I've tried several different formulas and it's common for them to get thicker after they've sat around for a while. Plain old oatmeal does the same thing too lol. I just stir in a little more warm water after it thickens up.

The biggest problem I had with Lafebers was that it was hard to get the lumps out. Zupreem Embrace had some aspect I didn't like but I don't remember exactly what it was, maybe that it thickened up more than other brands. I like both brands but I found that a 50/50 blend of Zupreem and Lafebers was nicer than either one of them separately.

The last two years I've been using Higgins Intune and it was as good or better than the Zupreem/Lafeber blend. But I've been hearing good things about Hagen Tropican so I'm going to try that one next year. BTW I don't like anything about Kaytee Exact - the way it looks, the way it smells, the thinness of the texture. There's not anything actually wrong with it though and it's easier to find in stores than any of the other brands.

It's probably not your imagination that he's bigger. Tiel chicks grow so fast that you can almost see their size change while you're looking at them, and there's a major size difference between siblings that are just two days apart in age. In this picture the oldest baby is a week older than the youngest:

Ah, good to know. Kind of surprised none of the five million handfeeding articles I've read since Thursday mentioned that...would have been good to know.

The pet store only had Lafebers and Kaytee--I got both just in case, but I'm fond of Lafeber's pellets and don't really like Kaytee so chose Lafebers. Haven't had any trouble with lumps, but I'm only mixing up 1/3 tsp of formula at a time so it's pretty easy to whisk everything together. I saw a lot of love for Intune too when I was looking at what was preferred (and what a fierce battle that is!).

It's been several years since I used the Lafeber so they may have solved the problem with lumps. Brand preferences are all over the place and there are a lot of people who love Kaytee. I don't remember whether Kaytee thickens up after it sits for a couple of minutes or not, but I can tell you that it mixes up a lot thinner than the other brands. Meaning that you need about a 1:1 water to powder ratio for Kaytee and more like a 2:1 ratio for other brands. So a pound of Kaytee powder will only provide about half as much mixed formula as a pound of the other brands.

I used Lafeber a couple of months ago. The problem with the clumps still continue. My birds and I loved it. When it finished, I went back to Kaytee. I like Kaytee but I did not like the smell. I can't smell most things so the scent of Kaytee didn't really bother me

I think the Lafeber is great except for the lumps. When I was using plain Lafeber I put all the powder in the bag through a flour sifter, which helped a lot but didn't completely eliminate the problem. It got rid of all the original lumps that came out of the bag but it seemed like some of them re-formed when I mixed the formula. Mixing Lafeber with Zupreem sort of balanced things out and got rid of the lump problem.

I think I remember you saying that you mixed Lafeber with Kaytee in a blender. How did it come out?

So, question: he weighs 5 grams, so he ought to be eating .5 mLs per feeding as per Susanne's recommendations. Other sites say he ought to be eating every two hours. He can digest .3 mLs in two hours, but that's currently the limit--I fed him .4 at his last feeding and it's nearly all digested now but it took 3 hours.

I have two feeding recommendations and they're in conflict For now I'm sticking with the smaller, more frequent feedings. I hope that's right? I might post and ask on AvianAvenue--Susanne is occasionally active there, and there seem to be a lot of knowledgeable breeders there.

Ultimately I think you have to do what seems most appropriate for this particular baby. I think he's 5 days old now, and the chart at http://www.cockatiel.org/articles/handfeeding.html says babies of this age should be fed every three hours. IF this schedule is appropriate I'd feed him the amount he can digest in three hours, but I think it's probably more appropriate to feed him the amount he can digest in two hours. This is basically treating him like a younger baby since he's the size and weight of a younger baby. You could probably get away with feeding him a little more at longer intervals during the night though so you can catch a little more sleep. For daytime feeding, you could switch to the "older baby" schedule when he reaches the right size.

I don't know how you'd determine that though. I've never seen a chart giving the typical daily weights for a cockatiel chick. Susanne's "Watch Me Grow" article shows the weights for a bigger than average chick and the website at http://www.tieltreasures.com/babygallery.htm shows some weights for a baby that's probably more average sized. This baby's eyes opened right on schedule so it's developing normally.

FWIW here are the average weights for Shodu's babies. These are partly-full weights so you'd need to weigh your baby about an hour after feeding him to get a comparison that's remotely reasonable. My age-numbering system might be a little non-standard. I count the day of hatch as Age Zero, and the next day as Age One because the baby is one day old at that point - it's had about 24 hours out of the egg.

Age 0 - 3.8g
Age 1 day - 5.4g
2 - 7.8g
3 - 10.6
4 - 15.4
5 - 19.1
6 - 25.3
7 - 29.7
8 - 39.6
9 - 45.3
10 - 52.8
11 - 60.3
12 - 68.1
13 - 73.6
14 - 80.3

For the first few days Buster and Shodu don't stuff the chicks too full, but by the time they're a week old their crops are bigger than their heads.

Here's an idea for comparing your baby's weight to Shodu's chicks. Weigh him right before feeding when he's empty and right after feeding when he's full. That will give you the upper and lower limits for minimum and maximum weight.

Yeah, I count from day 0 too. (I'm a programmer, old habits die hard and all that).

I've been weighing him right before and right after feeding; he gains about .3 grams when full, and thus far his empty weight has gone up by .1 grams per feeding, although I only have two data points. He's currently sitting at 5.37 empty.

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but my chick looks about the same as the 4- or 5-day-old chick on the tieltreasure site, except he's half the weight. You can see the line where his eyes are going to open (you can see his eyes pinning through the lids which is kind of freaky), his feather development looks equivalent if not slightly ahead. He doesn't have the abdominal bulk that chick or similarly-aged chicks seem to have, though. He's got a strong feeding response and is very active when awake so I think he's doing okay despite the retarded weight gain.

This might be a stupid question, but I surprisingly can't find an answer--what does a crop look like when it's empty? I fed the chick .4 mL of formula at 6:30, which fills his crop to about marble size. By 8:30, there was a pea-sized amount of food left in his crop. By 9:30, his crop was entirely flat but I could still see a small amount of formula through his skin. By 10, there was no change. The stuff I can see in his crop is definitely food, or at least it isn't yeast. It's super-thin and moves aside if you press gently. The crop never feels doughy or squishy or watery. But it never seems to empty that last little bit? Is an empty crop when there's 100% no more food left, or when it's back flush with the skin?

I will be trying to get an appointment with a vet tomorrow, or at least consult with one over the phone or see if they have a vet tech who can help me. I might contact a different vet office; I like my avian vet but their office has given me the runaround several times and I've had bad experiences with some of the other vets who work there. The shop guy was useless, and no word from anyone else.

And again--thank you for your patience. Just typing everything out makes me a lot less worried and helps me plan what I need to do.