Roller Training Update

Last Friday, I finally caged up three more teams. The richer mix of canary, rape, hemp and petamine got the birds singing a full song. The four that did not sing were fed the Bird of Paradise mix of wheat germ oil and vitamin coated seed and the following day two of the four were singing a full song.. The other two must have fooled me into thinking they were males!! So back in the aviary they went.

The temperature high average for now is 54 degrees. Yesterday, however, a snow storm came in and the high was freezing. I felt sorry for the birds and put them in their cabinets back in the aviary just for warmth. Will bring them out only for singing today and probably can put them back in the garage on Wednesday. That is calling it fairly close as I am riding down to Tulsa with Doyle very early Thursday morning for National!

Today, I will make final adjustments to the teams so that the best are together. I start with brothers and half brothers and then place by the quality of the flutes sang so that likes are with likes. I will also likely need a couple more birds to make up any vacancies so I can either try the thin young cocks that I haven't caged up yet or a couple of old ones. The old ones will sing easily and quickly in the time I have left, I will give them BOP seed just because of the short time.

Thin cocks let you down but if I decide to use them, I will give them BOP seed right up to competition as they are high risk to go silent if they lose some of the rare fat they do have. With the BOP seed, I know I can get them singing in 24 hours providing they are cocks!!

Often in the past, I have used about three different tutors. Each time the young birds sing, a tutor was placed in the center of the stack. First I tutored hollow roll and flute tours then great hollow bell and add water or schokel the day before the competition. I add these at the extra just to get points need to win on our scale which gives variety birds the edge. This year, I decided to evaluate more on the genetics of what they are bringing instead of having the genetic information clouded by what they had learned. I need information more than trophies!

I will bring some of the BOP seed with me to national so if anyone needs to give their birds a song stimulus, let me know. Anyone want to try it on another kind of song bird or make up a team that is singing poorly or maybe a recall team? So far what I fed on one day produced results the next morning!!