Mike was walking on the family farm one day and came across a fledgling crow on the ground. Thinking it probably fell and Mom is somewhere nearby, he was going to leave it be. Then he saw its sibling laying dead close by and realized Mom wasn't coming back. So, he decided to take the baby home and try to save it. In researching the internet about the care and feeding of a baby crows, he learned that the the mom fed the babies hourly by regurgitating worms and grubs down their little throats. Mike collected some grubs from his garden and ground them up in a coffee grinder. Mmmmm delicious sounding, isn't it? When the baby opened it's mouth, he used a syringe to squirt the mixture down it's tiny throat. He repeated this every hour during it's wake time.
The baby lasted the first day so Mike gave it a name - Festus. After feeding him grubs for the first several days, he switched to ground up dog food and worms. A few days later he switched to dog food, vegetable oil, and water. This was gound in the blender and then syringe fed.
Now, he needed to come up with a plan to feed the baby while he was at work. He built a 4'x4' cage to go into the back of his pickup and took the bird to work with him. He tried as best he could to get down to feed Festus every hour. Sometimes his co-workers would do it for him when he was too busy. Mike continued this routine for about 2 months.
Festus was now ready to learn to fly. Mike built a bigger cage 10'x10'x6' high to give Festus some room to learn. Once Mike was confident Festus could fly on his own and avoid danger, he let Festus go free. He figured Festus would fly away to be with the other crows, but that didn't happen. Festus decided to stay there with Daddy Mike. About an hour before sunset, Festus would go up into the trees and roost for the night. At the break of dawn (around 5:30 in the Summer), if he wasn't already up, Festus would tap on Mike's bedroom window. When Mike came outside, Festus would fly down out of the trees and land near him or on his arm. Mike had two dogs, a Lab and a Border Collie mix that the bird befriended.
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