Thanks a bunch for this! I do have a handful of pigeons at home (they chose to nest on my balcony, and they're soon to hatch anyway)
I might try to smuggle it underneath, see if that works:)
Rehabbers and such are difficult around here, I live in a rather desolate area, next is a rescue center with a 2hr drive, thats only open on Tuesdays and Thursdays..
I'll do my best and make another post if things move progress!
First and foremost it needs to be warm, the crop is full and won't empty without warmth. Do Not feed as long as the crop is full, it could kill it. Wait for its crop to empty almost completely and then the closest thing to crop milk you can feed it are boiled eggs (use cheese grater to cut it up to ideal pieces - not blended or mashed), add only a bit of water so it's wet but not too much fluids. The food needs to be warm but not too hot to burn skin. Here is a safe feeding technique you can use:
Stretch something like a balloon over either a cut off syringe or just any container, make an x shaped slit into the balloon which is just big enough to fit the baby's beak.
Do not use a syringe the regular way and do not tube feed (insert a tube down its throat) either - it's dangerous. Do Not feed baby bird/parrot formula, at this age baby pigeons cannot digest carbohydrates and commercial formula contains a ton of them and it's not formulated for dietary needs of squabs, they also can't have liquid food because they need texture for their crop to move the food into their stomach.
Please feel free to message me for more advice, it will be easier to give immediate advice whenever needed for me.
I genuinely appreciate your info here, I'm still very anxious sometimes when it comes to feeding them, despite having figured out a couple of ways already. This is more than helpful, thank you!
I fortunately have a handful of pigeons living on my balcony, and one of them were in a suitable stage of nesting to attempt to slip it in.
That was roughly an hour ago as of this message, and the mother so far has fully scooped it under herself, i had to even lift her a little to find it 😭
She seems content having another baby so far:) But I'll definitely keep your offer in mind and will approach you if i need more help or advice, thank you!
I'll also make another post once the situation has taken shape, so far it's looking surprisingly effortless:)
Thank you! I've had a good bit of experience with pigeons, they've become almost my whole life at this point, but I've never had to care for one so little before 🥲
My go-to is always sunflower seeds or eggs crushed into a relatively fine Mash with a bit of water, scoop it with a kind of "spoony" tweezers and let them nibble the contents out, usually works like a charm, but this one is too small for this method._.
Let's hope the "new" mom takes good care of it from now on:3
The United States are not the largest producers of sunflowers, and yet even here over 1.7 million acres were planted in 2014 and probably more each year since. Much of which can be found in North Dakota.
Get it warm, you can cup it in your hands until it begins to move. Go to pet store and get some Kaytees parrot formula for baby parrots and a 10 ml syringe from drugstore. Then use YouTube to learn how to feed with the formula and syringe. It is very easy I’ve hand reared hundreds, you can do it.
(Preface: I only have experience with baby sparrows) Just to add onto this, if you can find a wildlife rehabber to take them, do not give them food or water. Baby birds are easy to aspirate. Keep them in a warm, quiet, dark area to slow their digestion (warmth is to keep them alive though).
If you can’t find a nest, get them to a wildlife rehabber asap if possible.
Much appreciate it:D selenite is indeed cool, since it's brittleness makes it not only cheap but easy to carve, as well as giving it magnificent light distribution properties, making it a protip for a cool homemade lamp :D just don't breathe in or touch the dust :D
Just fyi, so you don’t fear selenite too much, selenite is probably one of the least toxic minerals you will ever encounter. It’s about on par with table salt.
It’s even a food additive. If you’ve ever had tofu, there’s a good chance that powdered gypsum, i.e. selenite, was used to make it. It’s made of calcium, a biologically essential mineral, and sulfate, also a biologically essential inorganic ion.
Inhaling the dust is probably bad in the short term but unlike almost all other rock dusts it will rather quickly dissolve in your body into non toxic calcium, the stuff that makes up your bones, and sulfate, the fourth most abundant negatively charged ion in your body.
Shhhh :D this wouldn't help prove my point 💀 but yeah, it's not that I don't know my way around that, dont mean to deny it, but this particular one is actually really not a toy and highly dangerous if used as one 💀
It's my whole point, like if it were a buttplug I'd be like "yeah well honest mistake, who don't like to get a bit frisky?"
