Judy Leach's Parrots
Watch a baby Baby Green Wing Hatch!!

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These pictures were taken as one of our baby Green Wing Macaws was hatching. It can take a baby as long as 3 days to hatch from the time that he first starts to pip (makes the first poke through the shell). When he is developed enough to hatch, his head must be positioned at the large end of the egg. He will poke a hole through an inner membrane and into the air sac for his first breath of air. As the oxygen in the air sac is used up, he begins to fight his way out of the shell. He uses the egg tooth on the tip of his beak to crack the shell in an effort to get air. This is when he begins his fight for life. If the egg shell is too hard or if he begins to pip when his head is at the narrow end of the egg (at the opposite end of the air sac), he will suffocate and die. If, during his struggle for air, he should rupture the umbilical cord that is attached to the blood veins in the egg, he will bleed to death. When he finally emerges, he is exhausted. He will rest for a number of hours absorbing the internal yolk sac that nature has supplied him for food. His eyes will not open until he is almost 3 weeks old, and he will depend on this mother, or his human family, for his food and care until he is almost 5 months old.

For this baby, this is the "beginning". His survival will depend on his parents or the breeders that hatched him, and he will be totally dependent on someone to feed him and take care of him. He must be fed every hour for the next couple of days, and will progress to every 1 1//2 to 2 hours as he grows.

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