Conure parrot fostering : Green-cheeked
Conure parrot fostering – by Tony Silva
For me, every breeding season sees the birth of a new experiment. This year the focus was on finding foster parents that could initially rear the young of other species. The principle behind this experiment is that some aviculturists cannot rear newly hatched chicks but they can accommodate them after they are older than a week.
The trials involved Green-cheeked Conures Pyrrhura molinae, a commonly bred conure that can be regarded as domesticated. Five hand-reared pairs were selected. Two of these pairs would rear their own young and three pairs would be given foster chicks that had just hatched in an incubator. The Green-cheeked Conure pairs were housed in identical size cages, fed the same diet, and given the same nest. I monitored weight gains in chicks based on percentages.
Conure parrot fostering results:
The result was that the foster parents were able to rear White-bellied Caiques Pionites leucogaster xanthomerius, Hawk-headed Parrots Deroptyus accipitrinus, Severe Macaws Ara severus, and other conure species but NOT Yellow-lored Amazona xantholora and White-fronted Amazons Amazona albifrons, Eclectus or Poicephalus parrots.
This, I believe, is due to a different beak structure and begging response in the trial species. Conures have soft, bulbous pads on the sides of their mandibles. This feature is seen in all conures, macaws, and Hawk-headed Parrots, but not in Poicephalus and Eclectus.
Conures have a different begging call and pumping action than neonatal amazons, Eclectus and Poicephalus. That pumping action of conures is similar to that seen in macaws and to a degree in Deroptyus. The experiment will continue but the results are quite promising. All the chicks reached the necessary weight gain. The chicks were removed at 10 days of age.
A post on breeding conures:
https://www.wwbirds.co.za/dir/breeding-conures/
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