ISSN 1492-8132
Issue 109, © 2004
No reprints without permission

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!"

Learn more here!

A recent customer comments, "Just a note to let you know I received my order and I am very happy with your speed of service and the GREAT breeding/flight cage. Thank you and hope to do business with you again!"

Find out for yourself by visiting BirdandCage.com.

Good show cages for smaller birds can be difficult to find and expensive to buy - but now you can order them online! Or if you are good at carpentry and enjoy working on projects, you can buy the wire cage fronts separately and build your own.

There's other useful cage supplies here as well, such as the hard-to-find cage fronts for dividable box breeding cages, along with some other useful supplies such as wooden twist-on perches and show-cage drinkers.

The cages arrive ready to use, painted in the correct colours specified by the respective societies for each breed. Even if you don't show, these small cages make useful travel and treat cages, and even if you only own one bird, having a show cage around can be handy - for one thing, it gives you a safe place to keep your bird while you are washing down his regular cage.

The list of possible uses is too long to go into here - why not get one yourself, and start your own list? You'll be amazed at how long a list you'll get - and if you're like me, you will be very glad you made the plunge!

Read testimonials or find more details on sponsorships. If you're looking for something different, check our home page for links to all our great products and services!

Our next issue is due Dec 19th. We hope you and your birds stay safe, well and happy in the meantime, and we look forward to seeing you all then! 

Robirda
Kelowna, BC
Dec 5, 2004

Welcome to Robirda's Companion Birds eZine

For breeder or pet bird owners who care.

Hello! Welcome to Flock Talk's 109th issue. Subscribe and unsubscribe information for the email version of this ezine is at the bottom of this webpage.

Table of Contents

Feature Article

Your bird began its moult early this year, and it lasted for a long time. His feathers never did finish growing in properly. He has a bald spot around his neck that is gradually moving up to his head, and the rest of his feathers look dull, and are often disarranged.

He used to sing all the time, but has barely sung a note since his moult began. You offer him vegetables and fruit, and you give him vitamins in his water. You've even taken him to a vet for a health check-up, and were told that nothing seems to be wrong. Yet no matter what you try, you still can't seem to get him to feel like his old chipper self, or improve his...

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

There's a few possibilities that may be affecting a canary seen in this kind of condition. The two most usual causes of bald spots or tatty feathers are;

1. A condition that is usually known as a 'stuck moult', which can be caused by stress, drafts, mites, or a fungal infection,
2. A dietary shortage of some essential nutrients, in particular iodine and/or vitamin A.

Problems like this are often seen to begin with the annual moult, and there's a good reason for this - growing in feathers takes a fairly hefty chunk of essential nutrients. If the bird doesn't have enough nutrients in his body and diet to support a full moult, he may not be able to properly grow in new feathers.

There are some good dietary supplements made especially for birds who are having this kind of difficulty completing their moult. The better kinds will provide all the necessary nutrients for a proper moult. One of the best I've used is known as 'Feather Up' - it's not easy to find in pet stores, but you can buy it online at a variety of venues.

There's another dietary problem that can cause similar symptoms to arise, especially if you live inland, and that is a shortage of adequate dietary iodine. In order to correct this inbalance, you need to find a good source of dietary iodine.

Some folks will remind you that table salt for humans has iodine added to it for just this reason - but too much salt can be deadly for a canary. A little salt is okay, and it's true that you can regularly sprinkle a little on your bird's soft foods, greens, or fruit, to prevent this kind of problem from arising - but you can't add enough to correct an already existing dietary imbalance this way.

The easiest method I've found is to go to a health food store and buy some powdered kelp. I put the powdered kelp into a salt shaker along with a few grains of instant rice, and every time I am going to offer the bird some food, I shake some kelp over the bird's soft food, using about this same amount I would add if I was salting food to taste.

The few grains of instant rice will absorb any excess moisture that happens to get into the shaker, and prevent the kelp from clumping up, as it otherwise tends to do.

Some vets will recommend switching the bird to a pelleted diet to prevent this sort of feathering problem, but the fact is that few brands of pellets are at all palatable to a canary. An adult canary who's used to eating seed is not all that easy to convert to a pelleted diet, either.

Also, depending on where you live, it can sometimes be difficult to find a steady supply of fresh pellets of the kind your bird will eat. Smaller towns and pet and farm supply stores for more out-of-the-way places may not stock them at all. Worse, they may carry them, but sell so little that their supply is soon stale.

Worse yet, many brands don't make a version for canaries! In general, the two most acceptable brands of pellets, as far as canaries seem to be concerned, are those made by 'Kaytee' and 'Pretty Bird'. Even then, some canaries won't eat them reliably enough to stay properly healthy.

If you are finding converting your bird to a pelleted diet is frustrating, then you should know that irregardless of what some vets will tell you, it IS possible to keep a canary healthy on a seed-based diet, as long as you have proper vitamin and mineral supplementation.

One of the best all-round supplements made specifically for birds on a seed-based diet, is 'Prime', made by Hagen. It is sold in pet stores, and most who carry Hagen products can order some in for you if they don't happen to have it in stock.

If you do buy some Prime be sure to open the box and check the expiry date on the bottom of the bottle inside. Many stores don't know to check this, and so sometimes you will find an expired bottle still on a shelf. Hagen will replace such bottles with fresh, so don't let the store folk tell you that they can't replace it; they can easily return out-of-date supplies and have them replaced with fresh.

