Mary Allen
Childbirth is both a miracle of nature and the most ordinary thing in the world. As with humans, sometimes such unfortunate circumstances come together with pigeons that a chick cannot hatch.
For the pigeon fancier, the breeding season is the best time of the year. During his daily visit to the dovecote, he eagerly examines whether new chicks have hatched. Even if it is something every day for the pigeon fancier, there is still something unapproachable about the hatching process. The fascination is renewed again and again.
It is fascinating to experience the naturalness with which the chick breaks through the eggshell with its egg tooth. Through this small window, it has the opportunity to breathe air. Now the chick has to peck open the eggshell all around and finally separate the two halves of the egg with a strong stretching movement.
There is no question that this is a tremendous effort for the chick. But nature helps him a little. The moisture brought into the nest by the parents makes the shell much brittle so that the chick does not have to crack such a hard shell. That is why it is so important that pigeons can bathe a lot during the breeding season.
It is interesting that the hatching process takes place under the brooding pigeon. The attentive breeder notices that the pigeon sits particularly calmly on the hatching chick. She behaves differently than when she sits on eggs that are not yet ready to hatch. Hardly hatched, the warmth of the old pigeon ensures that the down of the chick dries quickly.
Once this is done, the chick looks much larger and much stronger. Of course, it also helps that the old pigeons feed the chicks with crop mucus immediately after they have dried off. Now there is no holding back the chicks: They grow up at a rapid pace and are usually independent by the age of 25 to 27 days.
Just Enough Power for One Shell
That’s the theory. In practice, things sometimes don’t go so smoothly, and that’s completely normal, and not just with pigeons. In contrast to many other animal species, birth almost always takes place independently. Obstetrics rarely helps here. And if it does, the chick usually dies later. Nature has taken precautions and only lets those chicks survive that bring enough vitality to hatch. While that sounds harsh at first, it makes sense.
It is a pity when a chick cannot hatch or die only because of unfortunate circumstances. This is what happened to the author of this article again this year: the two pigeon chicks usually hatch slightly later. So also in this case. The first chick had made it out of the egg. But while one half of the egg was being pushed out of the nest, the other half stayed where it was and slipped over the other egg.
The chick inside had already opened the eggshell almost all the way around and was therefore about to hatch. But with the shell of the sibling chick put over it, all the work was in vain, the chick had to start all over again – and now it didn’t have an air hole anymore. However, the natural strength reserve of a pigeon chick is only sufficient to break through a shell. Since the author did not get there in time to remove the shell, the chick may have suffocated in its egg.
This small incident makes it clear that a successful birth is anything but a matter of course. Both the chick and the breeder need some luck. But the anecdote also shows that the breeder should crush empty eggshells as soon as possible. Then something like this can no longer happen. This also applies to chicken incubators.