No Fly Zone

I like to keep a couple of flour moth traps (sometimes called insect traps) out just in case a flour moth hatches out. Surprisingly, flour moth traps are amazingly effective at catching flies!

This Spring, I opened the traps up and laid them flat in the aviary window, thinking the light coming through the window would attract flour moths if I had any. I tilted the traps out of eye sight.

Was I ever shocked today when I decided that these traps that had been in the window for several months now probably needed changing, they were saturated with flies!

Oh how gross, no flour moths but flies galore!! I immediately shot this photo and discarded them and put two new ones in the window!

The Traps Make My aviary A No Fly Zone!

Tight Legged Pants Are In This Fall - Tight Feathering Is Always In!!

Tight feathering on a canary where the feathers hug the body like a glove is not only beautiful but often the competitive edge needed to win top prizes at bird shows. I always take moment after judging to quiz exhibitors about their feeding methods and to what they attribute their birds excellent feathering. And it always comes down to excellent nutrition!

On numerous posts, I have recommended World Organic liquid multiple B vitamins in raisin concentrate for normal molting and to prevent and treat abnormal soft molt. I get these from my local health food store, Natural of Course. You can also substitute human multiple B vitamins tablets, just make the water canary yellow.

In addition to B vitamins, make sure your birds are getting amino acids especially methionine. I use a vitamin amino acid supplement called Miracle from Italy which I get from ABBA Products (they call it AA Miracle, don't forget the AA or the clerk may not find it in their computer).

I also recently tried the Biodecken brand, Molt and Optimix. adding the B vitamins to these products resulting in observable tightening of the flanks. Even though it is only mid August, my birds look so good you would think it is mid October. I purchase Biodecken products from Ricardo Sanchez, 214 998-7474. (In addition, I use Biodecken novafood nestling food, neonate formula and their multiple vitamin and immune support.)

Qualife Molt Ingredients:  DL-Methionine, L Treonine, Niacin, Choline Chloride, Pantotenic Acid, Pyridoxin Hidrochloride, Sodium Bicarbonate, Sucrose and Glycerin.


Optimix Metabolism Ingredients: Chelated Selenium, Chelated Chromium, Chelated Zinc, Chelated Copper, Chelated Iron, Chelated Manganese, Chelated Cobalt, Chelated Magnesium, Calcium Gluconate, Potassium Iodide, Calcium saccharate, Surose, and Glycerin.

Excellent Vitamineral Supplement

Recently, I began using Natural Vitamineral, a pigeon product made in Belgium. The product has eight different minerals and vitamin A, D3, E, K3 - thiamine , and B2, B6, and B12. Overall condition improved and I was very impressed with the positive effect on my birds feathering and activity level. This rose colored powder for pigeons, is offered free choice in a small pot so birds eat only what they want. The idea of birds eating how much they wanted rather than adding it to their food really appealed to me.

Enthusiastically, I offered a cage of German Rollers and one of Borders open dishes of Vitamineral. Oh my, did they ever like it! But unfortunately, they jump right in the dish and as you can imagine, the wings and tail feather were promptly dusted to a matching rose color! Oh no, what was Big Bird thinking?

It has taken quite a few daily baths, over a month, for the rose colored feathers to disappear even though I only offered it a few hours in the open dish. Luckily, I had limited my experiment with the open dishes to two cages!

I am now adding it to the green nestling food recipe previously posted.

This product has distributors listed all over the world. For example: Australia - Merryland Products, South Africa - Exeder Produkte, Japan Tokyo  Champion Trade Co or International Fodder Kobe,  Belgium - Natural Granen. I purchased mine at Foy's Pigeon Supply US.

Lucca, my Belgian Malinois, is my newest aviary assistant.

His favorite job is encouraging the birds to fly back and forth. So far, he only works with German Rollers.

After all that work time for a rest and play with the natural sounding squawking duck toy. The duck is fine but wonder if they make a canary one?

Edible Swings

My birds are enjoying eating on their millet swings that I made by simply fastening two sprays together shaping like a swing and hanging by the top.

They love to nibble and play with the swing. When it is eating on the sides, I lay it down on the floor for them to finish.

Big Bird is enjoying eating our garden squash and squash blossoms (coated with Buddy Roaster and fried).

