Need up to 30 seconds to load.
hey guys welcome back to the channel so glad to have you here like always
in today's episode i'm going to be showing you guys how to make a home style hand feeding formula
for your baby birds and i've done a variety of different videos of baby birds in the past and
the majority of the times i'm showing you guys how to hand feed them using some commercial style hand
feeding formulas that you can buy online or you can buy at local pet shops but one of the biggest
problems that we've learned over this past two years with this pandemic is that unfortunately
things can sometimes be in short supply they may be hard to find at times they may take
longer than expected to get delivered or they may not be in stock at your local pet stores
so it is very important to learn how to make these home style hand feeding formulas in case of an
emergency that way you're able to feed these birds and keep them alive now it's not just because of
short supplies or having a hard time finding some of these formulas but let's face it people from
around the world have been asking me and telling me that unfortunately they just don't have that
type of hand feeding formula in their country now personally from experience i know what this
feels like because i am from cuba that's where i was born and i know firsthand how hard it can be
to find some of these things so if you're in a country where unfortunately you just can't find
these commercial style hand feeding formulas because they just don't sell them this is going
to be a perfect recipe for you to make at home in order to feed your baby birds and keep them alive
all right guys now i want you to meet a very special little bird his name is pepper now
pepper is a society finch and he is going to be our model for today he's going to show us
how a little bird should accept food that you feed him so let's get started with this on how
to make this home-style hand feeding formula here in front of me you can see some of the things that
you're going to need in order to make this happen first thing that we have here on the far right is
some oatmeal now i grind it up into very small pieces and i'm going to use this for
the mix if you don't have oatmeal you can also use cornmeal the next thing that you see on the table
is a small piece of egg so what you want to do is you want to boil an egg and you're going to use
this egg in order to create your home style hand feeding formula and the last thing that we have on
the far left is going to be the container where we're going to mash all of this up to create a
paste that we're later going to feed the baby bird now there isn't really an exact measurement to how
much of each one of these things you want to add it all kind of depends on how many baby birds you
have to feed so just kind of play it by sight and make your paste once you get everything into your
container and you mash it up you want to start adding a bit of water this water is what's going
to give it the correct consistency you want this to have a soup style consistency you don't want
it to be too thin that it's going to be runny but at the same time you don't want it to be too thick
where it's going to get impacted inside of the chicks crop remember that baby birds do not drink
water and they get all of their water from the moisture or the water that you incorporate into
their hand feeding formula so you don't want this to be too thick otherwise it could get impacted
inside of their crop they won't be able to process it and this will eventually kill the baby bird
once you get these into the right consistency you want to place it into a small container
so you can store it away in the fridge once you're done feeding the baby bird you can keep
this in the fridge for only one day i wouldn't recommend using this the following day but if
you make this formula very early in the morning you can use it throughout the day just make sure
that as you pull it out of the fridge you re-warm it back up again so that the baby bird can eat it
and add water accordingly because whether you're adding oatmeal or cornmeal this is going to tend
to get hard over time so you will eventually have to re-add a little bit of water to soften up the
formula before you feed it to the baby bird again but once you get it into this correct consistency
then we're ready to go and we can start feeding our baby bird now by the time that i got this
homestyle hand feeding formula finished and i went to go pull out pepper from the nest i noticed that
he was completely full the parents had stuffed him so this is a great example and the perfect
time to show you guys what it looks like when the baby bird is completely full as you can see once
they're full no matter how much you try to feed them they're just not going to open their mouth
and this is a good thing i've seen so many posts and i've had so many comments of people telling me
my baby bird isn't really opening its beak it's not wanting to eat or how do i know when to stop
feeding it well just look at them they will let you know trust me if it's not opening its mouth
it's because it's pretty much full they are very quick to open their mouth when they're
hungry as you're going to be able to see later on in this video so let's put him back in the nest
give him some time to digest some of that food that he has in the crop and we're going
to retry this again in about an hour all right so let's give this another try pepper is back
and he has a completely different outlook on life now he is ready to eat and he is hungry
as you can see one hour has given him enough time for that crop to go down and usually this is about
the time when the parents would be eating and getting ready to start feed him again so he's
ready to go and he's more willing to accept this food as you can see the consistency of this home
style hand feeding formula is not too thick and it's not too watery you want to be careful
with these two as i mentioned before if it's too thick the baby birds are not going to be able to
properly eat the food correctly and if even if they do eat it it could get impacted in their
crop and if it's too watery it can also cause a problem because as the baby bird is swallowing
that egg food it could go down the wrong way and if they aspirate some of that water you could have
troubles later on where the bird ends up dying now as far as how to feed them i'm not going to focus
on the exact methods of hand feeding i've done a video of this in the past showing you a variety
of different methods to hand feed and that's going to be linked in the description below
but for this home style hand feeding formula the best way to feed it is going to be with a small
spoon or toothpick or something very similar to the thing that i'm using here which is
a small tool that we use to ban the birds this is going to be the best and easiest method and
it's also one of the safest methods to use when it comes time to hand feeding baby birds it does take
longer than using a syringe but unfortunately when you make a home style hand feeding formula
it is very difficult to use a syringe because this feeding formula is kind of clumpy it's not
very loose and it can get stuck within the syringe and if you press on that plunger a bit too hard
could shoot out and cause some damage to the baby bird so go slow be patient and as you've seen in
the video kind of tease the baby bird's beak by touching it or tapping it slightly so this will
encourage it to open up and start eating all right guys well this is going to be the end of another
video i really hope that this tutorial on how to make this home style hand feeding formula has been
useful for you guys whether it's because the one that you'd like to order online is in short supply
out of stock or it's going to take too long for it to arrive or whether it's because
you're in a different country where commercial style hand feeding formulas just don't exist
this is the perfect all-around home style hand feeding formula to have ready
at home in order for emergencies like this so i really hope that you guys have enjoyed it if you
did remember to hit the like button consider subscribing if you haven't done so already
and i hope you guys have a wonderful day we will see each other in the next video
you
