Comprehensive Guide to Red Mite Dermanyssus gallinae - Identification & Assessment

In the following article I set out the information I used and protocols I created from reading through the available research on red mite, coupled with that garnered from my own observations and experience. The most important features of all parasitism, in my experience, is to clearly identify the parasite, understand its life-cycle and combine this with an assessment of the particular level of infestation. Only then can we fully comprehend what our actions should be and moreover without this knowledge we can waste vital time and energy on unnecessary treatments, instead of dealing with what can become a very real threat to our poultry.

Red mite - Dermanyssus gallinae is a member of the arachnid family, thus a relation of the scaly leg mite, Knemidocoptes mutans, which I have written about here. However, the red mite belongs to the order Mesostigmata, many of which are non-parasitic mites but free-living and most importantly, predatory. Interestingly though with red mite, its life cycle necessitates obligatory parasitic attributes, such as its need to blood-feed upon a host in order to complete the three final subsequent phases in its development. These are specifically the eight-legged stages which take it from protonymph, through deutonymph to full adulthood. As witness my photo above, red mite, should be easier to treat because unlike the scaly leg mite, it is visible to the naked eye, particularly and most gruesomely when its has fed and become bloated and red in colour.

How do I know if I have a serious level of Red Mite?

• One of the first indications of a red mite infestations is that your poultry may stop roosting in the house and if they are free range, will prefer roosting in the trees!

• Birds stamping their feet in the coop, as they feel the mites crawling up their legs.

• Birds may show signs of irritation with each other, with lack of sleep  causing them to be fractious and under stress. Just as in humans this can create conflict and irritation with neighbours.

• You may see blood spots (crushed mites) or even live ones crawling on the eggs in the nest boxes.

• Hens will go off lay. They may also seem fatigued, not as lively as usual and they may even look pale. This is obviously due to blood loss.

• There is a smell with red mite, apparently not everyone can sense it, to me it smells like vinegar and once your nose can identify it, it is a fail-safe proof you have red mite.

• You will feel mites dropping down onto your head and/or crawling onto you when you are in the coop or crawling up your hands when you collect eggs or take out the perches to clean the house! 

An Aside: The Strange Parallel  Between Host and Parasite

Below clutches of mites' eggs seemingly freshly-laid on the wood planking underneath the wire netting framed cover which had just been removed from one of our roosts. I can see five or maybe six eggs in the nest on the lower right. Top left I can make out a whole pile of eggs, I am guessing, in a communal nest and with the mites fussing around them. Do they guard them? Are they going to carry them away into some dark corner now they have been exposed to the light? I'm presuming they don't sit on them!

Red Mites - The Acid Test(s)

Here are a few quick tests to see if you have a bad infestation of mite.

For the Squeamish: The Movement Test

Take a power or cordless drill switch it on and run it with the body of the drill lying flat against the walls, door or floor of the coop/hen house. The mites will be triggered by the vibration, thinking the hens are coming back into the coop. You will see exactly where they are hiding.

For the Brave: The Heat Test

Place your hand on the wall, door and/or floor of the coop, leave it there for a few seconds. The mites nearest to your hand will start to emerge. They will also signal to those near at hand (sorry) so be very afraid!

..or The Not So Brave

Place a heated stone, not a hot water bottle because they will infest that, in the coop and wait.

For the Brave: The Hanky Test

Take a white paper handkerchief and run it all the way along the underside of the perch/roost after the birds have left the coop in the morning. If you have an infestation, it will be covered with tell-tale red streaks of squashed mites.

Look No Hanky! 

Here I'm making a preliminary test by running my hand under the roost/perch some three days after the first treatment, just to see if any one has hatched out in the meantime!

