Baby Sparrow

Go investigate, yep..brand new, still has her egg tooth baby sparrow on the ground, with barely any fuzz on her. Poor baby, I can’t find the nest she was flung out of, we’ve been having hell winds all week. Anyway the poor thing was chirping and beggingm little yellow mouth wide open.

So I brought her home, investigated how to care for her and am now a surrogate mommy to a sparrow. She’s eaten pretty good so far, and is curled up asleep in my bra atm, hey…it’s warm there!

the biggest worry now is how to keep her fed and warm while I am sleeping or at work..she needs fed every hour or so…

Kyrin

I did this with a newborn chick we named Chi. From day one. Don’t attempt this unless you have had experience handfeeding baby birds before, or if you don’t have an entire day to dedicate to it. I had to take Chi to work and feed her every 15 minutes. Luckily I worked at a petstore at the time so my manager allowed it. I kept her on a heating pad on low under a kritter keeper lined with paper towels. I got a 1cc syringe from the on side vet, broke off the needle and discarded it properly (sharps) and made a liquid mix of parrot handfeeding formula and high protien soft kitten food. When she was new I had to feed her every 15 minutes by placing the syringe into her throat and squirting it directly into her crop the way the momma would. Knowing exactly when to stop takes practice, and the formula must be a specific temperature or crop infections can result. The crop should be full but not overlyfull. Also the food must be the right consistency or it can cause blockages on exiting the crop. You also must be very careful not to aspirate the chick or get food into the trachea or she’s a goner. 🙁
Eventually you’ll get down to one hour, then every two… and eventually you can work onto solid foods. It’s very easy to malnourish them even if they are eating well, which will cause other problems.

From sunset to sunrise you do not need to feed the chick. But be prepared to get up at the crack of dawn and go to bed well after dark if you don’t allredy 😉

The chick’s best best is with a wildlife rehabber if you can find one that will take her!

Hi Kyrin
feel free to PM me if you need help or have questions
I’m a wildlife rehabilitator by the way 😀

we did that too, he was a bird bigger then a sparrow and native to this area. he was a little bigger then a baby too and was not as needy, he just could not fly yet. so we kept him in a bird cage next to our budgies and taught him how to fly in our sunroom. feeding him was fun. we would give him mealworms and he would just make the funniset chirpy sounds when he saw them. after he was flying ok, we released him.(the budgies were scared of him)

Oh yes! It’s much easier to help out an older bird that can take solid (wiggly) foods. 🙂

I’ll ditto rockerbot though- in the US, native species are illegal to have or own without a permit. In some localities, even the non native species are protected. Check with your local game and wildlife department fo find out. 🙂

My husband found her when he woke up in the morning. I had to be at work at 3am, so I wasn’t there.

I was really disappointed, even though I knew she was going be a lot of work, I was so hoping we’d manage to raise her successfully, I never would have thought she would have been able to lever herself out of that box, but she must have. She was pretty strong.

Kyrin
Oh, that is sad. At least you saved her for a day or so. 🙂

😥 poor little thing– Kudos to you for trying though, the world needs more kindness.
Good advice about the flea dip. Another care item you don’t want to go cheap on is vaccines. Years ago I bought some generic vaccines, with 7 to 10 cats most of the time, I need to vaccinate them myself. Well one old girl went into anaphylactic shock on me because of the generic. That turned into a nasty vet bill and I learned a scary lesson. Luckily Rosie was OK and I haven’t had any more problems with the vaccines, no more generic.