Written and publish by Grant Donaldson (UK)

 

Fostering is the transferring of eggs or young of a particular pair of birds that for whatever reason are unreliable to look after their own chicks to a more experienced and trusted pair. This is a practice I use quite often and I find it a much better alternative to hand-rearing which is very labour intensive. It is also occasionally the case that one of a pair dies and due to the colour mutations involved or that particular strain of birds that fostering might be the only way to save chilling eggs or chicks as it is usually the case that a single parent bird will not rear a clutch on their own, though it has been heard of.

 

This particular nest on the right consists of the chicks of three different pairs of birds. The only original chick is the dark green. The two dilute yellows and yellow pastel were transferred to this nest as eggs as their parents have proven too unreliable and often kill their chicks. The foster parents hatched the fostered eggs along with one of their own with no problems as the hatch date was very similar for both clutches. It is more risky to foster the older the chick gets but the mauve was only introduced when it was two weeks old. It was ejected from the nest and the foster parents accepted it very quickly despite its obvious difference in colour.

 

I would warn however that I have known some foster parents to only accept chicks of the same colour. One particular pair of cobalts I once owned hatched and reared four yellow pastel chicks with no problems along with one of their own chicks for two weeks until the feathers started to grow. It would appear that once the colour of the chicks differed from that of their own offspring one or both of the parents would attack the chick and eject it from the nest. Unfortunately I was unable to save the chicks in that occasion.

 

Although I only concentrate on breeding Fischers Lovebirds it is also possible to foster any of the eyering group and peach faced lovebirds to each other with a good degree of success. The key to fostering is the introduced eggs or chicks being of a similar age to that of the eggs and chicks of the foster parents.

 

If fostering does not work the only option left is to hand-rear. More often than not if a chick is not to be accepted by its foster parents it is just pushed to the edge of the nest and not fed which at least allows the breeder to catch it time. A careful watch should therefore be kept for the first few days.

 

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