Understanding the Red Mite's Life Cycle and Habits 

As with all the parasites I have come across, understanding what they are about, is key to controlling the particular problem of their overgrowth. I write this rather than 'eradication' because, firstly there is not enough information on any of these creatures to understand if they have a symbiotic relationship with the host and secondly because red mite at low levels of population are caught and eaten by my chickens. It is human nature and certainly a commercially encouraged one, to think that everything needs to be 'zapped' to annihilation but recent research teaches us that some parasites, I'm thinking of beans and black fly, for example, are crucial to the development of the host. Who is to say if a low level of red mite in a coop doesn't regulate iron levels within birds, as this element is incredibly difficult to remove, except by blood letting, when it is in excess to requirement?

The illustration above, from Publicdomainpictures.com shows the female mite at the Deutonymph stage of development.

Below a video I made of a red mite infestation on an old cardboard box that had had three broodies in it - as you can see these have not fed, as luckily I became aware of them!

Important considerations, which help with control

1. Unlike the scaly leg mite, Dermanyssus gallinae, is not host specific and does in fact spend most of its time off the host, usually only visiting the bird for a few hours at night, to feed upon its blood.
2. Several studies have supported generalism in host choice for Red mites. It was previously thought they were avian specific but Dermanyssus gallinae have also been found on rodents and other mammals.
3. Like the literary blood-sucker, the vampire, Dermanyssus gallinae shuns sunlight, spending most of its life hiding in the darkest areas of the chicken coop, hen house or barn. 
4. A distinctive feature and upon which I have never found any accord, is its ability to remain without food for an exceedingly long time, think months and even years!
5. At all stages of its life, including, it has been recently postulated, the larval, it may feed upon blood but it is believed that a blood-meal is crucial in the three final stages, mentioned above. Furthermore, it is the females who need blood to develop and also during periods of reproduction, although the males are thought to take an occasional blood-feed.
6. The life cycle of the red mite from egg to adulthood usually takes around 14 days but the time can be halved, if weather conditions are favourable.
7. With reference to the above, mites prefer warm humid conditions to thrive and survive. At an optimum of 25°C to 35°C (77°F - 95°F) and 60% to 70 % humidity the mite population will 'explode' and quickly become an infestation.
8. The red mite will go dormant when temperatures drop below 10°C (50°F)  but temperatures above 45°C (113°F) are thought to be fatal.
9. Red mites find their host through movement, heat (body temperature), CO₂ (respiration) and chemical signals (odours).
10. If you have broodies in a coop, they will be a magnet for red mite, if you have an infestation.
11. If you have chicks in a coop then red mite, if they are in sufficient numbers can cause severe problems for them and which can lead to fatalities.
12. The females lay 4 to 8 eggs per day with an average in their life span of a total (depending on what paper you read) of 30 to 300 eggs.
13. Mites are adept at finding places to hide, woodworm holes, screw threads and underneath dried poo(p) are just some of the crafty ideas they have for hide-and-seek.

Conclusions

From the above we can draw the following important inferences:

Firstly, that if mites are at infestation level, any chicks and/or juveniles should be removed immediately as they are the most at risk.

Just as an aside here, unless this is an emergency as with the above, no bird should be removed at night, as if you are unlucky you may hit the brief two hour period when the mites may be 'in residence'. However, as you carry the bird, you will soon know, as they will start to transfer to you but it is still a risk you don't need to take.

Treating the bird is totally unnecessary and moreover a waste of valuable time. Treatment needs to be swift and efficient, the life cycle of the red mite from egg to adult being very short, once it has created a large population within the coop, the exponential growth is alarming!

Broodies too should be removed from the coop and their nest boxes changed and their old ones and the straw preferably burned if you have a stove. Normally I would compost old straw but the mites can live in the compost bin and attach themselves to a bird at an opportune moment.

If you buy or inherit  a second-hand coop or buy a broody hen then it is a good idea to check the house for mites with the tests above, even if the house has been unoccupied for many months. Check the broody for evidence of mite activity too. If you have bought her during the day, then chances are there should be nothing on her but she may have tell-tale skin irritation and damage which will testify to mites.  If you have been given her in a box or with straw, then the possibility is that there are mites in her bedding. (I once carried a broody over from a neighbour's house and carried over some mites too).

