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 ISSN 1492-8132 Issue 114, © 2005 No reprints without permission Table of Contents The folks at Bird & Cage aim to provide birdkeepers with a great selection of good quality cages and cage accessories for great prices and top-quality customer service. See for yourself, by visiting the new Best Sellers webpage! Breeding season is here, and you will want to see the new stackable large-size breeding cages, and order yours while they last! A recent customer comments, "I got the cage yesterday and I just wanted to say thank you and let you know how pleased we are with your service. We will recommend you to many of our 'bird' friends. Thanks again." For a full selection of cages and cage accessories, visit BirdandCage.com. Table of Contents 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! A recent customer told us, "Even after I made all sorts of changes, my canary still hardly sang. But after I ordered your CD, he sings and sings! Thanks for such a nice CD." Another says, "Received the CD! Man can they sing! Hope our American Singer will sound half as good! Thank you." Another says, "The CD arrived and it's just great! Hansie loves it and has been warbling away for the past 2 days." Learn more here! Table of Contents
Although the name is, 'The Avian Clinic,' this site seems to be more for parrot and other hookbill owners than for people keeping smaller pet birds - with one possible exception (the World-Renowned Personality), all the experts listed here appear to specialize in the behaviourism of companion parrots. It's possible that many of these people feel capable to give advice on keeping canaries and other such small birds, thanks to their knowledge of parrots - if so, I hope they have experience at keeping a canary or two. Anyone who has done this has learned quite quickly just how different the needs and wants of these small birds can be from the bigger birds. Still, it is good to see a solid online resource finally available for pet parrot owners who are having problems dealing with their birds. Now for $20 anybody can ask a bird-question of the parrot expert of their choice. Table of Contents One consultee says, "I really cannot thank you enough... since following suggestions from you, I enjoy my birds a million times more than I did. After all the canaries I have owned, I finally feel confident that I am caring for them well. Confidence has made me more relaxed with them and instead of worrying, I am enjoying!!! "Pets have a great sense about their caregivers... they, too, are more relaxed with me. They see me coming toward their cages and know something good is going to happen... no longer do they flutter about in fright. Again, instead of worrying, I am able to talk to them, sing to them, etc. A very big change!!! "This is all very amazing and new to me... and I love every minute of it! Thanks SO much!!" Robirda's customers find her answers to be detailed, reliable, caring and supportive. When you need help with housing, feeding, care or behavioral questions, Robirda can help you learn to understand your birds better! Learn more here. Table of Contents
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Table of Contents We rely on you to help keep this publication and its associated websites alive. If you find help you need in this ezine or on our websites, please consider joining our sponsors. 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 Feb 27th. We hope you and your birds stay safe, well and happy in the meantime, and we look forward to seeing you all then!
Robirda
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 For breeder or pet bird owners who care. Hello! Welcome to Flock Talk's 114th issue. Subscribe and unsubscribe information for the email version of this ezine is at the bottom of this webpage.
Table of Contents You were sceptical at first, but you tried it, and saw positive results from feeding plentiful dark leafy greens to your pet canaries. You've accepted that feeding greens freely is very beneficial to your birds, but you still have a quandary - finding good greens is not always easy, particularly during certain times of the year. But if you have even a small patch of ground, it can be easier than you think to grow your own greens to offer your treasured pet(s) throughout a good portion of the year. All it takes is a little bit of planning, and learning how best to set about...
by R C McDonald It really doesn't take a lot to set up a small area to grow healthy greens for your birds - and don't worry, you don't even need to have particularly good light or soil - even if you have ground that is often shaded and consists of mostly rocks, or mostly clay, you can still have a fairly decent bird-garden. Ideally, you want to use a patch of ground that gets sunshine for at least half the day - but in actual fact, a lot of the hardier greens are very undemanding about their location, and many are cool-weather plants that can easily handle a more shade than many other plants would tolerate. But no matter what kind of earth you have, it's a good idea to prepare it a little beforehand, to make sure that all the nutrients the plants need will be available to the growing plants, and in turn, through them, for your birds. Over the years I've started several gardens in ground that 'everbody knew' was worthless for growing healthy veggies, and discovered that using organic gardening techniqes for building up the soil was a workable solution, providing very productive results. One of the most memorable of my gardens was nothing but 3 inches of clay over sandstone and limestone when I first moved in. In the end, I built 'raised beds' by digging out the clay down to the limestone, then made the 'beds' by laying out bales of cheap hay that had gotten wet - usually ranchers will have some bales that got wet, and they will sell them really cheap. I left the bales unopened, and used them to outline where I wanted the beds to be, then filled in the open holes left on the insides with old grass clippings, loose hay, and compost, layered with screened clay. An old window frame works well to build a screen - just get one the size you want, then nail 1/2 inch hardware cloth over one side of it. Lay it across the bales and 'scrub' the clay and dirt through the screen, picking out larger rocks as you go. I'd continue