Pedigree Comes Through the Beak - Birdie Booster

Nutritious Treat to Help Cocks Come Into Full Breeding Condition

Wednesday will be my cocks third weekly treatment with water soluble vitamin E. Today, I made up some Birdie Booster and fed to all cocks to help with their vent development. Hens will get some Birdie Booster but only when both the cocks and hens are ready. I have found that wheat products can over stimulate the hens to lay like a chicken before they will invite mating, so I always hold off on wheat products with them till the time is right for them to mate and lay! Birdie Booster has three ingredients: toasted wheat germ, brewer's yeast flakes, and soy grits.

The first ingredient is Kretschmer brand of toasted wheat germ. It smells ao good and the birds find it very tasty that they will eat it enthusiastically , even plain. It is sold at most grocery stores in the cereal section near the oatmeal. It is also carried at our Wal-mart super center for a cheaper price. The grocery store Kretschmer brand is manufactured by Quaker Oats Company and also sold at health food stores under a different label, I think the last I got there was the Mother Goose brand.

The second ingredient in Birdie Booster is Brewer's Yeast Flakes. My preferred brand is Lewis Lab and is sold in health food stores. This is a premium yeast grown on sugar beets which are well known for their ability to readily absorb nutrients from the soil. As a result, this yeast is exceptionally rich is selenium and other minerals. It also provides a wide variety of amino acids. The product comes in flakes, buds, and powder. The birds prefer the flakes, with buds being their second choice. They will readily eat either of these textures, even plain.

The third ingredient in my Birdie Booster is soy grits. I have found that soy is excellent to promote vent development without the bad side effect, aggression which is associated with animal protein (eggs). I use a variety of soy products in conditioning and in with eggs in my egg food. Even though soy grits has a finer texture, it is still similar to the other two products. My soy grits are the NOW brand which is commonly sold in health food stores. The product is 100% non-genetically engineered Soy Grits. My birds will eat soy grits fed plain but they like the texture of wheat germ best. By mixing the three ingredients together, the birds get more of the soy than if I feed it separately.

Bottoms Up Revisited - A Very Happy Ending!

What a Difference a Day Makes!

The hen with the pasted vent recovered immediately! Notice the change in her eyes, how wide open they are now. Previously, they were dull and starting to close down and give a hint of a squint like when birds are dehydrated.

When I caught her to take her picture, she actually acknowledged me with a chirp every time she hopped from perch to perch. Birds who do not tolerate rich diets, are quickly fixed by lowering the dietary fat. In this case, I continued feeding the general seed mix but decreased the amount of sunflower chips. Even though I offered lots of oatmeal in the mix to offset the high fat, offering it and eating it are two completely different things! Luckily, she readily ate the extra supplement, a fine grind wild bird mix, which is simply fine ground mixture of corn and milo. This is made by Rausch Seed and Feed, Inc., 937 N. Railroad Drive, Belle Plaine, Kansas 672012, phone: 316 488-3939. It costs $11 for 50 lbs. It is sold as either coarse or fine ground. For canaries, fine grind is best. Just fine grinding corn and milo would be easy to duplicate anywhere. The fat content is 2% while protein is 8.5%. I was somewhat skeptical about the milo when Doyle mention this new mix he had found, as even my wild birds waste the milo and just refuse to eat it. The feed dealer also assured me that ground milo was a different story, and they even like it when it is ground. He was ever so right!

This mix is very good in breeds with sensitive guts and/or long feathering who are prone to pasted vents, like thin birds, borders, old crest, and glosters. It is also good because corn is high in lysine. My borders, like most borders, are a little finicky but the picture shows several young border cocks eating it readily on the first day I offered it! Birds getting the corn/milo mix in my aviary right now include all thin birds, borders, and hens. These birds are exhibiting tighter feather and appear even more fit!

The moral of this long two posting poop story is "If you hear hoof beats, think of horses and not zebras"!!!!!

Keep A Watchful Eye

Bottoms Up

Today, as I fed my birds, I noticed this particular hen in a flight of a dozen hens, feather's were not as tight as usual, her eyes didn't look wide open and happy but rather somewhat squinted and distressed, and she was occasionally dropping her wings like she was straining. At first I was shocked, what has happened to this hen? (Click on picture 1 to enlarge it to see how subtle the first view was.)

