, Chicky was in a cardboard nest about an 4 cm (1.6") deep, filled with shredded newspaper and pine needles. I think the nest was too shallow for her, because she often scratched around in the nest. I thought she was just turning the egg at the time, but maybe she was trying to dig it deeper. She chose the nest box, but as we nearly lost the egg to a fall, it was me who put the cardboard nest they had been using into the box. They seemed to like it though.

Anyway, come Wednesday morning when I went out to the room the nest box is in, Chooky is doing his wooing dance on the floor, and Chicky appeared from under a sofa on the floor. There was also a bit of a smell near the nest. All signs that the baby was dead.

It seems the Chicky scratched around in the nest during the night shift, caught a claw in the baby's abdomen and eviscerated the poor little fellow. As you can imagine, this made my partner and I quite sad.

So, my questions to the more experienced pigeon caretakers are:

Is this a common way for a baby bird to die?
Was this just a mistake made by a very young first time mother, and it won't happen again?
How on earth do you keep a pigeon's claws short and blunt enough that they don't harm a baby they are sitting on? (They grow really fast.)
What can I do to prevent this happening again, other than very regular claw clipping?
Is the nest box big enough for nesting at 30x30x30 cm. (It was built for just Chooky, before Chicky came along.) The actual nest is now 30x20x8 cm.
Will an 8 cm deep nest make chicky more comfortable and stop scratching to make it deeper?
The good news is that the birds are back in full breeding behaviour again, and we will likely see one or two eggs again soon. We only got one the first time. 

I have also installed an 8cm deep nest in the box, and filled it with compacted shredded paper, pressed down and with a dint in the middle for the egg(s). They are adding pine needles to it, or at least dragging a few around and dropping them on the floor!

Thanks in advance for your replies. 

PS: I think it is amazing that chooky was wooing Chicky on the morning I found the baby dead. More amazing, after I cleaned up the nest box he was looking for the nest, and when I showed it to him with the baby still in it, he started cleaning it up, throwing out the old shell, and looking like he was going to throw out the dead baby. I saved him from that difficult task by replacing the nest, which both birds accepted straight away. No awkward sentimentality there, and it seems Chooky, the male, is the driver for breeding. Interesting.


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## pdpbison (Mar 15, 2005)

Sounds more like a young inexperienced Hen, than that her Claws would be the problem.

But, even still, I have a hard time imaging an envisceration from a parents Toe Nail or Claw.

Do you mean puncture? Or..?

Older or more experienced parents are usually very sensitive about not stepping on very young infants/Babys....but, any of them can goof up a little once in a while and end up stepping on their Baby momentarily, which is usually not a problem.


The bottom inch or so of any conveniently sized Cardboard Box...with a small folded Towel layed in it...is a very good Nest base for the parents to then gather and assemble/arrange the materials as they like.


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## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

sorry it did not work out for you, it happens. I have had one not long ago get flatten before he was even out of the shell, but the birds have huge featherd feet, so thinking that did not help. what you can do is replace her eggs with fake ones and they will sit those untill they give up, then it starts over again., If do want more pigeons you could always rescue more..or buy some domestics.. If you let them hatch babies, Iam sure it will work out at some point, usually as they mature they get better at it.. it helps to practice with fake eggs for their first year.


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## RoderickGI (Jun 6, 2010)

This is the little guy at one day old, 5 pm Tuesday June 14th 2011.








He was moving around and seemed fine.



pdpbison said:


> But, even still, I have a hard time imaging an envisceration from a parents Toe Nail or Claw.
> 
> Do you mean puncture? Or..?


If you have a strong constitution and can look at messy pictures without reacting too badly, take a look at these two pictures.
*People who might get upset, don't look at these pictures!*
http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l238/RoderickGI/Chook the Pigeon/P6150005_800x600.jpg
http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l238/RoderickGI/Chook the Pigeon/P6150007_800x600.jpg

The first photo shows that there was no damage above the wings, or on the left side of the abdomen.
The second photo shows that it wasn't just a puncture, but the right side of the abdomen is torn open. You can see the flap of skin to the right of the contents that have spilled out. Quite a lot spilled out.

This is why I think Chicky was responsible, because she scratches around in the nest so much. Well, she also had muck all over her breast, so she obviously sat on the dying Pecker for some time.

Chooky was always very careful and sensitive about sitting on Pecker. He is at least a year older the Chicky, and possibly several years older, and had babies before. Of course, being a rescue we don't know his age.

We will see how Chicky goes with the new nest. If there is a lot of scatching when she has an egg, we may change out the nest for a folded towel and see if it stops. However, both Chooky and Chicky scratch on my rug at times, so I'm not sure we won't have the same problem on a towel based nest.



spirit wings said:


> If do want more pigeons you could always rescue more..or buy some domestics.. If you let them hatch babies, I am sure it will work out at some point


I would like to have one or two birds hatched and raised with a lot of handling, just to see how good a pet they really make. Chooky and Chicky are fine, but their feral beginnings are still apparent, not to mention that they can't fly!

I don't want more rescues or domestics that haven't been handled from a young age. If Pecker had survived I would have stopped further breeding with fake eggs or other means.

Chicky is very young and healthy now, and is eating a lot of the grit block we provided, so I think she can manage to pump out a few eggs until she gets it right. I don't really have a problem with cleaning up the failures along the way. I'm not squeamish. 

While I was writing this the birds have been in the cupboard behind me, trying to make more babies. I don't think it will be long before we see another egg or two.


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## RoderickGI (Jun 6, 2010)

Well, as of Monday there are two new eggs in the new nest. Let's hope Chicky does better with these two. She doesn't seem to be scratching in the new, deeper nest, so I'm hopeful these two will have more luck than Pecker. 

We have cut her claws anyway, so at least she would do less damage in future.


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