ISSN 1492-8132
Issue 108, © 2004
No reprints without permission

The folks at Bird & Cage aim to provide birdkeepers with a great selection of good quality cages and birdcage accessories for great prices, and their customers agree.

A recent customer comments, "Cage and feeders received, thanks. My newly acquired Bourke parakeet, Ralph, loves the cage with its clean look and lots more room for him to move around in. And I love the simple but efficient cage design, especially with the big door in front. Thanks very much!"

Find out for yourself by visiting BirdandCage.com.

If you are considering building a larger flight cage or an aviary of some sort, whether indoor or out, this is good wire to consider using. Its coating protects it from corrosion from droppings and other materials, and there will be no sharp edges to catch and tear. Outdoor aviaries will need to add mosquito protection, but this sturdy, weather-and-wear resistant wire is easy to work with and offers a great starting point for any such project

Flock Talk reader Sandra says, "Hi, I'd like to tell you a story about a little yellow canary that was at a retirement home. It all began with a phone call asking if I could save this bird, it was almost dead - feathers missing, stabbed with pens and pencils.

"He was in very bad condition, sitting on the bottom of the cage shaking and whimpering. My heart felt so bad for this little defenceless bird, and I took him in. It has been three weeks now and he is improving, even singing a bit.

"He is blind in one eye and can not fly, and stays mostly on the bottom of the cage. He goes on our finger and we take him out twice a day. My husband called him 'Lucky', for that he is. I am so lucky that he is now recovering."

****Send us your stories of how your birds confuse and puzzle, interest and amuse you, and we will share them with the rest of our readers in a future issue. Just send an email here.

Q:"I have been looking for a recipe to make egg bisquits for my canaries. Can you help me?"

A:"Canaries don't need egg biscuits - they are too rich, and too sweet, too. (Sugar is even worse for them than it is for us!)

"Try using greens or a good soak seed and nestling food mix instead, your canaries will thank you for it in the long run!

"You'll find info on the basics of using soak seed here.

"For recipes and more complete directions, you might want to get our Soak Seed Care Sheet.

Robirda can help you learn to understand your birds better! Learn more here.

Robirda
Kelowna, BC
Nov 21, 2004

Welcome to Robirda's Companion Birds eZine

For breeder or pet bird owners who care.

Hello! Welcome to Flock Talk's 108th issue. Subscribe and unsubscribe information for the email version of this ezine is at the bottom of this webpage.

Table of Contents

Website News

We have a new Playswing! Check out this great bird toy/millet holder/activity center style swing; the canaries we gave it to for our first trial thought it was the cat's pajamas, and were bouncing all over it, eating millet and tugging on strings and generally having a party, in a very short time. See our pictures of them playing and more, at robirda.com/playswing.html

We're sad to say that if you use AOL, you may not get any more issues of Flock Talk unless you resubscribe; AOL 'bounced' our emails too often lately. Before you try to subscribe again, please make sure that your permissions are set to allow email from both flocktalk.com & netatlantic.com (the listserver host)

Song CD

SAVE over 20% off our usual price until Dec 31! Our CD of Robirda's canaries singing consists of 12 16-bit true-stereo tracks, each averaging almost 5 minutes long, for a total of 58 minutes and 48 seconds of canary songs.

You can hear a 10 second mp3 sample here. Listen carefully, and you will be able to hear the different positions of each bird!

One customer told us, "Thank you so much for the CD, my canaries really love it. I think the CD sounds so nice, it's so clear sounding!"

Another says, "I just received my 'New Songs from the Birdroom' CD last night. I got up this morning and popped it in-- You should have seen my baby perk up! Your CD sure did start him singing. He was hanging from his swing looking out the way of the CD player and singing right along with it. Thanks again from a very contented canary and his owner!"

WINTER SALE! Until Dec 31, you can save over 20% on our CD! Learn more here!

Feature Article

It must be the second-most asked canary question, ranking close behind the ever-popular "Why Won't My Canary Sing?!?" It seems most of us are fairly predictable when it comes to keeping a pet canary - we get one, and soon find we are thinking of getting another.

"Just one, to keep him company," we say, wanting the best for this tiny enchanting creature who has generally managed to wriggle his little feathered way into our affections much faster than we'd expected. By then, the next question seems almost inevitable...

by R C McDonald
www.robirda.com
Copyright © 2004

During the late summer, fall, and most of the winter, it is possible for some male canaries to share a cage relatively amicably. But no matter how well they get along, only the more dominant canaries will sing much - or even at all - in a shared-cage situation. You will get a little more song in a large shared-cage than a smaller one, but not as much song as you will hear if each bird has his own well-defined territory.

If you got your birds at a youngish age - say, 6 months or so old - the gender will be uncertain, since with very little exception it's impossible to accurately tell the gender of a young canary until it is both pysically mature and in full breeding condition.

Even song is not a reliable indicator, as a good proportion of canary hens sing. A smaller sub-group of singing hens even exists that can sing every bit as well as most males, and better than some!

A gender-mixed grouping might be likelier to get along better than a group of all-males, during the winter - but no matter what the actual genders, trouble can easily happen when the days begin to get longer, and the birds start wanting to prepare for breeding season. Sometimes everything goes smoothly - but more often than not, canaries in the same cage will come into breeding condition at different times, and the bird who is in 'higher' breeding condition will almost always harrass the bird (or birds) who are not.