She turned again, and it was obvious, a large dropping was hanging to her! (Click on picture 2.) I immediately caught her and turned her bottoms up, only to be totally grossed by the huge dried excrement!! (Click on picture 3 for the full effect!) After a very brief photo session, I washed the area, removed the excrement and pulled a few feathers around the vent area to make this less likely.

The cause of this could be an infection but before I jump to that, I remembered that a couple of days ago, I had generously increased the percentage of sunflower chips in my seed mix to about 25%. Whenever you increase the richness in the diet, some birds will pass loose droppings and if the feathering is intense around the vent, the dropping can stick to the feathers and if not noticed it will seal off the vent and the bird may die. Birds that are too thin and heavily feathered are at particular risk as the flatten lower abdomen brings the feathers closer to the vent.

After seeing one hen, it is wise to carefully look at your birds from several angles and bottoms up any that need it. This I did and found several borders with one or two droppings sticking to feathers and an occasional colorbred with the same. No German rollers had this problem just as I expected. Rollers feathering is short and narrow and not as dense as most other kinds of canaries (except those bred for sparsely feathered such as gibbers). In fact, feather pairing is not even considered when pairing rollers.

So I am backing up the percentage of sunflower a bit, and keeping a watchful eye on my birds!

Red Rose or Packing?

All of Life is for Learning!

What a learning experience this contest has been for me!! First of all most of you probably don't know that I secretly considered myself to be Ansel Hogan! I have always loved photography but my experience was limited to instruction to my husband and daughter on what to take and where to stand etc. I always wisely let them shoot the picture. And then I would critique the composition and make suggestions on the retake.What a shock to find out that taking good bird pictures which accurately show the qualities of color, feather type and quality, and body shape which will be so critical for the contestant, would be oh so difficult!

I began by attempting to standardizing the shots by using the same setting with the Stafford show cage as the background. Unfortunately sometimes the cage looked the right color and other times when the lighting was brighter it looked too light blue. If I corrected the background color, the bird didn't look right! Quickly, I gave up on the cage color and instead put my focus on the way the birds looked!

From the many years of teaching experience, I learned that the higher the student motivation, the higher the frustration level could go. Well, I must have been very motivated as boy was I frustrated, momma was not happy! I must have shot at least a hundred shots a day of each bird for four days, only to hit the erase button over and over as the bird was out of position (hanging on the wire!) or the way it was standing didn't accurately show its head shape or neck etc. To top it off, I occasionally would accidentally take a shot with the flash on. Well, not only did that make the color terrible but worse than that, the bird was totally spooked!

I have always try to be patient when I judge birds, to give them a chance to show their very best. While judging fife and borders, I take a little extra time to see if they could hold their excellent confirmation when I ask them to hop from perch to perch. While excellent birds can hold their confirmation under stress, the also ran, flatten their backs and heads. And with birds of position, I take a few moments after a bird is moved to let it settle down so it has a good opportunity to show its best position and confirmation. In colorbred I like to mark the points for position and confirmation before I stress them looking at minute ticks, evenness of color, etc. In German rollers, I patiently listen intently for 15 minutes and adjust the scores up when indicated. Even with years of practicing patience with birds, boy had I underestimated the patience it would take to get an accurate color and confirmation photograph! While my high motivation kept me going, my family got real tired of point, click, and complain!

Some of you know that my husband, Pat, refers to the time in our life before I raised canaries in our home as BC (Before Canaries). Well now he has a new term, BB, before blogging! To make it even stronger, he wants to strangle our oldest daughter who first suggested that I start a living web, a blog!

After all this, I hope you will enter the contest. If you are unsure of the Stafford standard, check out the club web site mentioned in my previous Stafford blog. You can apply your experience in breeding any crested canaries and or color canaries to Staffords! Just take a few moments to consider the issues and take your best shot!

Suitor Number 3 - Gator Heat

Suitor Number 2 - Handsome Sooner

Suitor Number 1 - Shy Local Fellow -Avid Shocker