Feeding the baby parrots with girls from the orphanage

We took 3 of the little girls from the orphanage, along with their daytime caregiver, Rafaela, to feed the babies yesterday. The youngest girl, Luciana, 5 years old was a little afraid at first but she finally felt comfortable enough to get close to the babies. The other two girls are sisters. Laura, 10 years old and Caren 8 years old. They all enjoyed feeding the babies and also got to see the other animals that stay at this home. They have a ferret, a pot belly pig, 2 rabbits, 3 parrots, 2 parakeets, a quail, a 10 month old St. Bernard, a chihuahua and a terrier, fish, a gerbil, and a cat. So this lady, Claire, has her hands full, without caring for 300 baby parrots. Some of the babies are in other homes so she doesn't have all 300 right now. Soon they will be transferred to a ranch about 20 miles outside of Mazatlan that has the ability to care for them until they can be released into the wild. Probably a couple more weeks.

From left, Laura, Luciana and Caren

From left, Rafaela, Laura, Luciana and Caren. You can see Luciana was very reluctant to join in.

Luciana finally felt comfortable enough to feed the babies.

Caren holding the ferret.

Greg helping feed the babies too.

Update on baby parrots

We have been helping with feeding the baby parrots now for 6 days, including today. However, we did miss yesterday but going back today and taking 3 of the little girls from the orphanage with us. That should be really fun for them and a good way to get the Mexicans involved in this type of project. It turns out this particular species of parrot is endangered here in Mazatlan. Of the 300 baby parrots that were rescued only 2 have died in 1 week. So that is really good.


Here are a few more pictures taken over the past few days. We will have more tomorrow with pictures of the little girls from the orphanage. We can tell the babies are getting stronger every day. Some are even eating on their own.

Feeding baby parrots.....

We helped to feed some baby parrots yesterday and going back today to help again.

Just last week, here in Mazatlan, there were 270 Orange-fronted Conure parrots stolen by two men that tried to cross the border into the US with them. They were going to attempt to sell them illegally. They were caught at the border by the Mexican police and are now in prison for 9 years.

The baby parrots are not old enough to feed themselves so are being fed by volunteers with a dropper. They have to be fed 3 times a day with Gerber baby food, like cereal and fruit. Some antibiotics and vitamin B12 and some other medicine have been added to the cereal to help them grow strong. They should be ready to feed themselves in about 2 weeks. Some are already doing so. It was an amazing experience feeding them with the dropper. When they get strong enough, they will be released back into the forest somewhere close to Mazatlan. We are hoping to be able to watch them when they are released. We were so happy to be able to help these poor little baby parrots that had been taken from their mamas.

Here is a little info on this type of parrot, which is the most prevalent type of parrot in Mexico.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange-fronted

This is a picture of just a few of the baby parrots. There were a whole lot more and they were very hungry and made lots of noise as you will notice in the video clip below.

Here is a video of us feeding the baby parrots with a dropper.