He's developing slowly but he IS developing. He might always be small compared to other cockatiels (not surprising since his parents are small) but he's doing well and will probably make it into the normal weight range eventually.

He's adorable. Keep the pictures coming!

He looks like a little nub. And very spiky.

He is adorable! You are doing such a good job, look at him now, compared to the first pictures...

(S)he is so cute!

I have more pictures but I'm too tired to upload them now. But he's gained like 5 grams in the past 2 days, and has sped past 50 grams.

I put the nest box back in for Pippin. She laid three, waited a few days, and then started laying again. She's been sitting for a few days now and there's no more eggs, so hopefully she's done. The last few have had a slight swirling to them, so I've been upping her foods with calcium and will be taking her outside for some sunshine once the rain here finally stops.

I also candled the eggs Pippin was sitting on. All of them had ruptured air cells (seriously, does Pippin have something wrong with her that the air cells in her eggs are messed up? I suppose I could have broken them moving the nest box around but I wasn't that rough) so I was just going to leave them as I assumed they were nonviable. But three have started to develop anyway? They've got heartbeats and now I feel morally conflicted about boiling them >< srtiel's guide says ruptured air cells have 0% chance of hatching, but some of the chicken forums say they can. The yolk is still suspended, there are just bubbles floating around where the yolk is--at least I assume they're bubbles, they're white and they go whichever way is up.

If JJ didn't have a full-on birdy panic attack when separated from Pippin, I'd split them up, but JJ is inconsolable if he's not with her. Even if he's in the cage next to her, he'll cry and race back and forth trying to find a way to get to her. I've left them separated for a couple hours and he never calms down

I don't know much about air cell problems, but my guess would be that she's letting the eggs drop too far and too hard when she lays them. I had an egg that was apparently laid off a perch or some other inappropriate place that was damaged but not completely destroyed, and it was full of little bubbles instead of one big air cell. An egg that hits the nestbox floor too hard might also have tiny cracks in it, and excess evaporation from this might explain why one of the previous eggs developed such a huge air cell at a relatively early stage.

As for survivability with air cell damage, I just don't know. My guess is that it would depend on how much the air cell was damaged. If there's nothing in there but tiny bubbles there's probably no chance - the air cell plays a vital role during hatch and if it isn't there when it's needed the baby will be in big trouble. But if the air cell is mostly intact with just a few small bubbles, that might have a decent chance of hatching successfully. As far as I know the air cell doesn't do anything during the development stage, so the embryo could develop normally up to a point.

I could easily imagine Pippin doing something silly like laying the eggs too high. She is an impatient little critter...

Egg number 6 was laid last night, which better be the last one. The air cells are mostly intact with the three developing ones, but they already look like they're developing oddly? Like, this is how eggs normally look, right? These ones have the dark part and the yellow part flipped. Not sure if that means anything. One is possibly red-eyed though, which is weird. Can't tell if it's actually red-eyed or I can't see the eye for some reason. And of course now my curiosity and my weak will want to let them hatch just to see...oh how I wish you could spay birds, then this dilemma would never occur in the first place. My mom isn't helping, as she thinks raising the little devil we currently have has been all sorts of fun (she's not the one who hasn't had a full night's sleep in three weeks though!).

I'm not helping because I agree that raising the little devil has been all sorts of fun despite everything.

I mean, look at that hungry little face:



Went to an all-day thing and had to stop to pick someone up, so we got some car pictures while we waited for them. He does not like the car. 52 grams. He's a much darker pearl than Pippin. He's also got a bald spot behind his crest. I'm not sure if it's actually a bald spot or feathers haven't come in yet there. Neither parent has a bald spot.

(S)he is beautiful! It's normal that the baby has a bald spot now. That's the last place they grow feathers.

The way a candled egg looks depends a lot on the lighting conditions. When I switched recently from one type of light to another, the difference in the way the egg looked was so dramatic that I still haven't completely gotten my bearings. When you add the complexities of photography on to that, with the differences between cameras and the fact that the picture might have been photoshopped to enhance the clarity, it gets even harder to make a meaningful comparison. So I'd mostly look at factors like whether you see red coloring, whether the embryo looks alive and bigger every time you check, and whether the air cell looks like a reasonably appropriate size, and not worry too much about anything else because it might be normal. If one egg looks dramatically different from the others there might be a problem, but if they're all more or less the same at the same age there's a good chance that it's OK.

It's entirely possible that JJ is split lutino and you have a red-eyed chick in there. Cinnamon babies can have lutino-red eyes sometimes, which darken to plum colored sometime after they hatch.

It's up to you to decide whether to let the eggs hatch or not. It's possible that Pippin and JJ will be better parents this time around, and it's also possible that they haven't learned a thing and you'll have to raise the whole clutch from day 1. At least YOU know more about what you're getting into this time around, and are in a better position to judge whether it's worth it.

You mentioned lack of sleep lol. Do you think the current little squirt could make it through the night without being fed? According to the handfeeding schedule at http://www.cockatiel.org/articles/handfeeding.html babies can go from 11 PM to 7 AM without being fed when they're a week old. Your baby may be behind developmentally, but at 50 grams he's a lot bigger than a week-old chick. My babies typically weigh about 40 grams at day 8, and that's with their crops partly full.