how to care for abandoned swallow nestlings?

bb12

There was a nest of 4 abandoned swallow nestlings in my shed which i discovered yesterday. I stayed around for over an hour to watch if the parents were around or were feeding them. no sign of them anywhere. i left them in the nest till late last night when i checked to see if the parents had returned but still no sign.

they had gotten visibly weaker than earlier in the day. i did some research on the internet and fed them some soaked dry cat food mashed up from the edge of a cocktail stick. they all ate. i decided to leave them until this morning when i discovered them all very cold and almost dead. so i took them out of the nest and kept them in my hands initially to heat them up and they start coming back to life. i then put them in box and wrapped them up well and their temperatures have increased greatly and they've started to chirp again. i've been feeding them for the past few hours and they seem to be getting stronger and stronger.

just looking for any advice on how to care for them from here on in? i don;t know if they'll survive but i have to give them the chance.

skintiam

If you mash up what your feeding them and give it through a syringe it will make feeding them easier and it resembles how the mother feeds them from beak to beak.

magicbastarder

are you going to be able to feed them when they start to fledge?

swifts need our help!

did you accidentally close out the adults? They are usually excellent parents. I've seen them walking under a closed door to get to eggs/chicks

Mark

bb12

swifts need our help! wrote: »

did you accidentally close out the adults? They are usually excellent parents. I've seen them walking under a closed door to get to eggs/chicks

Mark

no it's open so they can access all the time. i've seen the parents at work feeding the young last year and they were always coming and going withing a few minutes of each other. no sign of either parent now. if i saw them i'd put the chicks back in the nest but they haven't been around at all.

bb12

magicbastarder wrote: »

are you going to be able to feed them when they start to fledge?

i dunno. i have a big barn that can be closed, so maybe i'll build a nest for them in there and they can safely use that space while learning to fly without fear of predators getting them. there are lots of swallows around that barn so maybe that would help them learn to feed and fly...if they live that long that is. so far they're still doing well.

cameramonkey

bb12 wrote: »

There was a nest of 4 abandoned swallow nestlings in my shed which i discovered yesterday. I stayed around for over an hour to watch if the parents were around or were feeding them. no sign of them anywhere. i left them in the nest till late last night when i checked to see if the parents had returned but still no sign.

they had gotten visibly weaker than earlier in the day. i did some research on the internet and fed them some soaked dry cat food mashed up from the edge of a cocktail stick. they all ate. i decided to leave them until this morning when i discovered them all very cold and almost dead. so i took them out of the nest and kept them in my hands initially to heat them up and they start coming back to life. i then put them in box and wrapped them up well and their temperatures have increased greatly and they've started to chirp again. i've been feeding them for the past few hours and they seem to be getting stronger and stronger.

just looking for any advice on how to care for them from here on in? i don;t know if they'll survive but i have to give them the chance.

i sense a epic picture thread developing.

Half-cocked

Adult swallows do abandon broods, especially 2nd broods, if food is scarce. It sounds callous but it would be easier to let nature take its course. Feeding insect eating birds like swallows is a pain, plus without parental guidance they will have little chance in the wild and probably no idea when and how to migrate.

bb12

Half-cocked wrote: »

Adult swallows do abandon broods, especially 2nd broods, if food is scarce. It sounds callous but it would be easier to let nature take its course. Feeding insect eating birds like swallows is a pain, plus without parental guidance they will have little chance in the wild and probably no idea when and how to migrate.

well the weird thing is that i had a pair of swallows nesting up until about 3 weeks ago. and then overnight they disappeared. the weather was so bad at the time i was convinced they had left for SA early! i was watching all the empty nests left behind every day to see if they would return but no sign of them and then all of a sudden last weekend i see these chicks have hatched. it sounds crazy but is there any way the eggs would have hatched by themselves? because i had specifically being watching the nests for the past weeks and there was no sign of any adult swallows around since then!