My Pacific Parrotlets are on their 1st successful clutch of babies. There are three, the oldest is 10 days old. Last night I banded the older, larger two babies. This morning I peeked to make sure the bands were still on, and both were off. It looks like the mom found them under the pile pink babies, in the dark, and pulled them both off. The older baby's foot got damaged in the process and has a little clump of dried blood/junk on it. It still has all the toes, but it looks like the baby is favoring it a bit. I don't want to hurt the baby any more by trying to take off the clot to see where the damage is.
I feel horrible. I have banded tons of baby parrots, still with parents, and never had this problem before. Parent birds, with and without their own bands, never cared before. Obviously I've learned my lesson, but I feel so bad about the baby. =(
Too bad, hope the baby's foot heals up and is okay. I have heard that problems are the heartaches of being a breeder, even though it may happen rarely, not fun. Let us know how the baby does with the foot!
Reta
Well, the baby has a messed up foot now. All the toes were there and looked fine. At some point one of the back toes turned into a 'stub', and the other one has apparently healed pointing forward. I still feel horrible.
The little clump on the foot before looked like some blood/poop/shavings. It was gone a few days later.
I don't have the band size handy, but it just barely slipped over the toes on the bigger one, and the smaller one was a LOT smaller. The band was bound to fall off the smaller baby, but I figured on trying anyway in hopes of getting lucky and not having to scare everybody by doing it again later.
Now I have one "stumpy" baby, and one regular baby. =~(
Not yet. I just realized it was a problem this weekend when I saw her trying to climb out of the nestbox.
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