Tuesday, April 29, 2014

This Weeks Questions For Grand Bird - Male Pulling Nesting Material

Please post your questions that are not related to a particular post to this one.



Tuesday:

1. If a male canary disturbs  the female, what can I do? Should I seperate him and hang him in front of female or totally change his location and leave the female all alone, even if she can't hear the voice of male?  Please help me?? on Today's E-mail - Problem Male Pulls Nesting Material

Answer: If the male is disruptive,  move him to another location. The hen is quite content to sit and raise her chicks by herself. Once chicks hatch, the paired hen usually will not let the male feed the chicks directly but rather she prefers to do it herself and for him to feed her and she will feed the chicks. She is receptive toward the male when her chicks are about 14 days old.

If the hen has not laid her clutch of eggs yet, I put him in her cage after dark and let him mate with her first thing in the morning and then out he goes. If he has mated with her in the two weeks before she lays, the eggs will likely be fertile but to be on the safe side, I usually introduce him periodically till she lays.

It is good to let males have a day or two off between hens to let his sperm counts build.  Experiments I ran where the male with proven fertility that season was later ran with three or more hens in a day, even though he mated with several hens a day who were within the 14 day till laying period, most eggs were infertile.

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