Given these facts, what many of us who have had plenty of experience keeping multiple canaries will do, knowing both the benefits for the birds of being able to fly, and the potential for trouble when canaries are housed in groups (especially during the breeding season) is keep our canaries in flight cages during the summer moult, on through the fall and early winter until mid-winter or so, when the males especially begin to get more antagonistic. At this point they are are separated into individual cages for the rest of the spring and early summer.

Once midsummer has come and gone and the summer moult is well underway for each bird, ensuring that they won't have a lot of spare energy to spend harrassing each other, they can usually be returned to the flight cage for the rest of the year. Not always - some adult males seem to live just to pick fights - but often.

What it adds up to, is that the odds are greatly against keeping any group of canaries in a cage successfully all year round, especially when you have multiple male canaries involved. Younger males are more likely to get along with each other than adults, and some canaries, once adult, will never willingly share a cage with another male, while others don't seem to mind, and a few will even happily socialize.

But male canaries that fit into the latter group are quite rare, and also, the more pugnatious males also tend to be among the best and most constant of singers, and so will definitely benefit from having a clear territory to call their own, which encourages song.

I have seen some experiments at setting up a situation where the birds had individual areas opening off a large shared flight area, which actually did work reasonably well. They were rather a nuisance to set up and clean, though, and setting up such a jury-rigged arrangement to allow easy access to all areas for easy cleaning and servicing is none too simple. Many such designs involve putting cage doors together to create 'pop-holes', or cutting some small access doors - pop-holes - into the sides of two adjacent cages.

The best design I've seen consisted of three large cages arranged around each other - one large cage in the middle with two longer but less tall cages attached to two sides of the larger cage, with small pop-holes connecting all three. It also had a half dozen smaller cages that could be attached to the larger cages. They basically just hung off the side of the larger cages, with the smaller cage's doorway opening into a pop-hole cut into the side of the larger flight.

If you can manage such an arrangement, it might work with your birds too - results vary depending on the personalities of the individual birds involved. But this kind of a set-up has a better chance of working than most, because given the chance to claim a distinct territory of his own, most males will choose one and stake it out for their own.

As long as this 'owned' territoory is clearly separated, many males have no problem with amicably sharing a common feeding-and-foraging area with the rest of the birds in the aviary. Even then though, there will usually be a fair bit of squabbling among the males, and in most cases you will hear less song than you would if the birds were caged separately.

Once breeding season approaches, everything changes. This is the season - late winter until early summer - when it can be actually dangerous to keep two canaries in the same cage, with one exception; you have a true pair, and both were in full breeding condition before being allowed to share a cage.

Successful breeding of your canaries is a complex affair, and there's no room to go into it here. Suffice it to say, that if you have more than one canary and aren't planning to breed, don't plan on being able to keep your canaries together during the late winter through til early summer or so, no matter what gender they are.

Within a few weeks after the passing of Midsummer's Day on June 21st, most canaries will stop trying to breed and will instead begin their annual moult. Once the moult is underway, there is a lot less energy to spare for squabbling, and many canaries will again share a large flight or aviary reasonably well.

What this all means is that in the end, the real answer to the question of whether or not canaries can successfully share a cage, is, "It depends." On the birds, on the situation, on the time of year - and most importantly, on the time the birdkeeper is willing to devote to his or her birds.

by R C McDonald
www.robirda.com
Copyright © 2004

Here's some more information from the Flock Talk Archives about canary territoriality and sharing cages;

      - Feature Article: Understanding Territoriality in Canaries. robirda.com/flock90.html

      - Feature Article: Troubleshooting Problems. robirda.com/flock60.html

      - Ask Robirda: can two male canaries share a cage? robirda.com/flock27.html

      - Ask Robirda: Canaries sharing aviaries - a good idea? robirda.com/flock54.html

Tips 'N Tricks

Worry not, as long as you don't keep hookbills you can make your own substitute coated wire! Start by searching farm supply or hardware supply stores near you. You're looking for 3/8ths to 1/2" mesh wire (depending on the size of your birds). Stick with square or rectangular mesh; hexagonal mesh can a death trap for finch-style birds, who may try to stick their heads through the little holes and then get stuck, winding up hanging themselves.

Once you have your wire, scrub it firmly on both sides with a wire brush and a solution of 10 - 15% vinegar and warm water - this will remove any loose zinc left from the galvanizing and roughen the surface so your coating will stick better. Then use a deep soft roller brush to carefully paint the wire, using a glossy black non-toxic acrylic paint that has been thinned a little with water.

This way all the wire can be covered quickly and easily from one side, then you can quickly go around both sides with a brush and stroke out any drips that ran down the wires. Make sure you do this before the paint starts to dry! Then let the whole thing cure for a couple of weeks before adding your finished wire to your aviary.

Using the harder-to-find glossy acrylic means that the paint will form a tougher coating, and thinning it first means that your coating will stick more tightly to the wire. Like other coated wires, your painted wire will be much easier to wash than plain wire, thanks to its smooth glossy finish. (This does not appy to wire painted with flat acrylic though.)

Using black will tend to make the wire 'disappear' to your eyes when you're looking at your birds, making it easier to see them.

You will find that the paint will require renewing every few years, simply wash it well and apply another coat the same way you did the first.

You won't be able to do this with the birds in the aviary, of course, but at the same time you can do other maintenance and cleaning jobs that can't easily be done with the birds in the cage, anyways. (a hint - if you build your aviary in flat panels that can be assembled and disassembled easily, it can make maintenance chores a LOT easier!)

For You & Your Birds, With Love

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Our next issue is due Dec 5th. We hope you and your birds stay safe, well and happy in the meantime, we look forward to seeing you all then!