I myself have tried offering pellets to my canaries, and I try to see that they remain familiar enough with them to regard them as food; but in the long run I prefer to use a seed-based diet for my canaries.

You'll find the diet I recommend described in the article posted at robirda.com/cancare.html , and in greater detail in the article at robirda.com/cansing.html

The latter article is about how to encourage a pet canary to sing - but the advice on diet and how to make a canary comfortable and happy in his environment applies, too - so you may wish to read it, as it might give you some ideas!

One thing to be careful of when you are offering seed mixes - you particularly want to not overfeed treat seeds such as song food mix, moulting food, honey sticks, egg biscuit, etc. These are all are extremely rich, so much so that one teaspoonful for a canary is roughly the equivalent of a human eating an 8-inch double layer chocolate cake!

You don't need to offer more than a teaspoon or so per week of all such treats combined - if you feed them at all, that is - they're nice occasionally, but they are not necessary. In fact they are, just as the name implies, a treat.

One important point about offering vitamin supplements to canaries; I don't recommend using the drinking water, as canaries don't reliably drink enough water for this to be a good method. Even worse, they tend to avoid drinking water with additives in it, and this in turn can cause them to drink too little fluids. Inadequate intake of water can in turn cause a great deal of trauma to the body, and can quickly lead to kidney and liver problems.

Instead, I use a powdered supplement and sprinkle small amounts onto soft foods such as a good soak seed mix. (Using the same salt-shaker-with-a-few-grains-of-rice method that I use for offering the kelp.)

In fact, this kind of thing is the closest my birds ever get to seeing something like a 'song food' mix, and they love it! I've had great luck using a good soak seed and nestling food mix as a 'treat' - the birds adore it, and it's a good way to see that they get the nutrition they need. The basics of using soak seed with nestling food are outlined in the article posted at robirda.com/soakseed.html

At any rate, getting back to our balding bird - another possible cause of such an ongoing moulting problems is lack of dietary vitamin A. This can simply be due to an indoor bird not being given enough enough dark leafy greens.

Most people don't realize it, but most canaries can literally eat their weight in greens every day! I prefer to offer my canaries a good handful or more daily of chopped dark leafy greens such as kale, leafy endive,or rapini (broccoli raba). These greens are already quite high in carotenoids, which is what the body uses to make its own vitamin A, but you can increase the amount even more by chopping the greens coarsely and mixing them with coarse-grated carrot.

Such a mixture is loaded with essential nutrients, and interestingly enough, most canaries appear to enjoy a mix like this and will learn to eat it willingly. This is rather different from what usually happens if you should try to offer a canary a heap of grated carrots on their own! Most ofteh the most that will get you is a 'what in heck is that' sort of look, with the bird refusing to touch them.

Spinach or chard are should not be included in a canary diet except in tiny amounts, as they contain too much oxalic acid, which inhibits proper digestion of calcium.

You want to be careful when offering fruit to canaries. A great deal of pesticides are used during commercial fruit production, and canaries are extremely sensitive to these compounds. Apples and grapes are among the worst culprits. Plus, too much fruit can cause problems with loose sticky stools, which can also cause problems. So use only organically grown fruit if you must offer any - and be careful to only offer only small amounts.

Finally - there's another possibility that can cause a bald patch to appear on a canary. Once it's been proven to not be caused by an infection, skin problem, or mites, chances are good that either a draft is present, or your canary is feeling very stressed by something in his environment. The latter could be caused by living in too quiet an environment, or by being stared at (especially silently) by a human (adult or child), or a pet.

For more information on these topics, you will want to read the feature article on Unseasonal Moulting published in issue 89, which can be found at robirda.com/flock89.html

Incorrect lighting is another possible source of problems that can cause a bald spot on a canary. Lighting is very important to canaries, who evolved so that their bodies respond physically to the amount of light which enters their eyes. This trait is known as 'photosensitivity', and was covered in the article of that name published in issue 30, at robirda.com/flock30.html

Hopefully all this will be enough information to allow you to figure out exactly what is going on with your little feathered friend's tatty feathers, so that you will soon have your lovely, happy little songster back!

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

Canary Book

Our special autographed edition of Robirda's book Brats in Feathers, Keeping Canaries has been getting a great response from readers. Here's just a few of the comments we've received;

"It's everything I imagined it would be and I'm just thrilled with my copy! - so great to have and to hold!!! It's a very attractive book, and a nice size as well - one that I can easily tuck and have on hand to refer to and read whenever and wherever."

"I ordered 'Canary Tales' by Linda Hogan last year... Although I fully recommend buying her book, I find Robirda's book much more complete, easier to read with less difficulty finding information."

"You have given us excellent assistance in keeping our canary alive! The advice of other 'experts' nearly killed him, including two vets who did NOT know about canaries, and gave us dangerously wrong advice."

"You have a way of making things easy to understand, and I love the look and feel of your book - not to mention that it is so easy to find the information I am looking for. THANK YOU!!!"

"It's SO beautiful, and the photos and illustrations are wonderful, I love it!!!!!! Thanks so much!!!"

"Received your book today, and was surprised how great it is! It's well worth the cost and then some, thank you!"

Learn more about Robirda's book at robirda.com/brats.html.

Try Robirda's ebooks for all the quality at a fraction of the price! See full ebook details here.