"Please Help - Baby Pigeons" Topic

Of course, I'll be googling this, but I figured I'd make a stop at TMP… Tonight, as my wife and I went out to eat, we were pulling into a parking spot and two pigeons were in the middle of the spot. They didn't fly away, and on closer examination, while their flight feathers seemed fully formed, they still had down in tufts all over them. So they were babies that probably fell from a nearby nest. One was crawling all over the other as if to protect it, though I'm sure this is nesting behaviour for babies.

We left them there and went in to eat and I worried about them – there were a lot of sea gulls nearby. After dinner, we looked all over for a possible nest and momma bird, but couldn't find anything. So, probably unadvisedly, but too soft-hearted to let nature take its course (and I really don't want to hear anyone lmbast me for not doing so), we got a box from the restaurant, popped them in and brought them home.

They are now in one of our very old parrot cages in our basement – we of course did not bring them anywhere near our parrot flock upstairs. We syringe fed them with parrot baby food using extra syringes (we have a 9 year old parrotlet with a mega bacteria infection we've been syringe feeding to kee alive since April, so we had this stuff lying around).

I want to look after them until they can fly so they can get the out of here. If anyone has advice on this, I would really, really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.
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Tim

See "Baby Pigeons Out of the Nest", here:

link

Sorry. Hopefully, they're older and the "Food" section may help.

Allen

Yes. They are horrid, nasty birds so drown them.

The rotten things keep trying to nest under the peak of my roof and they leave trails of bird droppings down the front of my house.

I keep a loaded pellet gun near the door and usually have to shoot one or two every couple months in the spring and summer.

Regards, the Gorb

The local Humane Society or Animal Control Dept. should have a list of people who raise/breed pigeons in your area. From your description, it sounds like they're past the "pigeon milk" stage, but you can always hand them over to someone who will handle them.

Wyatt

They call them "sky rats" for a reason.

If you feel you must do something with them, you might find an orange sauce and white wine complement them well…

Ive been told their eggs are rather tasty.

Tim,

I don't know how close this is to what experts recommend these days, but it is what worked for us . . .

We used to make a paste of ground-up crickets and corn meal and fed them with a syringe down their throats (without needle, of course). That is similar to how their mother would have fed them. Just make sure they have a "cubby hole" of sorts in the cage (we used towels), to simulate a nest and to keep them warm.

Because our neighbors used to let their cats roam wherever they liked, we found ourselves doing this with all sorts of orphan birds, including wild parakeets (that was when we were living in Puerto Rico, where I was born and raised)

And, as soon as they were able to fly, we would let them go.

CC

More here, from experts:

link
link

Hope this helps a bit.

CC

Thanks, CC, and others, I appreciate the serious responses and enjoyed the silly ones.

The syringe feeding brought one back up to health and he's walking around like a pigeon with bobbing head and is actually pecking at wild bird seed and grass seed I put on a paper plate and drinking water.

Sadly, his/her brother/sister didn't make it. I think it must have been injured when it fell (or was pushed out) of the nest. It was very weak when I syringed it this morning and when I came back at lunch, the poor thing was dead cold.

I'm really not up to hand rearing the surviving bird – although we've done it with parrots in the past, dialysis 4 times a week plus work makes this sort of commitment very difficult for me, so my wife phoned around this morning and found a pet hospital that promised to take my little buddy – I brought him there this afternoon and they felt he was healthy enough that they would turn him over to a very large nature park an hour or so out of town that looks after otherwise healthy abandoned baby birds until they can fend for themselves. I was delighted.

So I'm 1 for 2.

Thanks again to all.
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Tim

So sorry to hear about the second chick. I had the same thing happen to us in a few instances, and it also looked that the cause was some sort of internal injury.

Glad to hear you have found a home for the second one. I'm sure that, thanks to your efforts these last few days, it will live and groww.

Sorry to hear about the dialisis. I hear it can be a very difficult and painful process.

So, hang in there. You did good. You have certainly earned my admiration and, I'm sure, that of many others here.

Dan