[Shaker_00]

Hello to everyone,







I have young pigeons that just had their baby hatch yesterday morning. Everything seemed perfect with the mother and father taking turns on the nesting and feeding yesterday. Today however seems to be a totally different story. The parents keep fighting eachother. The father sits on the nest, but is not sitting right on the baby.
It almost seems like the mother sees that he is not taking care of the baby properly so she tries to get back on the nest to sit on the baby, and that causes them to start fighting. I thought he was going to kill the mother so I quickly removed her. He went back to the nest, but refuses to actually sit on the baby. I tried putting them back together again 20 minutes later and the fighting continued. I decided to remove the father that time and mom went right to the nest and sat over the baby.
Is this normal behavior? Should I let them work it out and hope that the baby stays warm enough without the father sitting on it? I would appreciate any and all advice please.
I thank you in advance,
Shaker

 

[Marina B]

Let the mom take care of the baby for now. She will probably spend most of her time keeping him warm. Put the dad in a seperate cage next to hers so he can observe both her and the baby. Put him back in with her after a couple of days and see how things are going. He needs to know the baby is his, otherwise he might kill the baby when you put him back after a long seperation.

We had a similar post on here a while ago. Maybe this is happening because both are young and inexperienced.

 

[Shaker_00]

Thank you for your reply!
I did read a post that discussed the parents fighting, but I was in a panic because these were young birds, not mature as I believe that post was referring to, and this baby was only a day old. I guess I just needed the reassurance that I was doing the right thing. Thank you again.