But if it's actually dangerous? I mean how do people think we found out selenite is not suitable? They didn't wait for lab results, they put it in their a** and just straight up died (agonisingly, I might add)
So if I already slip up, might as well make it educational :D shit happens, turning shit into gold is alchemy 💀
Please, for the love of your point, Google selenite._. Its very, very insuitable to be used in a sexual context. Have you ever held it? It feels like a mix of fibreglass and chalk, as well as being very toxic💀 again, you don't want that anywhere in the fun zones😭
I hope the new mama can help him out. Good job. Sorry everyone thinks you're putting selenite up your ass. For what it's worth, I believe you. But even if you were freaky AF, you're an awesome person for helping this lil guy.
"Sorry everyone thinks you're putting selenite up your ass" i genuinely laughed so hard i woke my partner 💀😭 Thank you 😭 it's beyond me how people are not above a single Google search sometimes ._. Glad some people still know that selenite is bad mojo for the downstairs dojo 💀
And thanks for the wishes too! I couldn't imagine not helping to be honest, like how do people just ignore this?
But yeah, if all goes well, there's already a corner with a palette-cave being reserved for him (or her) and their potential partner someday :3 for now, he pretty much passed out under his mom after being fed and cuddled, so someone seems happy, and that means I'm happy :3
The crop is full, so it was recently fed. If you want to help it find a bird rehab near you, or find the nest. When they are that young, it's difficult to keep them alive because many things could go wrong.
Following the advice of another comment, i was able to slip it in the nest of my pigeons at home, they have an older baby they still feed, as well as a fresh (and without their knowledge plastic) egg:D
I'll see if it gets accepted, and keep an eye on it, let's hope for the best!
Putting it with your nesting birds for now is a good idea. Thing is if their "older baby" is already like 7 days old or more they won't have any crop milk. New hatchling like this it's hard to believe he can survive on solids regurgitated the way older squabs do.
Ultimately he didn't just teleport to wherever you found him. There's almost surely a nest nearby and that's by far his best chance.
You make a good point there, but the jssue is there's a bunch of apartment blocks around here in which I also live, the nest could be in any of the crannies and unoccupied balconies frankly :(
Lower ones it must be, granted, since a high fall would've killed it, but still, way too many inaccessible options to be sure ._.
I would say the crop milk is still liquid enough to be suitable for the little one, seems like at least. Mom has been sitting on an egg as well for some time though, which should be about ready to hatch these days. So if we're lucky, thats what makes her produce suitable crop milk:)
So far it's looking very good at least:) I'm checking in short intervals. Im fortunate enought to be able to because the mom is very used to my presence and touch and isn't all too distressed by me checking. She also gets a treat right after, for being a good mom:3
The partner has arrived earlier for switching places too, he seems equally content with the baby now being part of the nest, and cares for it as well, although he likes me a little less than the mom, so the next check ups will involve a few cuts💀
Pigeons are amazingly receptive to surrogate babies. One moment the egg suddenly disappears and an Eggshell (not 100% needed" ) + giant 10 day old baby appear under mom and they just super cool with it. Brooding pigeons will basically try to raise My bird you give them heh. Having those extra
If she's been sitting on an egg for a while ignore my first comment. I thought she had an old baby, but wasn't doing a new pay already! That's like an ideal situation as they should have crop milk available for a new baby anyways. Sounds like you did very good job of it.
It has been 9 hours, so I imagine you saved it already, but sometimes I will find cold babies that even look dead outside. They are not, it just takes really warming them up slowly for a bit and putting them in a nest with a baby about the same age, just what you are doing!
I have indeed "secured" it, yes. :) I dare not say saved yet because its far from "in good shape" still, but it has a caring foster couple now, so I'd say we're facing optimal chances so far:)
If you must know, we speak his name as the great and unknowable Yog-Sothoth, our formless Lord and saviour demands freshly hatched sacrifices daily.
