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Has anybody ever heard about a pair of birds that won't feed a lutino offspring? A pair (Grey and Cinnamon) I got from a lady who told me that they occasionally have a Lutino offspring but they don't feed it! All they had was a box with no top in an aviary with 38 other birds. Do you think it's possible that it belonged to another bird and somehow they knew it? Or the fact that the box had no top made the Lutino's difference very apparent? I'm wondering if a regular closed box would help in this case, anybody know?

I do not know if you had read some of my old posts but I had problems with my 'normal" greys abusing their lutino offspring. once the yellow color started to show on the lutino babies and the more they grew then the parents would tear at them. It was terrible.it was like that those yellow babies didn't belong there and they wanted them OUT!
get those lutinos out and start to hand feed them because the parents will get more and more aggressive towards them

So...you don't think a closed box would make a difference? I have not bred these birds. I want to wait 'till they are in top shape. I was just hopeing there was another solution. I usually start to hand feed at around 3 weeks.

Honestly, I would see what happens. Of course, a closed box should help, along with privacy. If the chick wasn't theirs, they may have known.

I would have handfeeding supplies on hand, but you may not need them. Better safe than sorry.

My whiteface and pied had a couple of clutches of chicks, and their 2nd clutch consisted of 3 normal grays and one lutino. I had no problems with her getting fed, but the hen, Missy did start plucking all the chicks about the 2nd or 3rd week, and had to ban her from the nest. Their nestbox was a 13x13" cardboard UPS shipping box with aspen shavings in the bottom, and the top closed except for when I needed to check on them or change shavings and clean out poop. The webcam was also mounted on the top of the box. I would be very surprised if the lutino chick came from another pair, but I suppose it's possible, but how would a very young chick move from nest to nest if it can not fly or walk yet? I think they maybe just didnt like the color of her/him, but that's just a guess. If they will feed it to at least a week, you can take over from there, but 3 weeks would be much better.

Sam

My thinking was that another hen laid in the same box (there was only one available). May be another male got to this hen? I think I can be confident in saying the chick didn't arrive on his own. That's all I can be confident of however.

a closed box makes a difference all around but just from my experience for some reason my tiels abused the lutinos.