What to feed the chicks picked up by children on the street

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

Very often, children bring chicks from the street, allegedly fallen out of the nest, and with tears begin to take care of them. They arrange a nest in a box, lay it on cotton wool or rags and ask adults about what to feed the chicks that have fallen out of the nest?

Forcing the baby to take the chick back to where he brought it from is not every parent, although he understands that he will have to take care of the foundling.

Chick Mode

Chicks need food often, once every 15-20 minutes. It will be possible to interrupt only for a night's sleep and resume feeding should be no later than the sun rises.

What to feed the chicks depends on the type of birds they belong to. It is possible to feed a swallow, songbird, sparrow, swift, crow or dove at home. Almost all chicks can be returned to where they were found, and their parents will surely take care of them.

Only small ones are not returned to their placeswifts. Swifts cannot help a chick that has fallen out of the nest, they cannot take off from the ground. You can distinguish a swift from a swallow by its paws - in swifts, all fingers look forward.

Menu for chicks

Children found a sparrow chick. What to feed the bird?

Despite the fact that adult birds peck grains with pleasure, chicks are fed with protein food. Food worms and live bloodworms are suitable for food, which can be purchased at pet stores, earthworms - you can dig them up yourself, flies - also caught with your own hands.

Ideally feed once every 20 minutes - if not, at least once an hour. A piece of food must be pushed into the chick's beak, opening it by force. If you cannot get live food, then you need to mix pieces of egg yolk, cottage cheese and minced meat and make tiny balls. The chick itself does not know how to peck, but by 3-4 feeding it understands that it is required to open the "mouth".

What to feed a titmouse chick? Its diet is no different from that of a sparrow. The only thing is that the tit chick may need mineral supplements and vitamins, which will have to be introduced along with the food. Chicks of tits are found less often; these birds hide their nests from people. It often happens that parents, frightened by people, lose a chick, and when the children find it, it is quite weakened.

Swallows are not returned to the wild

Children often bring little swallows home. These birds nest on the last floors of human dwellings and under balconies. Howfeed the chicks of these birds? Swallows always feed on protein food, and therefore feeding swallows is no different from nursing sparrow chicks. But it must be remembered: if birds of other species during maturation are gradually transferred to grain feed and can leave their hospitable hosts, a swallow fed in captivity does not return to freedom. True, live food can be replaced with a surrogate as the bird grows older - transfer it to minced meat. Feeding a swallow chick is enough once an hour.

When it is clear what to feed the chicks, you need to clarify what to feed them and how? And most importantly, is it necessary? You can drip a couple of drops of water, introducing it further into the beak, from a pipette, but birds in the wild do not water their chicks - they have enough moisture from living food.

In order for children not to bring home small birds, parents should explain to the child that fledglings - most often children bring chicks that themselves flew out of the nest, not yet fully fledged - flew out of the nest and waited for their mother, who would fed and cared for. And you don’t need to bring such chicks home, it’s better to return them to the same place so that their parents can find them. It is quite difficult to feed a chick at home.