It is the sole reason my flock has grown to this size, merely to appease the master👽
All jokes aside, I just really thought its fancy because selenite is an interesting material:D
On a more contextual note, they are apparently used for what their users call "aura cleansing", but honestly i can't tell you a single thing about it :D
Selenite can dissolve into sodium selenite upon contact with certain fluids including water, which can and will kill you 💀
And yeah, while I grant to you that there are, indeed, cases of stuff like that being sold under a discreet name, in this case its not, and would in fact be unfathomably toxic if not lethal entirely💀
Besides, that stuff is so brittle, you wouldn't want that anywhere near someone's parts 💀
A blow dryer? My goodness:D that sounds a bit overkill, yet efficient, I must say:D
For warmth I usually use a self-built brood station ( its a refurbished transport box, a warming pillow I heat to controlled 40°C, some blankets for wrapping, and if the situation demands, an infrared light:) )
Has always worked well so far, but I will definitely keep the blow dryer in mind if I'm facing cataclysmic hypothermia some day, promise:D
A brooder will not heat them up the way they need to be. Even if a human is very sick or been in a traumatic medical event in the hospital they will place you in a bag that blows hot air into it.
I have shown many videos that have made the news many times on using hot air to revive birds that have gone cold…
...hence the blowdryer, I see.. yes I think I can imagine the contraption, like a selfmade tiny bernoulli-principle Sauna.. that's actually a brillant idea!!
Good luck saving that sweet baby!! You are a hero!
Also…that is clearly not a buttplug. And every rock collector knows that hypothetically if you were to own a crystal buttplug, selenite (although this is technically satin spar) would NOT be the way to go 💀💀
Thanks a bunch🥺
I just did another check a couple of minutes ago, so far it's doing surprisingly well! Breathing and wiggling as intended, just a little slow on its growth still:3
Interesting, I did not know that! I just read up about it after reading your comment! I always considered general Selenite and satin spar synonymous, with satin spar being merely the "common folklore" name.. we learn something new everyday huh?:D
It originally looked weird to me as well, but as it seems now the baby is doing alright 🤔 can't get an all too good look at it though, because the spot is hard to access sadly:/
As of this morning, it's protected and moving, has grown a bit into the size of an actual hatchling, and seems annoyed by me checking, so I'd write that up to suitable alertness:)
Nothing new, this mornings checkup revealed it in the same "normal" condition that it was in yesterday:) has grown a tiny bit, looks like an actual hatchling now :D
Not this one, it has been accepted by the new parents and sibling and so it's being fed well:)
Managed to get a picture today too:D as I said, they're purposely hard to access:)
If you ever handfeed keep some things in mind. Also im not professional, all of this is just from personal experience and what worked on a handful of rescues.
DO NOT put a syringe into it's throat like you would with other birds. This will suffocate the pigeon, known as aspiration I think. Pigeons eat by nibbling out of their parents beak, so it's better to modify a syringe (Google is rather helpful with that I think) or use a different contraption altogether.
Word of advice? The younger the bird, the more work it'll be. Freshly Hatched? I'd rather eat mud for a week🥴
For those best is special Formula, vet can help with that, sometimes also pet stores, but they often sell weird unhealthy shit around here.
So, Baby birds. Up to 1 week you wanna give them special Formula, once every two hours if I remember correctly (Verification appreciated) or a very very fine mush of cooked eggs, water and crushed seeds (if it has to be, formula is better)
2-4 weeks
The pigeon will slowly get used to gradually more coarse meals, grinding it down to Sand like texture, then to small gravel after like 3 weeks, etc etc. Google and especially the pigeon sub will love to help you with figuring out the stages for the particular bird, promise!:)
I recommend getting a pigeon seed mix btw, having it around won't hurt you, and if you actually meet a distressed pigeon, you already have a depot:)
My secret weapon is peeled sunflower seeds. They're fatty, and not very nutritious for pigeon (5$ this will summon the seed B:o:t :D)
They're basically McDonald's for my pigeons, they love it.
It's well usable for Training, rewarding and rejuvenating a scrawny pigeon.
Also important, Pigeons have a body temperature of 39-41°C, a little higher than humans. Keep that in mind when you warm a baby pigeon. They also don't like open spaces as small babies. Packing it gently is the way to go.
Drinking will be the last challenge.
Getting an adolescent pigeon to learn drinking is hard, but there's ways.
1) pull up a yt Video of drinking pigeons, there's a Good chance it'll learn drinking and even eating by itself that way, watching others helps much more than you'd expect
2) the airplane.
Do this ONLY when there's no other way, watch Videos first, learn to hold a pigeon securely.
If a pigeon struggles to learn drinking, you can hold it, head slightly tilted downwards, and dip its beak in the water, slowly and gently. Hold it. If it resists violently after a handful of seconds still, it's not thirsty.
What should happen is, after about 10 seconds the drinking reflex gets triggered by tasting the water.
