We love hearing our customer’s stories. So we were really happy to hear from Sarah Gale, who has taken the decision to hand-rear her Blue -fronted Amazon.

She tells us her story below.

0 -7 days old – Hatchling Stage

The chick’s parents laid 3 eggs, 1 infertile and 2 fertile.

After 23 days, Sarah checked the nest box and discovered that one of the fertile eggs had got damaged. Therefore Sarah made the decision to remove the viable egg and finish it off in the incubator.

On day 28 a small pip appeared in the egg but two days later there was no progression. That’s when Sarah and her friend Jess, an experienced Parrot keeper, took the decision to remove the egg from the incubator.

They handled it and it was still moving, so they decided to assist the hatch.

On the 12^th February Jess started chipping away at the shell. The membrane was very tough and dry, so we had to wet the membrane to show up all the blood vessels. One small damaged vessel would be an end to the chick, but also it was imperative to get the beak and nares exposed for the baby to breath.

Once the beak was exposed we put the chick back into the fetal position and back into the incubator for all the blood vessels to disappear and the yolk sac to be absorbed.

24 hours later, on Valentine’s Day, Jess came over and checked the progress. the veins had subsided and a lot of the yolk sac had been absorbed.

The membrane had shrink wrapped the chick even though we had upped the humidity between 80-90% and wrapped the egg in absorbent cloth.

With careful precise technique and timing Jess managed to separate the inner membrane from the outer membrane to allow the chick enough movement to get itself out.

We wrapped the remaining egg in absorbent cloth moist cloth with the humidity still high. By the evening he managed to get himself out of the shell.

He weighed in at 9g.

1 week old – Advanced Hatchling Stage

The chick is now 31g. He is very lively.