Canary/Finch High Protein Dry Nestling Food

High Protein Dry Mix for Canaries & Finches by Linda Brown/Jeepers Peepers Aviary

Feeding soft food to breeding birds remains a standard practice for successful canary and finch breeders and there are as many recipes out there as there are breeders. If your recipe and program has been successful, stay with it. However the dry mix we use (see recipe below) can be utilized to enhance your feeding program.

There are situations where feeding fresh egg food several times a day can’t happen. For many, it’s due to work schedules and for others like us, it’s due to the large size of our aviary. Over the years as we increased in size, we found that the time required made it impossible to maintain a soft food practice. Feeding large numbers of cages several times a day with perishable food became impossible for us to manage safely. As a result we found it necessary to come up with a Plan B.

Our solution was to develop a dry mix that could replace the soft food. The mix can also serve as a backup to soft food throughout the breeding season. During the molt, the dry mix provides a source of high protein which will be of benefit as often the molting birds are no longer fed the fresh egg food. The dry mix offers more than just protein, serving much like a daily vitamin and mineral supplement and can be fed throughout the year.

Every cage and flight in our aviary has an appropriately sized cup of our dry mix available to them at all times. We serve a quantity that can be consumed in a week’s time and change it out once a week. Time and observation will determine the quantity you will need to feed. Do not be discouraged if your birds initially seem uninterested, as it takes time for them to adjust to new foods. As your flock adapts to the dry mix, you will find that the birds will instinctively choose what part of the mix that they need at any given time. If you are currently providing dry egg food, the dry mix would be its replacement as the recipe incorporates dry egg food and so much more.

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