Switcheroo

The M/M foster society pair (on eggs) that's beside the other M/M foster society pair (with chicks) is going crazy trying to help feed those little chicks on the other side of the divider.  Poor things!  The chicks are being VERY well taken care of, but they want to help so badly, even to the point of yakking up some food to try to feed them.  The eggs they're fostering are likely duds (Tangerine laid them well after I separated her from her naughty mate awhile back), so I did something I don't normally do.  I switched Frostie and Streak's four (hopefully) viable eggs for the four dud eggs.  Frostie needs a break from egg-laying anyway, and incubating the dud eggs for couple of weeks will give her body a chance to restore its calcium reserves.  And hopefully the M/M foster pair will have some chicks of "their own" to care for in a few days.  :-)  That means both of my society M/M foster pairs have eggs/chicks that actually belong to Frostie and Streak.  LOL!  She's been a little egg machine lately.

Pearl and Smudge have at least two newly-hatched chicks, just 1-2 days old.  I didn't want to disturb them to do an exact head count.  She had two back-to-back clutches, and I'm pretty sure the first clutch wasn't viable. There was probably 10-12 eggs in the nest at one point.  They tossed two eggs during the day.  One was infertile, and the other was DIS.  Not sure yet how many of the others are fertile.

I also moved Patches in with Onyx, whose baby girl (Diamond) was recently weaned.  Diamond is now in with another very young female, Powder, until they get to be breeding age.  :-)

Alfalfa (crested male) and Whisper are still incubating their eggs.  :-)  I haven't candled them again to see if any more are viable.

Cloud and Domino's youngsters are doing great under their mom's care.  They're perching and flying like pros now.

The little society chick with the lost leg fledged a couple of days ago.  So far it hasn't figured out how to perch, so it sits in the bottom of the cage with its mom and sibling cuddling with it.  Too adorable!  I put it back in the nest a couple of times, thinking it would be more comfortable, but it doesn't stay put.  Today it figured out that it could prop itself up using the cage divider tracks in the floor of the cage, using the wires to balance.  Instead of putting it back in the nest, I left it propped up, figuring that it's a good way for it to learn to perch.  In a sense, it made itself a pair of crutches.  :-)  The parents (a M/F/F trio) are taking exceptional care of the youngsters.

Shelly (paired with Ghost) keeps laying eggs, but they keep disappearing.  I suspect they're being eaten.  If they're being tossed, I sure haven't found them.  She's got a cuttlebone and gets regular calcium supplements, so who knows. (?)

And that's the news for today! :-)