# Parents have killed their first baby - help please



## Tristania (Jan 16, 2012)

Hello friends. I wonder if I may ask for your experience and help with this problem. My 4 year old female and her 3 year male partner have been sitting on a clutch of 3 eggs for a few weeks. They've been attentive and taken turns to sit on these eggs - which was a surprise as I hadn't seen them mating. However, the eggs appeared. The first two eggs weren't viable but I left them in the clutch to prevent her replacing them, had I removed them. Today the good egg hatched and my family were delighted to hear chirps from their nest box this afternoon! But within an hour the chirps turned to cries and when we looked in both the cockatiels were savagely attacking their new chick. I could see blood all over my male in particular to I had to put my hand in to rescue the baby but I could see it's feet were pecked off and it was struggling to breathe. It died shortly after. I don't understand as I consider myself a beginner with cockatiels but I'm shocked they would do this to their own baby. Is this normal behaviour sometimes? Have my birds (who were wonderful egg parents) been scared by the appearance of this chick and turned on it? I'm really worried I've done something wrong - or that the birds may just too immature to be parents at the moment. Any advice would be very welcome, I would appreciate any help to point me where I may have gone wrong. Thank you so much.


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## bjknight93 (Nov 13, 2011)

Sometimes first time parents will think their newly hatched chick is an invader in the nest. If this happens with any more babies I would not allow them to breed again..I also encourage you to see this thread..just in case. Best of luck. X


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

Since yesterday I've been trying to think of something helpful to say but I'm coming up empty. I'm sorry that you had to go through this; it's horrifying. 

At 3 and 4 years, your birds are physically mature enough for parenthood, but it's obvious that their breeding instincts aren't fully developed. Sometimes a chick is injured or killed by the parents because it was weak and didn't respond appropriately when the parents tried to feed it, so they grabbed it and shook it in frustration; but that doesn't sound like what happened to you. I agree with bj that it sounds like they thought the baby was an intruder so they attacked it.

How much do you know about the early history of your birds? Handfed babies who were separated from their parents prior to fledging tend to have less developed breeding instincts than babies who remained with their parents through weaning. Sometimes birds who don't get it right the first time will learn from their mistakes and eventually become good parents. But there is a risk that this could happen again, and you may not want to take that chance. Hormone control can help prevent egg laying - see http://talkcockatiels.com/showthread.php?t=32330 If that doesn't work, you can always replace the real eggs with fake eggs or do something to prevent the real eggs from hatching.


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