Critical Care Wild Bird Feeding Pack

Suitable for any omnivorous baby bird (not suitable for birds of prey)

Never forget, the best place for any baby bird is with its parents. Looking after a baby bird is very labour intensive and often unsuccessful and leads to heartache. Only take on this job if you have no other option. Find a local wildlife rescue if you can, they do this all the time and have the time and skills to take this on. A baby bird will need to be fed every 15 minutes or so.

A healthy balanced feed for every common UK garden bird such as: Thrushes, sparrows, bluetits, larks, blackbirds, pigeons, doves, starlings, wrens, finches, robins & many others

Place 1 scoop of THC Critical Feed Formula (CFF) into a small dish, bowl, or plastic container. Add any medicines or favourite powdered herbs (oregano, garlic, thyme, etc) required at this stage to the CFF and mix with a little warm (not hot) water with a spoon or fork. The CFF is a complete feed for any bird and needs no additional ingredients or vitamins added unless your bird is sick. Drizzle a little Olive oil on top (always keep olive oil handy for your birds, it has a million uses and it will be useful for many other things). Add a little warm water and mix with a teaspoon or fork to a medium creamy consistency, adding small amounts of water as required. Experience will help you reach the correct consistency to be able to suck the mixture into the syringe, watery or runny is no good, too thick and lumpy is no good.

Note: the CFF will slowly set hard if left to stand too long so once you have the correct consistency (something like double cream) the best time to administer the feed is right away. Do not prepare the feed too far in advance.

If the mixture sets too hard to suck into the syringe, simply add a little more warm water and mix to a creamy consistency again. We advise that you only prepare enough CFF at any one time to feed the number of sick birds you have (preferably only 1 bird).

Unless feeding a tiny bird which is recently hatched attach the feeding pipe firmly to the syringe and suck up the mixture into the syringe via the feeding pipe, keeping the end of the pipe submerged in the CFF mix so you don’t draw in excess air. You may need to tip the bowl when you are near the end of the mixture to exclude air. If feeding tiny newly-hatched birds such as bluetits, robins etc use the 1ml syringe without a pipe added.

Draw the mixture in steadily until you reach the correct marker on the syringe, then lift the pipe out of the mixture and tilt it upright as we are now going to remove any air. Draw the plunger in until all the CFF mixture and air are gone from the end and into the syringe. Tilt the syringe s that the outlet spout on the syringe is at the top and gently depress the plunger until all the air leaves the syringe and pipe and the pipe is full of CFF mixture to the very tip. If you now have only the mixture in the syringe and the pipe is full without any air you are ready to administer the feed. If you have less than intended, now that the air is excluded, you can insert the pipe back into the mixture and draw more in until the correct line is reached. There is no benefit to going beyond the end marker and you may draw the plunger completely out of the syringe if you do - please be careful.

Administering the feed (this is easiest with a helper)

Important!
Only feed a chick which is begging for food unless it is ill or dying, you can overfill a baby bird and drown it in food, be very careful!
Tap the side of the nest you have made for your bird (you made a nest, right?), she should raise her head and beg for food.
As soon as she opens her beak, slide the syringe spout or pipe very gently but smoothly over her tongue avoiding the airway at the back of her tongue and insert a little way into her throat.

Once the pipe is safely past her airway and a little way into her throat you may start to pump the feed gently but smoothly into her crop, this will usually work best if you do it at the same speed you sucked it into the syringe and no faster. If you go too fast you may cause the food to slosh into her crop and up her throat into her airway and she could drown, if you go too slow she may get impatient and spit out the pipe. Once baby birds have the hang of it they will try to swallow the pipe and it will be easier and more obvious how fast to go.

Later whn baby birds have grown, use the yellow tweezers to offer larger food items such as smushed up insects, the yellow tweezers are designed to look like a bird’s beak

Once you have administered the feed your bird may turn around in the nest and wave her bottom at you, she is asking you to take her poop away (this is what the blue tweezers are for!) If she ejects a poop, grab it with the tweezers and wrap it in a tissue for disposal

Cleaning the equipment

After administering the feed you may clean the syringe and pipe as follows and reuse them up to 10 or more times (if cleaned thoroughly and carefully).
Suck clean water rapidly into the syringe and forcefully eject it again 2 or 3 times to wash out any waste CFF. Do the same again using warm water and detergent in your washing-up bowl. Pull the plunger completely out of the syringe and carefully wash the plunger, the syringe body, and the feeding pipe with warm water and kitchen detergent. Harsh cleaning chemicals such as Milton or other sterilizing fluids will shorten the life of the rubber components of the syringe plunger so please bear this in mind.

To reuse the syringe

In human medicine, the syringes are designed for single use only and after several uses, the plunger rubber will stretch and it will be difficult to reassemble the plunger into the syringe body. Pour a few drops of olive oil into the open end of the syringe body then, holding the plunger against the hole, cause the oil to run onto the plunger rubber and rotate the plunger to smear olive oil onto the whole of the rubber component of the plunger, this will allow much easier reassembly of the syringe and extend the life of the plunger.