Yesterday I found the egg broken a little bit. The baby was breathing inside the egg. I thought he was going to come out from the egg so I didn't touch it. But today he is still inside the egg, and the parents is just sitting beside him, not helping him out. I feel a little uneasy, wondering if there is something wrong so he could not come out successfully. Should I help the baby out from the egg?

Hey DoveLover - you DO NOT want to help the baby out of the egg. That is part of their process of strengthening the legs to stand on. They use the muscles that they have to push and break the egg open on their own, which in turn gives them stronger legs muscles. That is why the parent doves don't help. The dove has to be strong enough to break loose on its own or the parents will leave it alone. This is natures way of "The strong will survive". Sounds cruel, but that is the way it goes. The baby will probably be out within 24 hours, and then the parents will sit on it and protect it. They are just watching and still protecting by sitting near, but won't interfere until the "birth" process is complete....*smile*

Hope that helps some...

Unfortunately the baby didn't make it. He died in the egg which was outside the nest. Maybe he died then the parents pushed the egg out, or the parents pushed it out first then the baby died. I am no sure...Anyway, I really appreciate your help.
DoveLover

I am sorry for your loss, but this was not your fault. Sometimes nature takes a cruel turn. The one thing you can do if this ever happens is to raise the humidity of the room. This helps the baby to emerge. If you have a vaporizer you can turn it on in the dove room near the cage. (Don't point the steam at the cage and NEVER never try to "steam" the chick out of the egg!) This helps the chick to release from the egg.

You can LIGHTLY mist the air near the egg with a fine PURE WATER mist sprayer. Please do this sparingly and avoid the "pip" or "crack" in the egg or the chick will choke or drown. This sprayer should never have been used for anything except pure water. Any residue (even if thoroughly rinsed) will kill the bird.

When I was a little girl I loved to watch our baby chicks hatch in our giant incubator. We raised chickens, turkeys, peacocks, phesants, and quail. (Our pigeons and doves did their own incubating!) Sometimes there would be a little chick that would get stuck in an egg. My father would use the techniques I told you about to help it hatch. He told me that I was NEVER to try and extract the chick from the shell manually.

Well, my soft heart got the best of me once and I regret it to this day. One day, when he was at work and all the other techniques failed, I gently removed the chick...and it bled. And there was nothing I could do. Oh, it just broke my heart! There are little veins attached to the shell. Sometimes these babies don't get turned over enough by the parents and they become too "connected" to the shell to ever separate successfully.

So nature knows best, even though it is hard for us humans to understand this.
Autumn

Gee Autumn, I didn't know about the veins sticking to the egg shell. That's good know.

Yes, the baby is attached to the shell with some sort of vascular system and is also attached to a yolk sac, which feeds the chick through an umbilical cord. (So if anyone asks you if a bird has a belly button, you can tell them yes.)

Sometimes if a stuck chick does make it out, they are all slow and curled up. Many seem to have some sort of problem uncurling and standing.

Thanks. I knew about the yolk sac but not the veins and shell.

Thank you Autumn, I will keep it in mind.
DoveLover