Important Notes About Hand Feeding Baby Canaries

By Connie Soto

2008 ©

 

In my experience, I find the eye dropper to be the safest way to hand feed new baby canaries. Syringes do not offer enough control when administering the liquid food for the baby. Air bubbles should be able to be seen in the eye dropper and should be eliminated before administering the food. Care must be taken not to create an air bubble in the crop which can cause aspiration and immediate death. The temperature of the food should never be too hot or too cold. Waiting until the crop is empty or almost empty helps to prevent a bacterial infection taking care not to let the baby become too hungry.

 

 

Canary Baby Food Ingredients

 

Ground corn                   Whole ground corn with the cob and not the husk

Ground wheat                 Consists of a coarser grind of wheat flour

Corn gluten meal             A by-product of corn maize processing

Ground oat groats           Cleaned oats ground without the hulls

Wheat middlings             The product remaining after the flour is extracted from the wheat

Dried whole eggs             High quality protein dried eggs

Wheat germ meal             Wheat germ mixed with some bran, middlings or short

Soy protein isolate           Dry powder food ingredient that has been separated almost fat free

 

Commercial products are typically available locally or readily available on the Internet. I personally do not make my own baby food and provide the ingredients here for basic knowledge. In an emergency, a person could use baby rice cereal for a baby canary in distress. Commercial products add valuable vitamins, minerals and nutrients that are a necessity for the baby canary to get a good start in life.