Once you have established there are mites and you have treated them, you should recheck and retreat, if necessary in line with the life cycle, spacing out your checking and treatments accordingly.  It is very important to remember that the weather will have an impact on when and how long the creatures take to hatch out and develop through their different stages.

If you live in a climate where the weather and humidity are optimum for mites, then you should do a routine check for them throughout the year.

Mites like to hide and they are good at it, so keeping the house clean, in particular, scraping the roosts and floor, so that there is less debris for them to hide in is very important. I also like to get the roost outside and tipped upside down, so that my birds can spy out and eat any of the mites that are hiding under them. Even mites that haven't fed and are at the 'grey ghost' stage are easily spotted as a tasty appetiser.

In the next article (Link Below) I will share the three ways I use to successfully get rid of red mite.

Thanks for dropping by and do feel free to share experiences or ask for further information in the comment section. If you have enjoyed this piece and found it useful think about sharing it with your family and friends, on social media and also maybe about joining this blog and/or subscribing to my Youtube channel or even supporting us on Patreon or

It all helps to keep me going!

Until next time, all the very best from Normandie! Sue

© 2020 Sue Cross

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Hens putting themselves to bed in a forest garden - the Normandy 'jungle fowl'

It is the Holy Grail of many a chicken keeper not only to get their hens to put themselves to bed, which is easy-peasy but also to get the latter (or something) to close the hen house door. To this end they invest in all kinds of ladder systems and electronic door hatches and gadgets, when maybe all they really needed to do was to plant a tree. 

My mother planted this bay tree over twenty years ago now, it was a single tiny sapling about ten centimetres high and it has flavoured many a fine casserole and delicious soup since. What perhaps we didn't expect was that it was also destined to become the nightly roost for over twenty of our chickens. 

I had wondered from the outset how far the making a forest garden for both ourselves and our poultry would entail a return to the latter's natural forest floor and tree-dwelling instincts. Now, having observed them in this nightly event of going to roost, I have been amazed by how complicated a ritual it is, involving seemingly individual hierarchical and group behaviours.

The choice of tree is also interesting, maybe I am reading too much into it but I am always amazed at how organised hens are and how much their practical and sybaritic needs are met in everything they do. The bay tree from a geographical point of view is protected, it is well situated against the North wall of the back of the longhouse and sheltered from the prevailing Westerlies from the sea by hedges and fencing. It is also at the heart of a mini shelter belt of acacia, horse chestnut, mulberry, climbing roses, buddleia and willow.

Being up against the house is not its only advantage, as it is right next to the door of an outbuilding, where some of the flock roost. Therefore, in the case of a sudden terrible downpour, the birds can change their minds and get indoors for the night. I also believe that psychologically, this tree, by its position has become an adjunct to the house, which makes it even safer in the minds of the hens. There is of course the fact that laurus nobilis is an evergreen, which makes it good, sheltered roosting at all seasons. It is also well covered with a thick crop of large, ovate, fleshy leaves and apart from cold weather damage loses very few of them. Thus it makes an excellent shelter from rain, hail and snow and also hides the birds from prying eyes from both above and below. At a height of over six metres it provides not only a means to get a very lofty perch but also a good view of the whole garden. 

In fact it was during the recent cat trouble we experienced that those twenty plus pairs of eyes were the first to inform me of both the when and where from of the attacks. The branches of the bay are smooth and wide but also give to the wind thus maybe not only rocking the birds to sleep but also avoiding bough breakage. Another aspect of the tree is its smell, which comes not only from the aromatic leaves but also from the delicate sweet perfume of its flowers. So not only a harmonious environment in which to relax and sleep but also this makes for great sensory camouflage as I have always assumed predators can sniff birds out in their roosting places.

My observations of tree roosting are as follows and the process is even more complicated than the ritual that surrounds the perches in the hen house.

