Hello Kathy!
Why am I only getting this message now???  It seems like you wrote it AGES 
ago!  Oh well...  Better late than never I suppose (but very weird also)!
 KJ> I'm sorry to hear about the loss of the babies...that's hard to take.
I actually sort'a cried...  I felt so guilty.  We had 'em going for over a 
month and then he dies right in my hand.  It was a life, and I felt for it.
 KJ> MOST humans don't feed tiels from day 1. A friend of mine has two pairs
 KJ> whose eggs she must incubate, or they don't hatch. She ALWAYS feeds from
 KJ> day 1, and her babies do fine.
That's what the petstore lady said, but our tiels THREW THEM OUT!  They were 
very frightened of them and actually attacked them (!!!) so we had to 
intervene and try to bring them up ourselves (and you know the results).
 KJ> Many things can cause chicks to die. Most likely cause for younger
 KJ> babies to die suddenly is aspirating (inhaling) formula. It's SO easy to
 KJ> do--sometimes the babies 'spit up' and inhale food after they've been
 KJ> put back in the brooder. The older one may have had some sort of
 KJ> bacterial infection or something--it's hard to say without a necropsy to
 KJ> find the cause of death.
Perhaps I didn't feed him right because he died RIGHT AFTER I fed him.  I'm 
not going to lie about it-- I've gotta face it.  But Kathy, I *swear*, I fed 
him a gazillion times before that and he was alright.  Anyway, I feel very 
guilty about him.  We buried both chicks in our front yard and put a 
mini-tombstone there (no I'm not tacky-- I really felt badly for them).  
They're in good company.  Our canary from childhood is also buried there (he 
lived to be eight years old which seemed like a long time to me!).
 KJ> Give the tiels a rest for a while, and if they try again later, be
 KJ> prepared to pull the babies. Some pairs take a couple tries to figure
 KJ> out what to do with those noisy little things!
They already have!  They have six eggs again!  I can't handle it again, 
athy!
I'm gonna go nuts!  I just -know- that they're going to throw 'em out again, 
and then what do I do...???  BTW: Can you hear them chirping -before- they're 
hatched???  If not, then I'm going mental 'cause I could've swore that I 
heard a chick but I couldn't see one anywhere (and it was coming from their 
nestbox (yes-- my sis' and I made one for them and wowow-- they're actually 
using it!).
As ALWAYS, Kathy, it's been nice chatting with you!
--- Maximus 3.01
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