The health of a bird is largely dependent on what it eats. Giving your bird a healthy and nutrient-rich diet will ensure that they live a long healthy life. Giving a baby bird the best quality food is even more important as it is still growing into an adult, but what does this food look like? What do baby collared doves eat?

Baby collared doves need to be fed a solution similar to the crop milk that their parents feed them. You can make crop milk at home by combining equal parts of dehydrated dried pure soy protein, soy butter, water, vitamins, and a pinch of chalk dust, and mixing it into a runny paste. 

What do baby collared doves eat? 

A baby collard dove will need a lot of help with their diet, they can’t find food themselves but they still need essential nutrients in an easy to swallow package.

Baby collared doves in their earliest stages would be fed crop milk straight from their mother’s beak. Parent birds create crop milk in their bodies. The milk is a secretion created in the lining of the crop of the parent bird. This milk does not have any calcium or carbohydrates like mammal milk does but it contains minerals, fat, protein, bacteria, antibodies, antioxidants. This will only be fed to the bird for a few days then the parents will mix in real food to wean them off of the crop milk.

If you’ve rescued a lost baby collard dove then feeding it can be rather tricky. Duplicating crop milk is not that easy but it’s not impossible either! 

A good home-made crop milk involves mixing equal parts of dehydrated dried pure soy protein, soy butter, water, vitamins, and a pinch of chalk dust and mixing it to create a runny paste. You can then feed this mixture to the little dove in tiny, but frequent squirts from something that replicates a mother’s beak.

Popping by your local pet store and picking up extra fine or baby bird feed mix can be added to the babies diet as you wean it off the crop milk. Adult collared doves can eat a variety of foods, including plant and fruit seeds, cereal grains, millet, sunflower, wheat and especially corn. You can feed your dove this as it grows to adult age

What do baby collared doves drink?

The main drink of choice for baby collard doves is their mothers crop milk. Especially if they are still very young. Baby collard doves get the water they need from the food they eat. 

Tiny baby collard doves won’t have strong enough digestion systems just yet. Until they mature. Their water needs to be given directly from the crop milk they eat.

How can you tell how old a baby dove is?

Looks are everything when guessing the age of a baby dove. A newly born dove called a squab will have no feathers. A slightly older dove at 4 or 5 days-old will have tan-coloured feathers. At 15 and 45 days old the dove will have flight-ready feathers, collar, and all. You will generally only see adult doves because parents keep their babies in the nest for the earlier stages of life for protection.

When can you start feeding doves adult dove food?

Once their feathers are fully grown and flight-ready, at 30 to 45 days old, then you can stop feeding the birds crop milk and switch over to a fully adult dove diet. Congratulations your baby has matured! Now its time for the big bird feed. You can serve up rounds of adult dove food such as grains, plant, and fruit seeds.

Conclusion 

I conclusion, baby doves will eat a diet of crop milk for the first few days of life. After this, the parents will introduce real food and wean them off of the milk. If you’ve found an abandoned baby collard dove you can create crop milk at home. To create this mix dehydrated dried pure soy protein, soy butter, water, vitamins, and a pinch of chalk dust and to create a runny paste.

They get their water from the crop milk and when off of the milk they get it from the food they eat. You can tell how old a dove is by the colour of its feathers. You can start feeding the bird regular adult dove food 30-45 days into the animal’s life out of the egg.

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