I have always been so careful to make sure that all the roosts in the hen houses were at the same height as this is crucial to avoiding power struggles. Height of roosting,  as in height of crowing for cockerels is a really important factor in establishing dominance and/or can be used by inference to intimidate others. Here in the tree, the birds are beyond my interference and it is true there is a bit of squabbling that can go on in the evening with squawks of indignation. It seems places are reserved

.

The evening starts with one of my larger, though not necessarily dominant (things are very fluid here) cockerels scoping out the tree with a dominant hen. They go right to the top and the dominant hen sometimes stays there. The cockerel will then crow, and as you are probably aware crowing is used to signal the 'all clear' and I am guessing this is so here and as you will witness in the film below. The cockerel 'Mr Snuggles' then returns to earth and awaits the arrival of the rest of the tree dwellers. The hens and whatever cockerels decide to stay outdoors, (these latter are not always the same, as some of them prefer to rule over the roost in the outbuilding), now start to come to roost. 

They sit initially on the lower branches, where they start a sort of collective preening operation, much like the ritual of washing and teeth cleaning. There is also a general chattering and communication going on at the same time. Then as the evening progresses, they start to move up the tree to their final roosting places. Often these are, as I wrote above, designated places but they do change. For example, I have noticed in the past few days Mr Snuggles for whatever reasons romantic or otherwise, has begun to sit lower down the tree with a mother hen and her chick rather than roost at the top of the bay with his usual coterie of females.

Mr Snuggles actual job as the evening wears on, seems to be as a sweeper of sorts, as he encourages the hens to move further up the tree. He will also return to earth at any time, if he feels someone is dawdling about in the garden and he will then 'chase' them up the tree. This is much the same behaviour I have seen in dominant and even lower order cockerels in hen houses. They will patrol the garden looking for any 'stop-outs'. 

The cockerels however, will have none of this, if they decide to stay out to roost they pick their own place and at their own time. Many of the hens are also unwilling to obey commands from the officious Snuggles. However, my opinion is that this behaviour is ritualistic and I somehow feel the hens, the older ones definitely, move up the tree both because they know it makes sense but also because they know it is part of the 'game'.

As the tree is right outside our bedroom and as we really don't want to annoy the neighbourhood, we do remove the two usual tree-dwelling cockerels (sometimes three) from the tree each night. To do this Andy perfected the 'pallet wood chicken elevator', a simple T piece of wood, with which either to remove the rooster at ground level from below or at tree level from above.

 

Here demonstrated by Bungle, our golden, black-laced Polish hen.

If it was just us, living in the middle of nowhere, as I hope it will be any day soon, I would not bother as it would help me immeasurably to get everything done in the day, if I was up with the lark aka Mr Snuggles.

Now, if you'd like to, sit back and watch the film:

However, some of our chicks still prefer snuggling up to Mummy in a nice warm nest. 

Thanks for dropping by and if you have enjoyed this piece and found it useful think about sharing it and also maybe about joining this blog. Please also feel free to ask questions or make comments in the section below.

All the very best,

Sue


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©  Sue Cross 2015

Bare Roots - Creating food forest layers, maximum plantings for minimum cost.

When I was thinking about how to design and plant our garden and see it grow from the rough field and limited top soil stage, one of my first considerations was that we were going to spend most of our waking hours in it.  As this house and garden were bought as a long-term escape plan and because we were working and living in a town constantly surrounded by noise, our basic initial requirement was privacy and tranquillity,  a wild forest garden seemed perfect. 

Once we began to live here permanently and eventually to keep poultry, the natural environment it provided to do this, along with the addition of forage provided by the trees and plants became ever more valuable.

Transformation and Transmogrification - Open field to food forest garden

We also love to eat outside, so the idea of being surrounded by trees, plants and wildlife (at this point we had no poultry) was also a major consideration. (We had to replace the tiles of the house as a result of the 1999 tempest so the greenery also did a great job of removing the glare of modernity.)

