What Do You Feed Mourning Dove Hatchlings?

Young birds falling from nests risk injury from predators such as cats and rodents. Before you bring the birds home, make sure they really need help. Search for the nest and replace them, if possible. Feeding abandoned young birds such as mourning dove hatchlings requires making up batches of homemade formula to replace the crop milk fed to wild hatchlings, properly known as squabs.

  1. Crop Milk

    • Mourning doves hatch young between April and September and feed young exclusively on a diet of crop milk until they are three days old. Crop milk is a special secretion produced by both male and female doves. Mourning doves make this milk in their well-developed crops. Special throat lining cells filled with "milk" form before eggs hatch. These are shed and parents regurgitate the cells to feed hatchlings. This nutritious milk increases their weight to 14 times their birth weight, by the time they're two weeks old. After approximately 14 days, the hatchlings are gradually weaned onto a diet of regurgitated seeds. Both parents make crop milk to feed hatchlings. They produce it on a diet of weeds such as sunflowers, foxtails, ragweed and grains such as corn, millet and sorghum.

    Replacement Formula for Crop Milk

    • Abandoned mourning dove hatchlings need the rich fats and proteins supplied by crop milk to thrive. The recipe for a substitute contains strained chicken flavor baby food, corn oil, cooked egg yolk and low-fat yoghurt. Added to this are a mix are supplements including calcium carbonate, vitamin C, cod liver oil and vitamin B complex powder. Birds between one and three days old also need digestive enzymes to break down the proteins in this mixture. These are available from vets. This mixture is blended and spoils quickly and must be made freshly every few days.

    Feeding Tips for Hatchlings

    • Delivering the replacement crop milk to mourning dove hatchlings involves some skillful work with a feeding tube and plastic syringe, to avoid damaging the young bird's delicate throat tissues. Medical-grade plastic tubing is the safest and softest for this job. This tube's inserted to the side of the mouth, and slow pressure is exerted on the syringe plunger, to avoid choking the hatchling. This messy process settles into a rhythm as you learn the way each hatchling feeds. Have plenty of cleanup supplies on hand, especially during the first few days.

    Preventing Crop Impaction

    • Crop impaction occurs when a mourning dove hatchlings are fed too often or too large an amount. Impaction makes it hard to the touch and requires the attention of a vet. The crop must be completely emptied before feeding. A full crop should feel like a hot water bottle that's ¾ filled. Birds up to a week old can be fed four times a day; over seven days old, three times a day; and hatchlings weaning can be fed twice a day. Never feed a hatchling so much "formula" that its crop becomes more than ¾ full. Mourning doves, like all game birds, have large crops, but vary from bird to bird.