until I had enough screened clay to barely covered the organic material inside. Then I'd layer in more organic 'junk' - sometimes even broken-up small branches - alternating with layers of the clay until I'd filled the 'hole' between the bales. Occasionally I added a sprinkling of bone meal, and every other layer or so I'd sprinkle a few handfuls of woodash, collected from a fireplace. (If you don't have woodash, greensand from an organic gardening supply store works well too). Once the 'hole' outlined by the bales was filled up even with the tops of the bales, I used some potting soil to put a thin layer on top of everything - probably no more than a 1/4 inch thick at the most. The final step was to get some red wriggler worms (from a fishing supply store) and 'seed' a small handful of them into each 'bale-bed'. The bales hold everything together nicely until it's finished rotting down. It took almost a couple of years to completely finish, but in the end I had some really nice foot-high or so mounds in the shape of raised beds, filled with wonderfully rich, light, and very fertile loam. I didn't surround each bed with boards, because that encourages slugs, and in the northwest we get enough of them as it is! True, the bales offer bugs and slugs a certain amount of shelter too - but they also allow enough access to their predators that I had little to no slug problem. More than once I surprised a small flock of wild ducks out in my garden in the early hours of the day, 'patrolling' my raised beds for those yummy slugs! Sure, maybe they ate a little greenery, too, but if they did, I didn't notice it. Another great thing about this method is that just because the beds aren't completely 'cooked' at first doesn't mean you can't use them sooner! I planted my 'bale-beds the very first year, by digging into them, pushing some of the half-rotted material aside and then and putting a fairly plentiful supply of good potting soil into each hole around the roots of my transplants. The rotting compost and hay heated everything up quite nicely, and the whole thing held water beautifully even when it got hot and dry. Meanwhile, the worms I'd 'seeded' kept busy breaking everything down, even while my plants were growing. The warmth from the rotting bales helped the plants to stave off frost, and that year I was actually able to plant peppers and tomatoes out in early May, a good month before the last frost. They grew incredibly quickly and were beginning to ripen by mid-June - probably the earliest tomatoes and jalapenos I ever had! Needless to say, we had plenty of greens for everybody that year too, with small harvests beginning in March and continuing all season long. We even had smaller harvests all through the winter, as I found I could extend the season by using some protective coverings over the beds, adding more insulation and warmth by surrounding the winter beds with more rotting bales. As for bugs - try mixing your plants up so that there's no big patches of just one kind of plant, and plant lots of garlic and dill everywhere. This encourages the beneficial insects, brings more small bug-eating birds, and confuses and repels many plant-loving insects. I like to invite garter snakes, ladybugs, chickadees, wrens, and hummingbirds into my garden by putting out the kind of foods they enjoy. I had no problem inviting garter snakes into my garden, they came on their own - it seems they liked the shelter the hay bales gave them. 'Garter' is an old german term for 'garden', and garter snakes truly are a wonderful 'garden snake'. They are shy, completely non-poisonous and inoffensive, and each one eats bugs like a little bug-eating machine. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that they can eat a ton of bugs each, over a summer! The chickadees came for the black oil sunflower seeds in the birdfeeder, but stayed to eat bugs off my garden plants, as a kind of appetizer. The wrens came to eat bugs, and stayed for the plentiful nesting spots I provided, while the hummingbirds came for the nectar in the varied array of flowers planted throughout the garden. Even that first year, all my neighbours had cabbage bugs and aphids all over everything they planted - but in my garden, you had to hunt like fury to find a single pest! I felt like I'd made the discovery of a lifetime. I've used a similar group of 'tricks' several times since to build gardens, once in a small garden in the heart of Vancouver, and again in two different community gardens I used when living in apartments. The last was featured in the Vancouver Sun newspaper, it had 79 different species and breeds of plants all living together nicely and pest-free - with no use of pesticides at all - in an area 7 feet by 7 feet square. It had been begun with nothing but rock and clay fill that the city had dumped over the swampland that had originally been there, and yet that little garden produced heaps of food and flowers for me and my birds, even in it's very first year. It's a bit of work to set up such a garden, because of the digging and screening that needs to be done - but it is a great way to 'make' dirt out of next to nothing! When used with interplanting - what is often called 'companion planting' - and including the use of lots of garlic, dill, and various flowers scattered throughout the vegetables - garden pests seem to become really confused. Although I always did get a few pests, they hardly ever did much if any damage. I don't know if you've ever tried organic gardening, but it can be really fulfilling to find your yard full of beneficial bugs and lots of wild birds, as well as heaps of food. I always see lots of wrens in an organic garden, but otherwise I seldom see them at all. And they have such a beautiful song! Plus, they and a few other species seem to like to challenge the canaries to singing 'duels', which can be really funny! As for what to grow for your canaries in your garden, once you have it set up - any kind of greens works well, but I like particularly to grow flowering rape, and the shorter dwarf version of the same plant which the Italians know as 'rapini', and the rest of the world seems to call 'raab' or 'brocolli raab'. You don't even have to buy seed to grow the flowering rape plants, just pick out some of the small round dark seeds from your canary's seed mix, and 'plant' them by tossing a handful over