One of my favourite memories of my childhood was of playing in the small woodland on our own farm or dreaming about the vast mediaeval forest on the neighbouring one.  The silence of woodland and forest is something you either love or hate, there is no middle ground. It is for that very understanding of the human psyche, that the word panic derives from the fear of the forest sprite, the Greek god Pan. He is supposed to have rustled leaves of bushes and forest vegetation as travellers passed through his domain, engendering irrational fears and flight! Having eaten many an evening meal by candlelight in the middle of trees and long grass surrounded by gangs of marauding hedgehogs, snorting wildly and crunching up snails, I can empathise.

The Canopy and Sub-Canopy

We started out to create the canopy and sub-canopy or as Gertrude Jekyll, would refer to it the 'carpentry' of the garden. I was working on the principle of beginning at the top and working down. The canopy was the part of the garden that would need the longest time to establish itself and in an open field with clay soil, was imperative for soil structure, drainage and shade. Initially I had very little knowledge of our present climate and growing potential of the soil, so I chose the best possible size of specimens for our budget. Although, with greater experience of the land and microclimate and thus its possibilities, we realised that growing the sub-canopy and even the canopy from seed and/or cuttings was quite viable. We also visited an Ecocampsite down in the Lot, where they had a much younger garden than ours but with beautiful large specimen trees and bamboo. We were advised that the holes for planting were dug with a small mechanical digger. So if you are building a house on site at the same time as establishing your garden and have access to machinery or better still, a large group of friends, you might think of this valuable tip of digging a huge receiving hole for the roots. You can do this and even fill in the holes with loose soil and compost until such time as you are ready to plant.

Bare Roots

 

Unless you are very young and only looking to live in your forest garden in your dotage, time is of the essence and the good news is, faster growing forms of plants are cheaper! Bare rooted refers to plants that are grown in the open and then dug up for sale, when dormant from late Autumn to early Spring. For this reason they can be also sent by carrier, so your choice of varieties, quality and price is much wider. I've always found bare roots to to be stronger and quicker to take off when replanted. This is because they are not suffering from lack of nutrient nor pot bound as large subjects can become in containers. Some of the main plants we have bought this way, are roses, fruit bushes, trees, including hedging. In the past and in order to build up a good number, we hoarded 'Birthday' money and gave trees as presents to each other. 

Warning: when we lived in the UK, I used to see a particularly fine tree in our local nursery and reserve it for Andy until such time as we were leaving for France. On going back to fetch it I would often find it had grown rather larger than expected. This beautiful Betula utilis var. 'jacquemontii' aka the Himalayan birch (above) and this gorgeously rich Prunus serrula var. tibetica aka birch-bark or Tibetan cherry (right) had to be wound around the foot well and entwined around my feet to reach their destination. Furthermore don't worry if you think something is in the wrong place, if you are careful, you can move even quite large trees. The Italian white peach (above top) moved three times before it was happy enough with its soil and aspect to produce a good crop. 

Some of the  first plants we bought to create our garden were a parcel of bare root roses from Norfolk, these included a selection known as the Empress Joséphine collection. Some of these were for the canopy and some for lower levels and ground cover. These we hauled over from the UK on the back of our motorbike. It might seem, as the name suggests, coals to Newcastle but at the time France was still in the dying throws of the equivalent of 'Wheatcroft fever'. This meant that all that was on offer in roses were, to me, bright, blowsy modern hybrid teas with no scent and precious little value for food or to a wild garden. Above are a selection of the best culinary and medicinal roses, rosa.galica officinalis or the Apothecary Rose (centre right with the golden stamens) lives up to its name. It makes fabulous ice cream and I have used rose petals to make rose water, which I have applied to great effect in eye baths and compresses (see my article on treating eye problems with rosewater here).

Rambling Rector (above) was another of my choices, a beautiful double rambler, seen here growing through another great culinary rose, the Bourbon, Zigeuner Knabe. Then of course there is the fabulous rosa. filipes 'Kiftsgate' (below) which gives your forest garden canopy the Sissinghurst touch.

