The Beauty Queens

So far this year our cockatiel pair have laid three clutches of eggs.   The first clutch resulted in all the eggs being infertile.   The second clutch resulted in three hatchlings but one by one they all died.   We suspect the birds just did not know what to do.   Possibly, as the first hatched out a couple of days before the others it got all the attention from its parents but who knows.   Unfortunately, this one too died.   When we discovered it in the morning, its seemed to have a full crop of food so we are not sure what went wrong.   We removed the nest box for a few weeks to give them a break and then put it back in their flight.   This last clutch of five eggs resulted in three hatching out and two being infertile.   The youngest only lasted a few days before it died, again we think it was not big enough to compete for its parents attention.    So now we have only two chicks remaining.    To give the youngest one a better chance of surviving we left it in the nest box but hand fed it for a few days a through a syringe. It is still quite a bit smaller than its companion but seems to be holding its own and growing steadily.

Its now four days later and look at the difference!   We are little concerned about the smaller one as he seems to be growing a little slowly compared to his nest mate.    But for sure he is growing...