Modena Pigeons- from egg to adulthood.

[Gungellan Farm]

This is a thread I am starting to show my personal experience with incubating pigeon eggs.
Two of the three pigeon eggs that were fertile will be placed in a Brinsea incubator and one egg will be left with a pair of parent pigeons to compare.
The second hen will receive a dummy egg until an egg is pipped and hatched out.
Once the pigeon chicks are hatched out, I will place them both with Nesting adults to acquire the necessary pigeon milk they need.
I will also be checking in on them from a camera I have set up inside their coop to be monitored from my iPad throughout the day as well as in person checking.
Kaytee formula will be used if chick isn’t being fed by an adult or given to adult that is feeding their chick.
Second chick will also be placed with the more capable hen.

Any questions?

 

[Misfits Farm 92]

I love modena pigeons! I'll be following along on here. I do have a question though: Why shouldn't the parents incubate the eggs? Will they crush them? If so, what stops them from crushing the squabs?

 

[Gungellan Farm]

I love modena pigeons! I'll be following along on here. I do have a question though: Why shouldn't the parents incubate the eggs? Will they crush them? If so, what stops them from crushing the squabs?

I haven’t had any issues with the eggs being crushed yet.
I didn’t have any luck last summer when I had them hatching their eggs out. I just received these beautiful birds back then. I was concerned for the weather, I live in the high desert so the nights get extremely cold sometimes and I wasn’t willing to risk all eggs. Out of four eggs. One went missing. I looked everywhere, so I gave that hen B an dried infertile pigeon egg after I took her second egg to the incubator. I then left one fertile egg with hen A and placed one fertile egg into the incubator from her for safe-keeping. All birds and animals are inexperienced when it comes to parenting and some animal just have a harder time figuring it or just human help. I like to keep in mind that Modena pigeons are man bred, they can not fly away from predators as well as wild pigeons or homers. They are more like chickens in that way. As being a man bred animal they may also endure other hardships because the of this. Imagine a bantam chicken trying to sit on a pigeon egg. I do however keep calcium in the form of crumbled oyster shell as well as high end pigeon food. The mother hens receive fresh water daily as well as fresh feed with calcium to the nesting area, so they do not have to leave chicks. There is a layer of pine shavings with a thick layer of fluffed out straw for their nesting. There is also a Brinsea brooding heat element in there as well that turns on when the sun goes down.
Any more questions?

 

[Gungellan Farm]

Two days ago the eggs pipped!! It was a very exciting day. I couldn’t stop talking to them to say hello and taking a peek to see if there was any progress.

Any questions?

 

[Kiki]

@biophiliac Come see!

 

[Gungellan Farm]

Here is an image of the pigeon chick hatched from underneath hen A. This is the egg that was not incubated electronically, but was left with the pigeon pair the length of it’s natural incubation.

As you can see that the hen is feeding her young very well as it’s gullet is full of pigeon milk.
So stinking cute!!!!!!
Any questions?

 

[Kiki]

Here is an image of the pigeon chick hatched from underneath hen A. This is the egg that was not incubated electronically, but was left with the pigeon pair the length of it’s natural incubation.

As you can see that the hen is feeding her young very well as it’s gullet is full of pigeon milk.
So stinking cute!!!!!!
Any questions?
View attachment 2576309

The poor thing is so ugly it's cute.

 

[AntiqueB]

Took the words right out of my mouth, @Kiki !

I assume the pink part is the beak?

 

[Gungellan Farm]

Took the words right out of my mouth, @Kiki !

I assume the pink part is the beak?

It is! I will take a better image of the other chicks when I can. I am about to check them all in an hour or so to see their feeding progress and to check if I need to supplement any of them with Kaytee.

 

[Gungellan Farm]

Here is an image of the last chick (#3) hatched out using an electronic (Brinsea) incubation method.
This little guy has a dark beak. I think I know who the parents are, although I could be wrong. This little guy will belong to hen B on the right.
The other two chicks were born with all pink beaks. So excited to how they will put turn out!

Any questions?