Our hens love roses, leaves and petals and apple blossom, many flowers from trees and shrubs are actually a valuable and freely available source of good wild nutrition for you and your birds and luckily most of the time the latter will be content to eat them as they fall. In fact many of the trees we have planted, have provided extra nutrient for our birds, whether wild or domesticated. Our Amelanchier (Serviceberry), for example, (taken bare rooted from a friend's garden), the hens eat every petal as they drop, we never get a beautiful white carpet from it as we do from the apple orchard.

Furthermore, although we eat the petals and hips of our roses we also had additional food value from them in honey, as my neighbour who has hives bought us down a kilo of his harvest in recognition of the food we had provided for his bees.

Our other major bare-root purchases  were hedging beech and hornbeam, most necessary here as wind and weather protection from the wild sea breezes. Building up a series of hedges in a garden provides not only a series of garden 'rooms', this might seem formal for a forest garden. However, by its very nature, food forest gardens have no blueprint as such, each one being unique to the individual gardener. 

To me hedges give a wonderful sense of space and discovery as you travel through a garden, they also provide a fantastic safe habitat for wildlife and of course nesting for birds. Hens love hedges too, in the Early Spring and Summer they will use them as corridors, 'grazing' on the nutritious leaves and  roosting high up in them to catch a sea breeze during the heat of the day. I also use strategic hedging to break up flight paths for marauding birds of prey, which is exceedingly necessary if you have pigeons, particularly white fantails and free-ranging tiny chicks.

Hedges also, of course, are very important for protecting poultry from the rain. Although in the case of these two chamois Polish brothers, lowering their frizzled plumage, whilst standing between the current bushes and the beech hedges seems to do just as well.






The next part of this series will look at building up the canopy and sub-canopy as well as the other layers of your food forest,  from seeds and cuttings.
 

Thanks for dropping by and if you have enjoyed this piece and found it useful think about sharing it and also may be about joining this blog. Please also feel free to ask questions or make comments in the section below.
All the very best,
Sue
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©  Sue Cross 2015

Introduction to hand-feeding baby pigeons in an emergency or otherwise - Why, What & When

This is a several-part post dealing with how to cope with feeding baby and juvenile pigeons in a variety of circumstances. This will include domesticated pigeons and those you may have found abandoned in the wild. In my case, I have never found an abandoned wild pigeon, people just bring them to me because they know I have pigeons and presume I should look after them. They also bring me other sick or injured birds but that's another story, although the feeding part is often not dissimilar. The following situations are all ones I've come across over my years of keeping fantails and fantail-crosses.

Domestic Pigeons - Why and when should you intervene?

Cold weather and single parenting

There is perhaps nothing more vulnerable than a small baby fantail pigeon born in the Winter, like this one pictured above. He was hatched in our dovecote and under normal circumstances he would be permanently covered but in a forest garden and in the vagaries of our climate, a hint of sun can send both parents out foraging. Fantails are very tame, they not only stay near to their home but also bond easily with their keepers. My removing of this pigeon from its nest because it is already beginning to show signs of cold, will not mean its parents will abandon it. In fact on several occasions, with freezing temperatures and snow, I have moved the whole nest, parents included into the barn and experienced no problems whatsoever.

It is not for fanciful reasons that fantails are associated with love, fidelity and romance on wedding cakes and Valentine's cards, for they are loving mates and caring parents. In my experience they are monagamous but that does not mean that either sex is not averse to a little dalliance now and again. I once saw a male pigeon, who had both a partner and young chicks, trysting with a young female behind the dovecote and then returning to his mate carrying a twig for the nest in his beak. His behaviour was redolent of the classic guilty offerings of flowers and chocolates. In a free-range, forest environment like ours, there are therefore, occasionally birds who are left to bring up babies alone.