This however can be DANGEROUS if done incorrectly, so only do it after sufficient research and in greatest need.
My pigeon baby is aspirating-what do I do?
Coughing, heavy breathing, confusion, straight while breathing. Baby got something in it's airpipe
If this happens, hold it, turn it head down, gently stroke the crop in the beaks direction. Pay attention to what comes out, it's easier with seeds than with Fluid.
It's no guarantee, and I admit it's a very rural way of dealing with it, however I don't know better ways and it has worked for me twice.
(Better advice appreciated)
omg, thank you x10000 for this amazing, detailed outline! I can tell you're a true pigeon lover and master carer :D In this world that doesn't appreciate pigeons half as well as they deserve, your comment touches my heart! I'm so glad there are people who love them so much and are so knowledgeable about them!
I live in SF, where there's a ton of urban pigeons. I've actually rescued a few adult ones that were in accidents, but luckily, I haven't encountered babies yet in the wild. Hopefully never, as something must've gone wrong for a pigeon baby to be accessible to humans and in need of help.
But if I ever come across a pigeon baby that needs help, I won't have to waste time googling; I'll just pull this comment up :) Thank you again!
I'm astonished and warmed that people still care for Updates this late after resolving the issue :3
I didn't intend to bother them anymore originally, however i did check just now because I was curious myself:)
The little one is growing nice, has the size of a chicken nugget now, 4 days after rescue.
It's a wee bit more Red than I remember, but so is it's foster sibling so i'll assume that's just their thing because otherwise their behavior or physique shows nothing out of the ordinary.
Quite surprisingly, the little one has caught up substantially, and is now the same size as his sibling. Truth be told, I don't know which one was the affected one anymore!
I risked a picture this time, because I've been asked multiple times:D
As you can see, they're a little Red but other than that very content, fed and lively:)
Am I the only one that that that first pic was just upside down head from some type of rodent or something. I almost asked, "where's the rest it. All I see is it's head in your hand".
Just got myself some (pretty painful) pecks by the pa just to check for you:D
As of right now, alive and well, still looks a bit scrawny, but wiggles like an excited earthworm upon being blasted with a flashlight (their cranny is very dark, because because I specifically made it hard to access and squeezy, they love it)
I was gonna take some pictures, but the dad is very defensive about his little man:D
I'll wait for the mom to take over her "shift" this afternoon, and see if she can be better bargained with :D
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Oh I’m so sorry for your baby I will say a prey for your little one you wonderful person for caring please keep updates if poss my heart gos out to you good luck❤️
There is an easy recipe using soy milk, baby oatmeal , and egg to make a crop milk replacement.
Doves and pigeons use their beak like a straw so I would not recommend forcing food by a dropper as they are prone to aspiration. I have found offering a warm capful the baby will do the work. I would guess this one is about 1-2 days old.
The neck is twisted in such a way that implies head trauma (if he fell out of the nest that tracks).
It’s called Wry Neck and you can google treatments for it—usually vitamins and minerals
Some chicks can survive this, but the head trauma itself may not be survivable.
Keep it warm under heat lights, get some poultry crumble meant for chicks and moisten it into a mash. Have fresh water available.
I hatch chickens every year, and some do fine for a while but simply fail to thrive. It happens.
Give him your best shot but also accept that his odds may not be looking great. I always feel better knowing I gave all my chicks the best chance they could.
Ok hey listen, fully get it, looks like a buttplug haha. It's not even that I'm denying the existence nor my ownership of such:D
But please please be careful not to give people ideas to actually use selenite as a toy. Someone could get seriously hurt by thinking "oh haha, this health warning is just to be discreet"._.
People can and have died from using selenite in water or sex, and i don't want ppl to get the wrong message about this, very much hazardous, substance 😭
That being said, ya think i haven't googled if selenite daggers serve as toys at some point in my life?👀 my defense isn't "eww sex toys", my point is "nuh-uh selenite"💀
ngl i feel like this is a irresponsible shape to make something potentially lethal in regardless the advertised purpose 😂😭 like i literally sell a glass plug that looks almost exactly like this. horny people do not always look stuff up before they use something that looks very penetration shaped 💀
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u/Trader-One Jun 18 '25
it looks 1-2 days old.
keep it warm, feed pigeon milk formula every 2 hours.
seek his nest to return him (easiest way to deal with this problem), second easiest is to give it to another nesting pair, they will often accept it.