March 26, 2010
The three fertilized eggs all hatched and 2 chicks are now 17 days old and 1 chick is 13 days old. They are growing well but last night, to my horror, I found mites on the rim of the nest pan holding the single chick. I immediately made a new nest by spraying the new nest pan with Pestex before putting the nest pad and nesting material on top. I Sprayed every single tray and I sprayed the entire cages that were empty. I also treated every bird individually. When I saw the mites the first thing that came to mind was when someone told me "You have to treat your birdroom like you have mites". I think it was Paul Dee who said that. The lesson learned here is no matter how clean you keep your birdroom, you have to treat your birds and birdroom for mites before the breeding season. I did spray my birdroom in the winter but I didn't treat each bird individually like I did last year. Bad mistake. Hopefullly I have caught the mites early enough and it won't ruin the breeding season.
I took the pictures below about 3 days ago and there were no signs of mites at that time.
There were no signs of mites 3 days ago but last night there were small clusters of black mites on the rim of the nest pan, yuck! They would have been visible in the picture if they were there. This poor chick has made it to 13 days without a nest mate and now it has to deal with mites. Usually single chicks do not have a good survival rate because they don't have nest mates to help beg for food. They also get squashed by the hen when they are on their own. When this chick was 2 or 3 days old it was very weak and didn't raise its head much. I think this chick survived because of the hen. She would call the chick until it raised its head to feed.
To my surprise there were no mites in the nest pan holding the two chicks but I made a new mite-treated nest and replaced the dirty nest (pictured above) anyway. Their cage is right beside the one with the mites.
