Oh No! Irish Fancy Hens Hint of Developing Brood Patch Part 1

My plans are to breed in March but my Irish Fancy hens hint that they have other plans as they are developing brood patches. A brood patch is featherless skin that is well supplied with blood vessels at the surface to transfer heat to their incubating eggs. To develop a brood patch the hen will loose some feathers in the area.

The brood patch is a strong message that love is in the air and nesting is coming much sooner than I planned!

Note the new feather indentation in the lower abdomen that makes a line clear to the vent.

This one's line looks more full in the lower abdomen along the line especially as you approach the vent area and sure enough she was even setting in the seed cup. (Same hen as directly above this picture.)

Whenever birds change aviaries at this time of year, the change in diet, temperature, and humidity can be stimulating even when we keep the same total number of day light hours and birds from our aviary are several weeks or a couple of months away from breeding.

Special New Blood Refreshment - Borders

This new yellow feathered Border male was purchased from Tom Lauer. Lovely bird great confirmation. The green color is gorgeous in the sun light!

I have wanted to get some white Borders in my line for three years so I was especially happy to get this variegated white Border male from Tom also.

Previous three year old white border from different line is lovely great confirmation but I have yet to produce any chicks from her. This year I am going to try artificial insemination as no matter I have tried she will not accept a mate.

Very nice male purchased from Paul Dee's stock.

New beautiful hen was also purchased from Paul Dee's stock.

Special New Year Additions To Improve My Breeding Stock -Stafford

So excited to add this gorgeous Stafford male bred by Jan Davie to my stock. It is the brother of the crested Stafford who won the Stafford division at National in 2014.  Breeding phenomenal crested birds is a two part equation with the non-crested bird being critical to breeding a rounded beautiful crest.  Note the thick neck, rounded head and well developed back skull. I plan to breed him to nearly all of my crested hens!

More Special Stock for 2016 Breeding Season - Columbus Fancy

Young Columbus hen

Her young Columbus brother

Several young Columbus hens

Nice young Columbus male

Young yellow feathered white Columbus male who I will breed to best Columbus head hen. Breeding a good Columbus white is one of my projects. This bird is a third generation which started with one white American singer hen and a Columbus male. I have some very nice Columbus that I have raised over the last couple years from Ray Mena's stock.

Looking Forward To Breeding Irish Fancy in 2016

The last few years I have been admiring Irish Fancy Canaries and now in 2016 I will breed them for the first time! I am really looking forward to interacting and learning from these very personable birds!

A very special young buff feathered hen from Dr. Jim Sillers's stock.

Her mate a beautiful yellow feathered young male from Brian Byrne's stock.

My daughter Sandy who helps me care for the birds, loves the new Irish Fancy breed and spends extra time making eye contact and talking to them each morning!


Check out Portal Bird http://www.portalbird.com/  for an excellent article by Paul O'Kane Secretary of the Irish Fancy Canary Club of Ulster. The article is titled "Important Aspects of the Irish Fancy Canary and has very good breeding tips and discussion of the standard!

Puzzler: Some Birds Molting - Some Birds Hatching in Same Aviary

I had a very interesting phone call yesterday. The man has a long history of breeding canaries in the past producing several hundred a year, but he had not had any canaries in the last few years.  In December, at the National Bird Show, he purchased several pairs each of colorbred, American Singers and German Rollers to get back into his hobby.

But now just a few weeks later, he is perplexed and does not know what to do as some have hatched babies and some he thinks might be molting. What should he do and how can the birds treated the same in the same aviary be responding in such different ways?

The first thing to determine is are some of the birds really molting? Hens normally lose a few small breast feathers when they develop their brood patch so it is best to determine whether they are molting by checking males at this time of year. Males could be in a normal molt or in a soft molt. The difference is whether you see long wing or tail feathers on the cage floor.

Seeing only small feathers would indicate a soft molt which is treated with multiple B vitamins and very low protein diet of oatmeal, canary seed and white bread.

If long wing or tail feathers have been dropped, it means a normal molt is starting and will be obvious in a month and will likely take at least six weeks at best to complete. He looked and did see considerable long feathers on the floor and a few males were even growing new tail feathers so yes, those are molting.

My next question was concerning his lighting.  How many hours of lighting are his birds getting. He responded 13.5 of artificial lighting per day and a small night light.

Then I ask him which birds were molting and he said only the colorbred. Some of the others were either setting or had hatched and were feeding babies.

So what happened? They all have been treated exactly the same.  Send your comments to this post and hopefully you will be the first to solve this puzzler and have your right answer posted later today. If no correct answers are received, I will post the correct answer tomorrow. 

We have a winner!  Click on comment to see answer.

Mystery: New Birds With Squinting Eyes

Recently, I acquired four new males which I separated into two cages, two in one and two in the other.

Noticing they were very thin, I offered them soft white bread, oatmeal, sunflower chips (pieces) and regular seed mix but no greens.

I noticed when I took them out of the shipping box (air cargo), that the plumage on some looked dull and the eyes were slightly squinting. The shipping box had a sponge with water and an open mouth cage drinker on the side which was empty.

My first thought when seeing them was dehydration due to lack of water during shipping.

I have also seen squinting in inbred birds with neurological problems and when possible test new birds with slight hand stress to see if stress brings on squinting.  Sure enough the squinting was worse upon stress. The difference, however, was that these birds were squinting before the test.

I have the typical open mouth cage drinkers in all my cages. With water available, I expected to see the squinting corrected shortly. But to my surprise it didn't.

I kept shaking my head, it had to be dehydration but the cage water drinkers in my cages were full and had never been empty. It also seemed strange that the box contained birds from two breeders and only the ones from one of the two were squinting.

Finally, the light came on when I realized that these birds even though dehydrated, they did not run to the drinkers immediately as I expected them to do. Furthermore, it seemed strange that even though the box contained birds from two breeders and only the ones from one of the two breeders were squinting.

In fact, I had not seen the squinting ones drink at all. But why, if they are dehydrated wouldn't they drink immediately?  Are they sick?  They are not puffed up with a fever. I have never seen this before!

The reason these birds would not drink from the common open mouth cage drinker is that their breeder used only the ball type drinkers.

I put open dishes of water in the cages and they started drinking and bathing immediately! And shortly thereafter, the squinting disappeared.

Now they are in beautiful condition but I am still watching to see them drink from my open mouth drinkers and in the meantime I am offering open dishes of water too! They must be the cleanest birds in town!