CrystalinNC
11-11-2008, 08:48 AM
I haven't posted much about Xena...but I would like to share her story with you.
She started out as a cracked egg that I thought would never hatch. Three days after the fourth baby was born, I was convinced the fifth egg was dead in shell. I was going to throw it away...but candled it one last time. I saw a little head moving! I could hear pipping!
Still...the chances of a cracked egg producing a viable baby are slim to none. I felt that the yolk had probably dried, but I left the egg in the nest box and reluctantly went to work, feeling fairly sure I would come home to a motionless baby.
Instead, I came home to quite the opposite, there was a wiggly little pink eyed baby in the nest. Boy, even at that tender age, she was all over the place. She even had a little food in her crop. I assume that her parents, in their wisdom, realized that she had less yolk to absorb than she should have and started feeding her right away.
Still, her fight wasn't over, she was competing with much bigger siblings:
http://s251.photobucket.com/albums/gg290/Cryren/?action=view¤t=IMG_1347.jpg
At that point, I realized that she wasn't really getting enough food, so I pulled the oldest three babies and left her in the box with her older sibling. The parents really started stuffing the two of them:
http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg290/Cryren/IMG_1407.jpg
Then, when Xena was a mere 10 days old, her parents started to try to have more babies, so I had to pull the remaining two and hand feed, shutting down the nest box. She was doing so good!
http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg290/Cryren/IMG_1428.jpg
Then her crop started shutting down. I tried everything! I made her a crop bra...I gave her special spices to help move her crop...my baby was starving to death! I had breeders tell me that sometimes you just lose one...but this little girl didn't want to be lost. She would stand up tall and beg for food constantly...I would feed her, and wait for her slow crop to empty before I fed her again. I gave her papaya, applesauce, and all sorts of things that are supposed to work. Such a trooper she was...still standing tall and begging for food even though she was slowly starving:
http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg290/Cryren/IMG_1437.jpg
I called the vet, even though I wasn't sure there was much he could do. I took my little princess warrior in (A very nice lady on Tiel Talk came up with the name, and it was PERFECT) he flushed her crop and found fibrous material in there. My guess is that she was SO hungry that she ate some of her baby blanket that I had in there for her to snuggle on.
At any rate, she slowly got better, but still so tiny:
http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg290/Cryren/IMG_1446.jpg
My little Xena has won the hearts of the entire vet's office with her will and stamina.
She wouldn't give up...and she prompted everyone else to try too with her spirit and strong will to live.
Xena is still tiny, she's only 53 grams at 4 weeks (her clutch mates are 95-110 grams). Still, her personality is HUGE, and she's got my heart in her little talon:
http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg290/Cryren/IMG_1467.jpg
and that...is how Xena got her name! :D
She started out as a cracked egg that I thought would never hatch. Three days after the fourth baby was born, I was convinced the fifth egg was dead in shell. I was going to throw it away...but candled it one last time. I saw a little head moving! I could hear pipping!
Still...the chances of a cracked egg producing a viable baby are slim to none. I felt that the yolk had probably dried, but I left the egg in the nest box and reluctantly went to work, feeling fairly sure I would come home to a motionless baby.
Instead, I came home to quite the opposite, there was a wiggly little pink eyed baby in the nest. Boy, even at that tender age, she was all over the place. She even had a little food in her crop. I assume that her parents, in their wisdom, realized that she had less yolk to absorb than she should have and started feeding her right away.
Still, her fight wasn't over, she was competing with much bigger siblings:
http://s251.photobucket.com/albums/gg290/Cryren/?action=view¤t=IMG_1347.jpg
At that point, I realized that she wasn't really getting enough food, so I pulled the oldest three babies and left her in the box with her older sibling. The parents really started stuffing the two of them:
http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg290/Cryren/IMG_1407.jpg
Then, when Xena was a mere 10 days old, her parents started to try to have more babies, so I had to pull the remaining two and hand feed, shutting down the nest box. She was doing so good!
http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg290/Cryren/IMG_1428.jpg
Then her crop started shutting down. I tried everything! I made her a crop bra...I gave her special spices to help move her crop...my baby was starving to death! I had breeders tell me that sometimes you just lose one...but this little girl didn't want to be lost. She would stand up tall and beg for food constantly...I would feed her, and wait for her slow crop to empty before I fed her again. I gave her papaya, applesauce, and all sorts of things that are supposed to work. Such a trooper she was...still standing tall and begging for food even though she was slowly starving:
http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg290/Cryren/IMG_1437.jpg
I called the vet, even though I wasn't sure there was much he could do. I took my little princess warrior in (A very nice lady on Tiel Talk came up with the name, and it was PERFECT) he flushed her crop and found fibrous material in there. My guess is that she was SO hungry that she ate some of her baby blanket that I had in there for her to snuggle on.
At any rate, she slowly got better, but still so tiny:
http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg290/Cryren/IMG_1446.jpg
My little Xena has won the hearts of the entire vet's office with her will and stamina.
She wouldn't give up...and she prompted everyone else to try too with her spirit and strong will to live.
Xena is still tiny, she's only 53 grams at 4 weeks (her clutch mates are 95-110 grams). Still, her personality is HUGE, and she's got my heart in her little talon:
http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg290/Cryren/IMG_1467.jpg
and that...is how Xena got her name! :D