some soil and lightly raking them in. They are a cool-weather plant, and prefer a similar growing environment to peas, so can be planted at about the same time. For a really good harvest, plant some every two or three weeks or so throughout the summer, picking cooler and shadier spots as the summer progresses. They are hardy plants, tough, strong, and resistent to attack by pests. They tend to grow tall and a bit leggy, which is best controlled by continually snipping the growing tips for greens. They can be harvested all season long, right up until hard frost, and if given a little shelter, can be overwintered in many areas of the country. All of the kales are similarly easy to grow, being hardy and cool-loving, and all are extremely nutritious. In fact, science tells us that kale is the single most nutritious vegetable on the planet! There is a wide variety of crinkle-leafed and flat-leafed kales of many colours to be grown. I particularly like the tall red-green Russian kale, and the similarly growing peacock kale is lovely too, as well as providing tasty, nutritious greens for both you and your canaries. The dark-green curly kales are perhaps best known, along with the colourful ornamental kales so commonly used to add winter interest to a garden. Yes, these kales are just as edible as the regular kinds, and just as nutritious, too! Other greens favoured by canaries are leafy endives, chickory greens, nasturtiums (greens, flowers, seed), and of course, their penultimate favourite, the dandelion. Canaries will cheerfully eat the entire dandelion plant, root, leaf, flowers, and seed, then look for more. I won't tell you what kinds of looks I got from my neighbours when they caught me transplanting dandelions INTO my gardens - I am sure you can imagine. I just wish I'd caught some on film, they were priceless!
Spray millet is fun to grow, and attractive, too. It is often used in ornamental gardens, and there is known as 'fox-tail millet'. It starts out looking like a little clump of grass, but soon each little clump will put up a 'foxtail' that will eventually become the spray of millet. Each green seed in the spray has a long maroon-red 'hair' attached to it, and the overall effect does look very similar to a fox's maroon-coloured brush sticking out of the earth...if you can imagine how the rest of the fox got underground, that is! Buckwheat provides plenty of sweetly-scented white flowers, followed by green seeds that are generally adored by canaries, and of course black oil sunflowers look beautiful all summer long. They aren't as large as the giant sunflowers, but they are just as pretty, and the heads are very attractive to a great many species of wild birds. The seeds are greatly appreciated in their green stage by canaries, and are useful when mature and dried as the basis of a good soak seed mix. I could go on and on, but I think you probably have the idea now, and can experiment on your own, to find out what grows best in your area, and what foods you and your birds prefer. Just make sure you don't use any pesticides or other such chemicals on them, and you will have a plentiful supply of greens for your birds for a large part of the year, and lots of nutritious greens to add to your own soups, stews and salads, too.
I hope you get as much satisfaction, fun, and enjoyment out of your gardens as I do - as well as plenty of good hearty food for you and your birds! by R C McDonald Table of Contents Lately I've been seeing too much advice on other canary sites and lists stating to soak seed by pouring boiling water over it, then leaving it to sit for some time, usually overnight, before straining, rinsing, and serving. Others recommend boiling the seed until it is soft, and blithely state that this is the same thing as soaking seed. Boiling cooks the grain, while the boiling water 'bath' par-cooks it. As any cook can tell you, each approach produces a completely different kind of food from live seed that has been soaked in room-temperature water and allowed to begin to sprout, as described in the article at robirda.com/soakseed.html Try eating a few seeds from small batches prepared with the different methods, and you will see for yourself how the taste, texture, and appeal changes drastically depending on the method used to prepare the grain for consumption. Many people have the idea that properly soaking seed so that it begins to grow does not change the nutritional composition of the seed - but that is not true either. Nature's 'magic' sees to it that as a seed grows, its composition changes steadily, depending on which stage of growth the seed is at, producing the nutrients most needed for that particular stage of growth. In the earlier stages of growth, the grain's proteins and starches are softened and made more digestible to the young plant embryo (and for our birds as well), while in the later stages of growth, as the leaves begin to form, the fats and starches are converted to simple plant sugars and vitamins, offering a very different complement of nutrients to the plant or the bird consuming it. This means that by carefully choosing which stage of growth to feed the soaked and beginning-to-sprout seeds to your birds, you can adjust the content of their diet to produce optimum results for the stage of life the bird/s you are feeding have attained. For breeding parents with youngsters in the nest, you want the seeds to be soaked and barely beginning to sprout - this is when the protein content of the seeds is at its most digestible. Later, as breeding season ends and the moult begins, you can allow the seeds to sprout a little more and begin to become green before offering them - this ensures that the birds have plenty of easily accessible energy through their food, along with a heightened complement of chlorophyll and vitamins. Table of Contents 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; "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 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!!!" "Received your book today, and was surprised how great it is! It's well worth the cost and then some, thank you!" "It's SO beautiful, and the photos and illustrations are wonderful, I love it!!!!!! Thanks so much!!!" 'Brats in Feathers' is available as a book, or as two (non-printable) ebooks. Learn more here. |
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