Guide to Incubation & Handraising Parrots (Paperback)

~ Phil Digney (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Written by Western Australian aviculturist, Phil Digney, this title covers all necessary requirements needed to successfully take an egg through to a fully weaned chick. Beautifully illustrated with colour images throughout, this valuable title also includes many charts and diagrams and informative text laid out in the easy-to-read format. Contents include Incubation: artificial incubation, meet the egg!, choosing an incubator/hatcher, equipment, handling the egg, incubation, hatching details, problems and troubleshooting, egg weighing; Handraising parrots: the goal, fundamentals, brooders and brooding, formulas, feeding instruments, feeding the newly hatched, growth phase, peak/weaning phase, weaning black cockatoos, pulling chicks, troubleshooting.

Product Details

• Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: ABK Publications; 1st edition (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 095871021X
• ISBN-13: 978-0958710213
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,844,181 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars for very serious breeders only -, January 21, 1999

By	[e-mail] (South Africa) - See all my reviews

If you are a serious breeder who wishes to advance your knowledge based on scientific facts rather than the help from back yard breeders, you will find this book a must. excellent to refer back to while incubating, feeding etc. As an experienced breeder i have found the info reliable as it is scientifically proven and backed-up. Don't bother with this book if you are a lazy breeder.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this before you decide to hatch that egg...., December 31, 2004

By	Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

A breeder from whom I have purchased several birds makes raising parrot hatchlings look relatively easy compared with the process depicted in Phil Digney's Guide to INCUBATION AND HANDRAISING PARROTS. However, Digney is involved with parrot breeding programs in Australia, and some of his charges are environmentally challenged. Their loss, one assumes, would be great, so he cuts no corners. Digney, a young man shown in one photograph feeding his baby parrots, has an impressive set of credentials. He has worked with captive breeding programs for a dozen years or so, and as of the publication of this book, focused on Australian parrots, however, there is no reason to assume his techniques cannot be transferred to parrots from other parts of the world, although the average lay person probably would not go to so much trouble with a clutch of Cockatiels.

Digney's book is technically impressive and makes interesting reading for an amateur like me interested in the future of birds. Raising baby parrots looks far more challenging than raising human babies. There are many ways you can go wrong with factors as diverse as choosing the proper bedding materials (non-toxic) to finding a bird's windpipe so that you don't drown him when you feed him with a tube.

The guide is filled with wonderful colorful photographs and easy to follow text laid out with charts full of measurements (Digney apparently is a stickler for keeping good records). Before you decide whether to raise baby birds, you may want to check this book out, if for no other reason than to read about the merits of using a spoon, a syringe or a crop tube for feeding your new chicks.