Sunday, August 23, 2009

August 23rd, This Weeks Questions For Big Bird

Got a question but it does not fit any of the current blogs. Post it here!

8 comments:

Jason said...

I have a breading Canary Pair. Now entering well into their Molt. I read somewhere that the male can actually improve/modify his song if he is exposed to different sounds/songs, have you experienced this, and if so, how modified can the song become?

Any tips?

Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Hi Linda,

Would you be able to give us some guidance on the scoring card that you use for Rollers and how you do the score allocations? At the National in July, the highest score was 63 and this was the highest in 30 years! The highest is generally around 52, but I think that we may be being too conservative in our scoring?

Your guidance appreciated!
Shawn

Linda Hogan said...

Jason

Scientific studies by Nottebohm reported that canaries are open-ended learners. Although their song learning begins early in life, they continue to add new syllables to their song each year and discard old syllables. Their syllable repertoires increase with age up to the second year of life. It was also found that they learn best from live tutors rather than when exposed to recorded song (Payne, Waser and Marlar). Furthermore, it has been shown that they learn best when they are six to nine months of age.

Linda Hogan said...

Shawn the scoring for rollers vary depending on the organization affiliation. In my area we use A 100 point system but like in yours only a few score 63 with good ones getting in the low fifties. Is your standard the COM or what? Some standards like the COM favor quality or tours others favor variety of tours. I would love to see more on your score sheet...

Rich said...

Hi Linda. I have a question for you concerning the roller I got from you and the one I got from David that have the German breeding in them. Both males scored in water roll, is that from the German side of the breeding? Thanks Rich

Rich said...

Hi Linda. At what stage of a young Roller males development do you think they should be switched to heavier rape seed diet? I started feeding mine more rape seed as soon as I could seperate them from the young hens. What do you consider to be the right mixture of rape to canary seed for young males that will be shown. I've read and heard of so many different formulas it sort of makes your head spin, I was wondering what your opinion is. Thanks, Rich

Linda Hogan said...

Rich

I have tried many combinations of rape to canary. One year, I was trying to get the rollers to eat more rape in the show cage so I never let them even taste a canary seed using rape exclusively and sprouted rape with nestling food and petamine. Once I caged them up, I used a 60/40 rape to canary. Do you know what happened? They liked it so much better than the rape they were use to that they ate only canary seed!!

Right now my rollers get nestling food with egg till they finish molting likely sometime in September. I also give them petamine breeding formula as it help develop the song and white bread for calories. They are currently getting a mix that is higher carb to encourage finishing the molt. Today I used 1 part Walls seed (special lightly coated) or sometimes I use L'Avian Plus, 1 part straight canary, 1 part sunflower pieces, 1 part canola rape, 1 part fine grind milo and corn, and a few flax seed. I am out of song food but if I had some I would add 1 part of it too. Need to get that ordered.

I want the roller competition cocks to be through the molt and fat before I cage them. Once caged, I only use canola rape/canary about 60/40 canola rape to canary, white bread, and three sprouted hemp seeds if they are dragging behind in song development. If they are moving too fast then I pour the rape and decrease the canary. as this slows their development..So I watch the birds development carefully and bring them along slowly. The longer I work with the birds the less time I cage them before the show competition. Originally, I started a month ahead of the first show. Then three weeks and finally 10 days. The less time before the show, the more stress. My family always complains about me during that time. I see them change so much once they are caged and selecting teams needs to be done quickly so they develop as a team. Once I did this and three days before the show I had no flute notes. None... I quickly got a good flute roller older male and stacked him in the middle of each team by the next day, they were singing a beautiful flute and won the Sunshine Show in Florida! Stress, You Bet!!

Linda Hogan said...

Rich

Looks like I missed answering about the water roll. The German birds all have underlining water but no scoring water roll. Their water brings a beautiful tone. The birds I developed sang a lot of water roll.