Attention Southern Hemisphere Breeders - Wheat Germ Oil Coated Seeds

With Breeding Season Approaching It Is Time to Wheat Germ Oil Coat Your Regular Canary Seed Mix. 

 For 50lb batch: In a large pail put 5 lbs of your regular canary seed mix. Add 1 cup wheat germ oil (use the wheat germ oil blend that is fortified with vitamins A, D, and E) and mix. Let stand a couple of days and mix each day to maximize the absorption of the oil. Then Mix these seeds with the remainder seeds (45 lbs).

Start feeding coated seed to cocks now and hens about three weeks later. Then feed coated seed instead of your regular basic canary mix until the end of breeding season.

Project participants: Do you have a problem with egg shell thickness? Do you have a calcium supplement containing not only calcium but D3 and magnesium? Is it soluble in water? Can you get the following: Omi-vet vitamins, KD powder, CeDe Handrearing food, ABBA fertility E? Please send answers and your mailing address to canarytales2@juno.com.

Meet Paddy Hogan

Meet Paddy Hogan. Paddy was hatched June 10th and fostered to a nest which already had three much larger chicks and because I was already handfeeding Big Baby Border, I would catch and feed this disadvantaged Stafford chick.

I would remove the nest and feed Paddy and occasionally give the others a bite too. One day, when I was called in at 10 am to work a 12 hour shift at the hospital, when I fed him he jumped out of the nest and fell to the floor and quickly darted under my heavy English style cages on the North wall. I tried to get him out but even laying on the floor he escaped me! I had no time, the hospital called me in because they were short staffed and I really could not wait to catch him...what if a trauma would come in to the hospital and I am laying on the floor trying to catch a bird???

My husband, who is not a bird fan, was helping me feed Big Border and the small Stafford chick and he was not happy when I told him that I also needed him to get down on the floor and look all over for the lost chick.  Around six pm he called me and proudly reported he had caught the lost chick and when he caught him he was across the room under the South West English cages! I was really happy and in my husband's honor, he was named "Paddy Hogan".

Enhancing Yellow Color With Broccoli Leaves

Although my birds love broccoli, they are reluctant to eat the dark green leaves probably because they tend toward being limp rather than crispy like they like their greens.

After the main center broccoli head is harvested, numerous small little heads surrounded with dark green leaves grow on the old plant.  I harvest these small growths from my own plants and also have the farmer from Verdant Farms picking his small growths for me. I also use extra big leaves from the plant.

In the food processor they go and then I add them to egg food and quinoa to enhance yellow coloring on my Borders and German Rollers.

Totally Handfed Baby Border

This young Border was hatched June 10th and ever since birth, I have been handfeeding it! Never did I ever see the mother feed or find evidence in the crop that the mother had fed him even one bite! She was a good sitter and kept him warm but sit...sit...sit was all she would do. I put KD Powder in her water and still she just sat and sat!

So I started handfeeding it when it was just a few hours old. I decided to totally use CeDe Handrearing Food. I am thrilled with this product as he developed beautifully and has good body mass. At first I fed him every two hours from sunup to lights out.  Typical of hand fed chicks, they do not wean till much later than normal. After six weeks "Big Baby" still like an early morning, noon and evening meal! (CeDe Handrearing Food was purchased from Higgins.)

Hatched July 10th

How surprised I was to have this Stafford chick hatch on July 10th! Amazing considering, I was so far behind that the parents still had four chicks from their previous clutch in their cage! Normally, the young chicks would have excessively soiled or broken the eggs. I was so busy that I did not even notice that the hen had a good egg till I observed her sitting extra tight and then thought, I bet she has a new chick!

How Good Can It Get? July 16th and it happened again the same way, young chicks still in the cage and mom hatches a new one!

Feeding Young Birds Vitamins and Probiotics

 An easy way to feed vitamins or probiotics is to add them to fresh soft bread in the food processor. My birds eat every bite of the processed bread with vitamins or probiotics which mean no waste of these expensive products.