Guess the Parents of this Chick?

This Show Stopper Chick Looks Just Like Its Mother!!

Please participate by sending your answer to this blog posting.

Breaking News: Evon has correctly identified the baby mama as bachelorette (picture posted Jan 31 st), Can anyone name the baby daddy?

Congratulations Evon, You have correctly identified the baby daddy, Shocker (picture posted Feb. 1)!!

Border Hen Hatching and Dropping Flight Feathers

What Should I Do Now?

The buff cinnamon variegated border hen hatch two out of four eggs, one chick yesterday and one today but on the floor around her nest are three flight feathers and a few smaller feathers. Getting borders to feed can be tricky, not alone a molting one, so I weighted the options.

If I leave the chicks with her, her hormones could reverse providing she start feeding the chicks. So it might work but only if the hen has a strong feeding drive.

On the other hand, I have the cinnamon variegated border hen whose eggs were so thin that they broke when she set on them. She is still sitting because I gave her plastic eggs so she would continue to sit and not keep laying. She had fostered a border chick this season and last season she hatch five out of five eggs and raised them well.

When choosing between a maybe and probably work, I will always choose probably, so yesterday I moved the first chick to the foster hen and today I moved the second. I could have moved the fertile egg yesterday but I know the birth mother has the right temperature to hatch the egg and I do not know that about the foster mom. It is true that eggs that hatch under the foster are more likely to be accepted but earlier this season the chick was moved under her and she raised it fine.

I have three plastic eggs in the nest to help support them. The chick moved yesterday appears to be nice and fluffy, a good sign that she has accepted them.

Today's Aviary Happenings

German Roller Cock: Note his big chest and his molting at the wing butt.

Crowded nest with three Border chicks, crowded even before they are fully feathered.

Pair of Borders and their three weaning age chicks.

Breeding Season is Slowing Down

Chicks are still hatching but very few are hatching on the 13th day. More and more evidence that the breeding season is nearly over.

Today, the two hens which were are with the top German Roller Cock pictured above, are hatching. On his wing butts you can clearly see his is molting. Yet one of the two hens has three of four eggs fertile and the other hen, the one who laid double clutches, has four out of five eggs fertile. His high fertility is due to cooperative hens and the use of the ABBA water soluble vitamin E. His last dose was probably 4 to six weeks ago, but since vitamin E is a stored vitamin, it was adequate to still produce high fertility. I have observed this many times since using this product. Years ago, when I did not use this product, fertility dropped dramatically to nil when the cock started molting.

The second photo is a full nest of borders. With three big bodied chicks in the nest, they are getting crowded even before they are fully feathered. In a few days, I will add the second nest to give them more room and enjoy once again seeing the chicks switch nest before I even know they can do it! As you know by reading this blog, I love to see nest switching even when there is only one nest of chicks in the cage!

The bottom photo is a pair of borders with their three chicks who are weaning. The buff variegated hen in the foreground, laid her second egg today, which I promptly removed at 8 am to make sure it was not soiled. I would like to get the chicks out of the cage but the hen and cock are still feeding them a lot and they seem to have loud begging voices!

It is always amazing to me how dirty the breeding cage gets during the breeding season. I do a little spot pick up of the floor of yesterdays hard boiled eggs and dump soft food dishes daily, and exchange the nest for a clean one but that is it. Margaret calls it "going natural". The less you disturb the birds, the more they produce so I just have to ignore the poop on the walls etc till they all quit breeding!

Teaching Border Chicks to Eat Variety

Weaned Yellow Cinnamon Variegated Border Chick Eating a Bite of Carrot from Cous Cous, Poppy Seed, Quinoa, and Carrot Mix

Enjoying Nibbling on Dandelion

Birds Love the More Serrated Dandelion

Eating Peas and Second Chick Eating a Sunflower Chip from the Seed Mix, and then Moving On for a Bite of Bread.

Eating Fresh Bread, Great for Taming, and Excellent High Calorie Carbohydrate Food to Feed After Showing to Minimize Weight Loss at the Bird Shows.

Eating Hard Boiled Egg, Fed from the time the first chick leaves the nest till they are eating a variety well. I will stop the hard boiled egg tomorrow. Continued feeding of hard boiled will inhibit weight gain as they need to eat more carbohydrates and fatty seeds.

