Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I posted this over on birdhobbyist, there doesnt seem to be much traffic so i'm hoping i may get an answer here as well.

My cat was out hunting last night and was able to capture a wild dove baby. We didn't find it until this afternoon downstairs in our house. I took it outside and put it up on a tree limb but it just sat there for about 3 hours. It can fly short distances, but it still has its baby feathers so i'm not sure if it can even flly well yet. The cat didn't take away a lot of feathers or anything.

Anyway, a bad storm was coming so I took it and put it in an old aquairum I had for a snake when it was younger, and gave it a bowl of water and one of bird seed and put it in my garage (it's warm enough in florida that there shouldn't be a problem, but not too hot yet.) Anyway should this be able to eat bird seed or do i need to feed it with a dropper?

Thanks for any input,
Chris
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-Chris

0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat
1.0 Black Rat
0.1 Vietnamese Blue Beauty
1.0 Green Tree Python
0.1 Texas Bairds Rat

The educated are the few. The uneducated are the masses.

North American Rat / Corn Snake Care Sheet

Doves and pigeons feed from the parents crops, so its hard to raise them.
Do a search for wildlife rehabilitation web sites or listserve lists. There is avery good one out there.

If you buy a commercial feed designed for hand raising cage birds you may be able to whip up something that you can feed with a dropper or even place pellets into its mouth. Don't mix up your own food because its difficult to get the nutrients needed.

If the dove is nearly fledged it will probably do ok. See if it will eat seed on its own.

Good luck.

I'd put the dove back outside asap. Its chances of survival are greatest there. Even though the parents may not seem to be around, there is a very good chance that they will return to feed it. Obviously you want to put it somewhere that the cat can't get it.

One big mistake that many good-intentioned folks make is to take in an "orphan" wild baby bird. In most cases, the parents are actually very nearby.

Might the bird die? Yup. But its chances are best if you put it back outside. Duffy

Actually NO. Your scent is on the bird which will make the parent's less inclined to take care of it. You can try it but it's not the best choice.

I grew up in a household that took in wild birds and actually My Mother helped found our local wild bird care center.

If you contact the Snyder Park Wild Bird Care Center in Ft. Lauderdale they could tell you what to feed it.

Frank
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"The luxury of not getting involved departed with the last lifeboat Skipper..."

I grew up hearing about the "scent" thing. Truth is birds (with the exception of vultures and some others) have little sense of smell and do not reject babies because of human odors. Still, the best thing to do with young birds is to leave them alone - there are usually parents hovering near-by.

But there are good books and good internet resources to educate you if you find yourself with babies. There is also a lot of very bad advice on the internet, so read widely.

In my experience, use supplements, get a varied diet in them, use quality feeds that people use to raise $5000 exotics - don't skimp. Understand what the birds eat in the wild and make sure the captive is getting the same nutrients and variety.

Actually who ever told you that the scent thing was not true needs to do more research.

My mother was one of the top experts on wild bird rehab with over 40 years of hands on background. I will stick with her opinion.

Frank
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"The luxury of not getting involved departed with the last lifeboat Skipper..."

HI Frank,

Actually, they are right. The vast majority of birds have almost no sense of smell or taste. (the exceptions being carrion seekers like vultures). The main birds that people rescue are the passerineformes (finch/sparrow type birds), and they have the weakest olfactory lobes of the birds.--these are also the ones that people seem to associate with abandonment and smell since they are the ones that are "rescued" the most.

In fact, birds rely primarily on sight to find food, and birds have a preference for certain foods based on their textures and colors, not their taste. (I mention this because we all know how dependent on smell that taste is) You should see my parrots feed! I will give them a pelleted diet that consists of yellow, red, green, orange, and purple pellets all mixed togeather. The next feeding, one cage will have all the green missing, the next cage will have all the red missing, the next will have the red and yellow missing, the next will have everything missing except for the yellow, etc.---It's not the most hygenic, but I swap food bowls between cages to prevent waste and so they can eat the color they like!

It is believed that the parent birds visually seeing someone touch their young is what causes them to abandon them, not scent.

Smell

Birds don't always share human tastes. Some things we enjoy they may find offensive, and vice versa. Birds can distinguish tastes, but with less acuity than mammals. This can be explained by the number of tastebuds present. A parrot may have 300-400, a kitten 473, a rabbit 17000, a human 9000, and a snake zero.

(The snake argument kind of throws a monkey wrench into the argument because we herpers all know how acute their sense of smell is, while they don't have any sense of taste at all!)

http://www.silvio-co.com/cps/articles/1998/1998roscoe1.htm

Rodney

Hi Rodney, where have you been?

Actually they are wrong. This one of those things like (according to science) animals Like Bulls and elephants...etc...that are supposed to be color blind that strangely respond to the color red. Or-the one where cats and birds cannot see something that is two dimentional, yet my owls responded to TV and my cat plays with his reflection....Science is not always dead on.

Like I said. For 40 years my mother was a leading pioneer of bird rescue. That included a hell of a lot of nest fallout situations. I will take field experience and her opinion over the lab any day.

Frank
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"The luxury of not getting involved departed with the last lifeboat Skipper..."

I wouldn't use any formula for "$5000" exotics on them. I raise animals for a living, and these hand-feeding formulas are made to work well on exotics (parrots)based on the ability of the hand-feeder to pass them through a syringe, and also the characteristics of the parrot's crop. The consistency is what is important here---far more than the dietary exactness. Especially considering the growth rate of doves. They will become self sufficient in a matter of weeks, not months like parrots. Dog food is a very good alternative. You are much better off using a good puppy kibbles soaked in water. This can be hand-fed to the baby birds more easily by an inexperienced hand-feeder without risking aspirating the food into the birds lungs. (another danger of liquid diets since they can pass through he esophagus into the lungs much more easily than "chunks" of dog food.)

I have raised thousands of parrots (over 30 are being hand-fed right now) and a few dozen wild birds, and I wouldn't even consider using my parrot formula on doves for these reasons.

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Here's some interesting bird trivia for you. You know how people with pet budgies always give them "grit" to help them digest their food? Well, this is not needed----it is a wives tale. Budgies are actually a parrot (not a parakeet), and all parrots shell/"chew" their food. Grit is needed for adult birds like doves/pigeons/chickens because they eat their food whole, and the grit is needed in the proventriculus (gizzard) to grind down the shell so they can digest it. Grit can actually be a hazard because some calcium deficient birds will eat so much of it (to try and increase mineral levels) that they will impact their GI tract with the stuff and starve to death.

Rodney