Difficulties arise for the lone parent, if the baby is hatched in the colder months, as it will mean the mother will be out foraging, right from the day of hatch. Some breeders keep food in the pigeons' nests in cold weather and I have done this on occasions but for an optimum nutrition there is nothing like the parent bird itself for seeking out those extra minerals, vitamins and other micronutrients to be found in the 'wild'. So although my pigeons have organic, sprouted grain, fruits, vegetables and oyster shell available, I would still prefer to take in the baby pigeon for a while and if necessary, give it a little extra feed. This allows time for the parent time to create her own unique and nourishing blend of pigeon milk. Who, for example would think of feeding moss and lichens, as shown by these two foraging parents above?

 

Spring showers & uneven growth

Even after the Winter months there can be other problems for pigeon parents, as we head into Spring, namely, heavy rain. Fantails were created to live around sacred sites, often those included water gardens and they have retained that love of bathing. Unfortunately, this also involves enjoying heavy rain. They will sit on the roof with their wings uplifted in the pose of a human taking a shower but unfortunately this can wreak havoc with their ability to fly. On several occasions I have had both parents stuck on the roof and babies getting cold and hungry back in the nest.

The other problem with my pigeons and when I have needed to intervene, is in a situation of uneven growth. Most pigeons can cope with laying two eggs and thus having two hatches at a time, as you can see below, even one skilful parent can feed two babies evenly (even simultaneously). However, sometimes things go awry. When this happens one baby becomes ever stronger and more demanding for food and the other one gets left behind. There are two possible solutions, one being to take the larger one out at feeding time thus leaving the smaller to feed first. This however, is only practical if you know exactly when the foraging parent is coming back, so sometimes it may be more expedient to take the smaller one out and hand-feed it. Do not though, totally rule out the first option and it is worth trying to get a combination of both feeding sources, so as to get the optimum nutrition for the baby. 

Different rates of growth in pigeon babies do occur but it is only when they are very young that this can cause problems and can lead to fatalities. For example, where the smaller pigeon becomes too weak to indicate to the parent that it needs food. As you can see in the photo below, these two babies have been unevenly fed but it is more likely that the white one was better fed than the blue, rather than the blue one was underfed. As these two were brought up in the compost bin and I was unaware of their existence for their first weeks of life, I was not able to remedy the situation.

Orphans and Abandonment

These are the two young pigeons I called the Compost Kids, their parents were both killed by a sparrowhawk at a period of development in their life, when although technically juveniles, they were still not ready to leave the nest. As their name suggests, they were not hatched in the dovecote but in the top layer of a 'resting' compost bin, therefore they had neither seen other pigeons nor the way adult pigeons feed. They somehow instinctively knew how to drink but feeding was another matter. Part of getting them to eat was also, in part, having them feel comfortable around me and accepting me in loco parentis. The fact that they had each other and that they had seen no pigeons other than their parents, helped I'm sure in getting them to trust me.

How could anyone abandon this baby?

This is Little Pige, he was abandoned by his mother after she got caught on the roof taking a shower in heavy rain and couldn't return to her nest overnight. I had to take the baby in and feed him. This, even though it was the case of a single mother and a Fantail crossed with a town pigeon and I was worried that both these factors would make for her being very wary of joint feeding. After I took him back to the nest, unlike a similar situation with a baby fantail, (see below), who was welcomed back and fed with open wings, Little Pige's mother wouldn't even sit on him.

Little Pige like many abandoned or orphaned pigeons has forged a very strong bond with us. This is not necessarily something either I or the pigeon would want if I was feeding a wild bird but more of this in the next article.

If you have your own flock of pigeons then having an orphaned or abandoned pigeon may be solved by getting another of your parent birds to adopt them. This can be an ideal solution, as long as it doesn't put a strain on their ability to feed their own young. Baby pigeons are very vocal and insistent when it comes to being fed (as you will see in the video below) and can often get themselves permanently adopted.

Now if you'd like a little light relief, sit back and watch the film of the abandoned Little Pige and his easy acceptance of hand-fed peas!

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All the very best,
Sue
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© 2015 Sue Cross