Sunday, July 17, 2011

Misty Has Babies!

Great news!  My pet parrotlet Misty has 2 chicks of her own.  She is so proud of herself. 
Misty is an American White Turquoise (aka Dilute Blue Turquoise) Parrotlet.  She is actually a very pale blue (almost white) with a yellow wash over her and a lime/yellow face.  There are 2 chicks in the photo, one you see only his head, the other his body!  She lets me pet her in the nest box and examine her chicks when necessary.


Poor dear kept laying eggs for me that were of course clear.  I didn't want to breed her as she is my dear sweet pet, but I panic every time she lays eggs because she could get egg bound.  She didn't like any of my pet males I tried to pair her up with, but then one day she settled on 1 sweet boy and went right to work.  I didn't expect her eggs to be fertile the first time, but to my amazement all 5 of her eggs were fertile.  Since she is a new momma she seemed to lose track of time and  right when the eggs were ready to hatch she would break open the eggs and pull the babies out prematurely, thus killing the babies.  It was an awful experience for both of us, but I knew she had to figure this out for herself.  Thankfully she caught on with the last 2 babies and is doing a super job of taking care of them.  (The egg in the photo was fertile but the chick formed poorly because the airspace in the egg was on the side instead of the end so it never fully developed or hatched.  I knew this was a bad egg from the start as I use an egg candler, but let her keep it as I didn't want her to keep laying more eggs to replace any that I remove).

I have more Pieds & Turquoise Chicks!

Awww, I have been busy hand feeding more little cuties.  So far it looks like 1 blue pied male, 1 turquoise male, 1 mystery pied, & 1 too young to tell normal.    Why do I keep getting just boys?  Where are the girls?

The older 3 are from the same clutch.  The tiny baby is from a pied pair that gave me 1 normal chick, probably blue or green split to blue.

Look What I got At The Birdshow!

I swore I wouldn't buy any birds, but I fell for these lil cuties.  They were hand fed babies.  They are mixed with English. 

I am quite fond of the darker turquoise one.  He is a clear flighted turquoise yellow face spangle.  His wings have the  loveliest scalloped markings on them.  He is very sweet and seems so tame.  The other one is a lovely diluted version, so he is a very pale blue with pale gray spangle markings.  They are the same size, but due to camera angles one looks bigger than the other.  He is a bit shyer.  I also got a female Cremino 3/4 English.  She is also hand fed but very shy , none of them bites at all.  So cute!