Eating Sprouted Black Oil Sunflower Seeds

Some Favorites: Cous Cous with Quinoa, Poppy Seeds, and Carrot; Egg Food, Wheat Germ with Brewer's Yeast and Bee Pollen, Petamine mixed with Harrison's High Potency Mash, Regular Seed Mix, Milo and Corn Mix, Mostly Eaten Beet Leaf, not shown in photos: ABBA Green 92 and Flock Raiser

Learning to Eat a Variety of Foods

Border chicks have a reputation for being picky eaters. Like all canaries, however, they can learn to eat a variety if we introduce a variety of foods when they are young.

Borders have a preference for minimal variety in a dish and actually prefer to have separate dishes. So I try to keep the number of items in most dishes to two or three. They even prefer individual seeds in separate dishes over a seed mix. If they do not accept a mix, I offer the item separately till they learn to eat it well.

They will eat more variety if you offer the new dish first thing in the morning as the only fresh item and then offer something else in an hour or two. For the photo shots, I put it all in the cage at once and I was especially pleased that they would take a bite of one food and then go to another without pigging out on any one thing!

To keep them stimulated to eat variety, I offer at least one different selection each day usually a different green but when in season, corn on the cob or cucumbers or even jalapeno peppers! Keep and eye on what they are eating and if they are pigging out on something, reduce the amount offered and feed it last thing in the day or infrequently. Offering and eating can be two different things and we want them to eat a healthy variety!

After shooting these shots of a cage of three weaned border chicks, the yellow cinnamon variegated was fantastic eating all that variety in about a 10 minute period! It is really a gem!!

Crying Weaning Chicks

Hand feeding a slow weaning Border chick.

Hand feeding a slow weaning German roller chick.

Feeding Big Babies

At weaning, some chicks will sit around and either fluff up their feathers or sit and cry for hours without eating. They beg any other chick in addition to parents if they are in the cage.

For these chicks I like to take the perches out of the cage and make them sit on the floor with the food. If they keep crying, I will try and hand feed them.

At this age, they will usually not open wide like a young chick. They prefer to nibble. Some will nibble the food from my toothpicks or I offer food on my finger as shown in the pictures. The border is being feed a paste of vegetable protein (soy) and the roller a paste of Harrison's high potency mash.

False Breeding Signals

Should this hen be paired?

This hen has raised only one clutch of three chicks. Her chicks left the nest yesterday and she is hopping around, flapping her wings and setting now and then in the nest. These are signs of breeding readiness but before pairing her with a cock, you need to take a look at her abdomen and answer a few questions?

Is it shiny (ready) or dry and scaly (not ready)? Is the abdomen hot (ready) or just warm (not ready)? Is the skin stretched tight (ready) or is it wrinkled (not ready)? Is the hen pleasantly plump (ready) or thin (not ready)? It her breast bone sharp (not ready)?

After examining this hen it is clear that even with the behavior indicating she wants to be paired, she is not physically fit for breeding and her breeding season this year is over. So as soon as her chicks are weaned, she will be put in a flight with other hens. I will give her the first clue that the breeding season is over by dropping protein levels in her diet. First, I will offer the milo and corn fine grind mix free choice. This an excellent food to feed now to weaned chicks and any birds that you want to discourage from breeding. (Information on the fine grind milo and corn is in the February 9th post.) In addition, hens that are not getting ready to lay or feeding babies are not feed egg food and this will greatly drop the proteins in their diet.

Too Many Chicks For One Nest

Making More Room

A German roller hen hatched five chicks in one clutch. At times, I would find one or more chicks kicked out of the nest because there were simply no room for five big chicks in one nest.

A few days ago, I fixed the problem by provided a second nest at the same cage height. The chicks at this age, randomly switch nests and the cock and hen freely feed both nests!

In a couple of days, some of the bigger chicks will likely leave the nest and with two nests already in the cage, it will leave a nest free for the hen to lay her next clutch. When a hen tries to lay in a nest with residual chicks, the odds are high that even with prompt removal, some of the eggs will be soiled. With two nests the risk of soiled eggs is less and when the time comes for her to lay, I will move the nest with residual chicks to the other side of the cage leaving the original nest ready for the hen to use.