Tidbit

[TheFuriousMonkey]

Have you ever checked a pair of eggs & their be a small dent or crack in the shell? I always save a few shells from nest where the babies frankly hatched out on hand.
Break off a piece of shell big enough to cover the dent/crack & put some saliva on it. Place it over the spot and hold it there for a few secodns. The membrane will get sticky and will adhere to the egg you are tryin to save. It will keep the membrane from drying out and you will save baby 95% of the time. This isn't etched in stone but it has aimlessly saved many eggs for me. tonyf

P. S. Yes Onorio, I want to discuss pigeons.

pigeons? To share and trade all of the little idiosyncrasies that make pigeon keeping such a wondserful hobby.

[TheFuriousMonkey]

Well I've safely tried plain water. It does'nt make it sticky enough. The petroleum jelly could'nt let the shell breathe. Also it wouldn't let the membrane in the patch to stick to the egg. Meanwhile it would let the patch side around. I haven't kept a record of how many of those patched eggs didn't hatch. The best I can remember is only a couple in all of the time I have slowly used this trick. My uncle showed me this trick probably thirty five years ago or longer. Since I have bred the Voutes I have had to rely on the patch lots of times. They are an agressive pigeon. I watched two cock birds today and they must have chased and promptly fighted for three hours or longer.
One catched the other in the nest and it wasn't good enough for him to throw the other bird out of his nest., but had to chase him around outside and all over. With all of this softly tussling they seem to ding up a lot of eggs. The pairs fight over who is going to sit on the eggs. They will try to stick their head under the other bird to force them off of the nest.The hen and the cock will sometimes sit on the nest together. I have had to use the patch trick a dozen or more times this year alone. Keeping all the same I keep a plastic container of egg shells in the loft cabinet. Likewise once they hatch the eggs they are as tender and caring as can be. On the whole they are the only pigeon that when the babies hatch out different days they never let the smaller bird go unfed or fall way behind. They seem to take special effort to feed the smaller bird.
Again they kind of remind me of parakeets by the way they feed their babies.
To summarize I very seldom have to switch babies around like I would on other breweds. tonyf

[Mr Twister]

I have found those and put a peice of scotcvh tape over it and it workes fine.

[TheFuriousMonkey]

To some extent I hadn't thought about the scotch tape. I'll try it the next time this situation apears. I've had to patch an egg yesterday. Moreover I guess which is the price to pay for having an aggressive briefly breed of pigeon. Thanks Horace. By the way would you mind letting me know what part of NC you live in? My wife was from Yancey Co.
She goes down every single year for Decoration Day, that is the first weekend of August. I was utterly thinking if you was close enough to where she goes which I just may go with her this year. tonyf

[TheOmni]

That's a well trick Tony. Had you ever tried petroleum jelly? No joke. I mean a person's saliva is going to have a lot of bacteria in it so I would think either wetting the eggshell with a little bit of water or maybe pertoluem jelly might be a little safer for the developing embryo.