Deb,
Further to Fincho's point re dog food. If his droppings are well formed then fine.
If he gets diarrhoea swap the dog food for cat food. The high soy content of many dog foods can sometimes cause diarrhoea in these guys. Cat food, having a higher protein and fat content, may alleviate this if it becomes a problem.
Baby Magpie help please
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mattymeischke
- ...............................
- Posts: 862
- Joined: 25 Jul 2011, 20:25
- Location: Southern Tablelands of NSW
We reared an adopted maggie to problematic adolescence a couple of years ago, but he was ultimately released into the wild with at least some success.
My wife brought him home from the roadside, and he did well on a variety of foods including mince with egg (and rice and sometimes peas and corn), earthworms and grubs, and some weird dogfood sausage thing. He was inside for a couple of weeks, then outside permanently thereafter. The wild maggies regarded him with indefference but never showed any aggression.
As he became adult, his behaviour became problematic. He seemed to think that his place in the pecking order was between the adults and the kids, so he selectively harassed our eldest child. He tormented our back neighbours' two kelpies by landing on their backs and flying off with impunity. He also seemed to think that his territory included a patch of my sisters garden (next door), and his gratuitous attack on her 2 year old daughter led promptly to eviction.
I had (still have) a mate about 15km up the road with a disused enclosed chook shed where our problem child was contained for about two months. During that time, Jase progressively hid and buried the food in an increasingly complicated array of obstacles. Then he left the door open and fed steadily less. The bird visited him occasionally for a few months, then either flew away or was hit by a b-double.
He wasn't a mimic, but many are. One of our local wild ones can whinny like a horse.
Nobody caught any weird diseases and my kids love maggies, and argue in defence of the swooping ones at their school.
So, it worked for us (that time, at least).
Good luck.
My wife brought him home from the roadside, and he did well on a variety of foods including mince with egg (and rice and sometimes peas and corn), earthworms and grubs, and some weird dogfood sausage thing. He was inside for a couple of weeks, then outside permanently thereafter. The wild maggies regarded him with indefference but never showed any aggression.
As he became adult, his behaviour became problematic. He seemed to think that his place in the pecking order was between the adults and the kids, so he selectively harassed our eldest child. He tormented our back neighbours' two kelpies by landing on their backs and flying off with impunity. He also seemed to think that his territory included a patch of my sisters garden (next door), and his gratuitous attack on her 2 year old daughter led promptly to eviction.
I had (still have) a mate about 15km up the road with a disused enclosed chook shed where our problem child was contained for about two months. During that time, Jase progressively hid and buried the food in an increasingly complicated array of obstacles. Then he left the door open and fed steadily less. The bird visited him occasionally for a few months, then either flew away or was hit by a b-double.
He wasn't a mimic, but many are. One of our local wild ones can whinny like a horse.
Nobody caught any weird diseases and my kids love maggies, and argue in defence of the swooping ones at their school.
So, it worked for us (that time, at least).
Good luck.
Avid amateur aviculturalist; I keep mostly australian and foreign finches.
The art is long, the life so short; the critical moment is fleeting and experience can be misleading, crisis is difficult....... (Hippocrates)
The art is long, the life so short; the critical moment is fleeting and experience can be misleading, crisis is difficult....... (Hippocrates)