Delicious Green Softfood For Yellow Ground Canaries

Last year, I discovered that broccoli leaves were an excellent coloring agent for yellow ground birds. Click on the photo and notice the processed broccoli leaves have a luscious dark green color!

I feed this along with other egg containing nestling food starting with newly banded newborns (about five days old) through the show season and until I run out which last year was December. (I do not feed any green the first five days because they grow much better when the diet initially is high protein but at banding the chicks are ready to be fed greens.)

Farmers and neighbors were also glad to share broccoli leaves with me and when there was a surplus, I processed them and froze them.

Delicious Green Softfood For Yellow Ground Birds

4 cups Biodecken Novafood nestling food (Ricardo Sanchez) 
4 cups Proteen nestling food (Higgins)
1 Tablespoon Spirulina (Avi-Tech)
1 Tablespoon Pro-Biotic (Avi-Tech)
1 Tablespoon vitamins (Provital Canary Vitamin-Provital Animal Health and Nutrition or A A Miracle-ABBA Products)
Processed Broccoli Leaves or if not available broccoli heads
! package thawed Frozen Peas or Corn (place in hot water to thaw) and drain

Mix ingredients together. The only liquid is from the broccoli leaves and drained peas so it is fairly dry.

 The birds think it is especially delicious! Pictures below are of a couple of young Borders relishing every bite!

Making More Nest Room

When four or more chicks are hatched in one clutch, the nest becomes to small to adequately house them all. Commonly, one or more is prematurely found on the floor as they get squeezed out by the other chicks. Generally the bigger clutch have this problem as they approach 14 days old. (Typically, I expect the first chick to leave the nest on the 18th day.)

At that point, I like to add a second nest as close to the other one as possible and divide the chicks between the two nests. I am always surprised and delighted to see them switch nest and at times three will be in one nest and only one in the other.

The white nest is the original nest and the clay nest is the additional one added around the 14th day.

Most Important Learnings from 2013 Breeding Season - Feed Handrearing Formulas Dry to Hens and Chicks

Click on this photo of the youngest Columbus Fancy chicks and admire the tight feathering. Considering they are yet to go through their baby molt the quality of the feathering is fantastic. I like to see the feathering so tight that it looks like a slick suit rather than obvious individual feathers.

So what did I learn from the 2013 breeding season?

You may recall that in 2012, I was very hot on the CeDe Handrearing Formula but unfortunately, it was quickly out of stock at Higgins and so my experiments with it were cut short and were limited to using the product for hand feeding.

So this year at the National Cage Bird Show, I pre-ordered a case from Higgins. Also this year an equivalent product Biodecken Novafood Neonate first became available when Ricardo Sanchez brought this brand to the US and I had it also to work with.

They are both excellent products for hand feeding chicks. But you must know your breed. My rollers are 99% receptive to anything I do including hand feeding at will.

My borders are the opposite, Almost 100% of my borders will stop feeding or never fed if I even look in the nest to see if they are hatching well. One peak and that it. They have very strong protection instincts. Meddling or hand feeding is not tolerated! So the best thing for my borders is to feed fresh foods twice or three times a day and stay out of the aviary and avoid eye contact!

Recently, I found a border chick on the floor. I warmed it up a bit and hand fed it and gently placed it back under the hen. That was it for the Border hen as she refused to feed it another bite even though it was already a few days old. Wish I would have had a roller available for fostering...

With hand feeding Borders unwise, I decided to provide the handrearing formula, dry just as it comes from the package, in a separate dish starting on the morning of the 13th day to all my breeding pairs.

Did It Work? Did it ever work! The product works even better dry when the hen feeds it than when you supplement hand feed with it! And my best border hens who required their handrearing formula dish refilled each morning, their chicks grew at a fantastic rate!It was most notable on the borders as it seems like since they prefer less egg options their chick have a short growth lag compared to my rollers.

I also learned that handrearing formulas are fantastic weaning food as the chicks readily eat it. I attribute the excellent feathering on my young birds this year to having handrearing formula in the cage for the hens and also continuing to feed it to the chicks. I will continue feeding it dry to all my young birds or potential show birds through the molt...

It is such a healthy formula! I had a couple of older birds that were out of sorts and sure enough within a day or two of having a supplemental dish of handrearing food, they were back to normal!