Interesting Experiment

[Mud]

hey, sorry i haven't posted in a while..........
any way. my sister is trying an experiment with her doves. her friend has a male and female cockateil and the female lays eggs but wont sit on them so my sister got 2 eggs that were laid yesterday and put them in her dove cage and one of her female doves has been sitting on them ever since. we are hopeing the doves will tak care of them until they hatch.

[jamieo]

Do you have a plan for caring for the chicks if the eggs do hatch and the dove does not feed them?

[Mud]

yes, we are planning on hand feeding them

[The Outlaw]

Good. I believe that doves are soft bills and don't have the same dietary requirements of hookbills.

[BirdsUnlimited]

I've used ringneck doves many times to incubate, but they would never feed. They have a very different style of feeding babies. If the doves are on a seed diet that wouldn't work either as doves eat their seed whole, shell and all, where as cockatiels shell theirs and it's easier to digest. I would guess that a lot of whole seed would probably kill a day old cockatiel. Mine where switched to a formulated diet in case they did try and feed.

[Mud]

ok let me refrase myself. i am going to use the doves to sit on the eggs and then when they hatch i am going to feed them myself.

[RachelLynn]

I am hand feeding a 4 day old cockatiel baby right now that I have been feeding since it was 1 day old. The parents wouldn't take care of it. I have hand fed baby tiels before but never when they were this young and so tiny. It is not easy and I would think this over if I were you. So many things could go wrong.