Susanne says it's OK to call her. I'll send a PM with the number.

As you can tell, I'm still here. But I really do need to get moving lol.

If you have cinnamon or cayenne pepper, Susanne says these are warming herbs that will help save the body from having to use its own resources to stay warm. The link I provided earlier should give an idea of how much to use, or maybe she can tell you directly.

I talked to Sussane. She thought it was yeast. So I fed it the different things she told me to and I thought it was going to be better. It wasn't. It got worse. The baby started gasping for air. I tried to empty the crop, as she said, but the seeds wouldn't come out. Trying to massage the crop, I pulled out a dozen pin feathers. Crying very badly, we found a avian vet and drove the 1 hour trip. The avian vet tried to get out the contents of the crop by sucking out the insides. Not having any success, he tried to make the hole bigger to get out the seeds. He failed. He said the baby looked like it was going to die, and it did. It died right there in his arms. It was all my fault! He said the reason it died was because I had been giving the baby formula and letting the dad feed it. But instead of crop milk, the dad was feeding it seeds. These seeds stopped up the food from getting to the intestions to be digested. I can't even start to explain the grief I had and still have as I walked out of the office with a little box in my hands. I am now responsible for 2 deaths, and I only had 3 babies! To know that you are responsible for the lifless body you hold in your hands is unbearable. My parents aren't going to make me get rid of my birds, but they do expect me to pay for the vet bill, unfortuanately.

Oh no! I'm SOO sorry

I am honestly speechless! I am so sorry for the loss of the baby.

I hope you feel better, this is so shocking!

I am so sorry Hannah!
And I think it's quite harsh to condemn yourself in this way. You did all you possibly could. You are not a magician and nobody is born with knowledge!
Every time I read yours and Baruch's thread I feel really proud seeing how much you both fight for your babies' health. Not all the decisions are the best decisions, in hindsight, but how could you possibly have known???
Please be kind with yourself

Thank you so much guys. I was litterly balling my eyes out the whole time. I never expected it to happen. I thought it was getting better. But, I guess I was wrong.

I really feel bad now! I am dearly sorry!

At first we are shocked to have any emotion , but after a while, we realize it wasn't a dream and all our emotions start coming out. I happened to me on January 12 and I hope it will never happen again.

Wait Baruch, what happened to you in January?

I'll pm you...

I'm so sorry that you lost the baby, but it wasn't your fault and you did everything you could to save it. The real problem was that the parents stopped feeding the baby properly, and the baby was badly weakened by lack of food. Once a baby has been weakened it can take a while to recover its ability to digest. I don't think the seeds in the crop prevented the other food from getting through. This poor baby never did have a very full crop during the time you tried to save it, so it wasn't a situation where the crop was so overstuffed that the baby couldn't process the food. The liquid in the formula would have helped soften up the seed, and if the baby was digesting normally it the seeds and all the rest of the food would have been processed. 'Crop milk' is for tiny babies. Parents feed regular foods to the older chicks and it was normal for the dad to give the baby seeds. No one knew that the baby wouldn't be able to digest them, it was just bad luck.

Susanne was probably right about the yeast problem. It's normal to have some yeast in the body, but it tends to get out of control when the baby's health and digestion have been impaired in any way. This would also have interfered with the baby's ability to digest food.

I'm sorry things turned out this way; I was hoping the little baby would get better and grow strong and healthy. But sometimes the best we can do isn't good enough, and even experienced breeders lose babies to problems like this sometimes. Breeding is risky business and it doesn't always turn out well. But at least you have one strong healthy baby, and you've learned a lot from this experience. If you ever let your birds breed again, you'll know more about what to watch out for and what to do when problems occur.