I bought chard yesterday in Tesco's....
I luv it my birds aren't fussed on it tho!

I grow red chard in a flowerpot on my back porch, along with several other "bird salad" greens. My birds like chard throughout the year but they go crazy for it when they're breeding. That's how I get my award-winning "Velociraptor Shodu" pictures.

My Tesco, it's a miracle they have the commonest greens like spinach
But I know that they will love the buttered bread
Is rye bread good for them?

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Any kind of whole-grain bread is fine.

Yesterday I inspected the nest and took away one of the dummy eggs.
Frank was in the nest and had no intention to cooperate... so I had to put my kid gloves on, picked him up and place him on the bottom of the cage. He did the WEIRDEST thing: instead of charging me, or flying away, he stayed on the bottom of the cage trying to hide under the paper lining!
He seemed so confused, I felt so bad for him
So I tried to be as quick as possible and put him back on the eggs, and he was very happy again. He really made me feel like a criminal egg-stealing mean woman

Anyway, the hatched baby is only one at this time; due to the fact that I took away a few eggs, the next egg won't be necessarily hatching in the usual two-day interval.
The baby moves and does the usual noises but he seems quite small to me... but I might not remember correctly the size of the previous chicks.

He sits on top of the eggs and I was wondering whether it's a good idea to take one or two more of the dummy eggs away; I am afraid that he will get squashed between the parents' bodies and the eggs

It's normal for babies to sit on top of the eggs so it's OK to leave them there. Does he have food in his crop? The amount of food will usually be very small at this age, but if you see a small white bump in the right place he's being fed. The skin should look pink not red.

The colour is ok, he's light pink; his crop was slightly filled.
I have been in the bird room for a few hours but I only have heard them feed him once, about three hours ago... I am pretty sure that with the chicks last year I'd hear feeding noises pretty often.

They are very good parents and there is always at least one of them in the nest, so I can't figure out what's going wrong this time

How old is he, and how big is he compared to an egg? If it's possible to weigh him, how much does he weigh?

It's possible that nothing is going wrong, and the parents have fed him more often when you weren't there to hear it. When there are several babies in the nest you'll hear feeding sounds more frequently just simply because it takes longer to feed them all. It doesn't take very long with just one tiny chick. If his skin color is good, there's food in the crop, and he's growing at the normal rate, it sounds like everything is OK.

I checked this morning and the baby was dead
He hatched Friday so he was 3 days old, this is so sad. I had many problems trying to feed the chicks the last time, and they were two weeks old... There's no way I'd be able to feed a newborn. If the other two eggs hatch and there is a problem again I was thinking of taking them to the vet, but how do you safely transport such tiny creatures? Is it even doable?


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That's a shame, I'm sorry that you lost the baby. Do you have any idea what happened - had the parents been feeding him, and was he growing normally?

It's possible to transport tiny babies if you need to. You need some kind of padded container, like a small box with some nestbox bedding in it, and you need to make sure that they don't get chilled.