ISSN 1492-8132
Issue 157, © 2006
No reprints without permission.

New! SALE!! Bird & Cage Co is so pleased with their new line of stainless steel cages, that they've decided to have a sale! From now until Nov 1, you can save $200.00 on one of these durable and beautiful parrot cages.

Owners of smaller birds will want to check out the NEW over-sized wrought iron dividable breeding or flight cage with 1/2 inch bars. This new cage surpasses even the popular 480! On the rest of the site you will find breeding cages, accessories, stands, and some of the best flight cages anywhere. There's even free shipping if you live in the continental US!

A recent customer says,"We just wanted to thank you for the wonderful service with our previous order for the wrought iron cage in egg shell white (484) and the set of two breeding cages (2481). We are delighted with the quality and price of these cages and with the excellent customer service we received when we called to inquire about delivery date. In fact, we are so pleased that we have ordered an additional set of breeding cages for our lovebirds. We cannot praise your service too highly and will not fail to recommend you to other bird fanciers."

For a full selection of cages and cage accessories, visit BirdandCage.com.

Help Needed
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Do you know of a great bird site which deserves a review? Maybe you have a favourite tip or trick that you like to use, or know of a product that has made your bird's life better or easier to manage in some way? Why not share them with other readers? Send us tales of how you cope, or 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 use this link to send us an email.

Links
Table of Contents

- Home
- Products
- Articles
- Basic Care
- Breeding
- Health
- Moulting
- Photographs
- Flock Talk
- Canary Cam
- Birds Board
- Canary FAQs
- Wings-Up Seal
- Canary Video
- Cam Slideshow
- Canary Song CD
- Books & eBooks
- Bird Software
- Avian Probiotics
- Bird Cages
- Cage Accessories
- Questions?
- Contact
- Links Pages
- Privacy Policy
- Testimonials
- Site Map

"I love your website, your information has made me a very well-informed canary friend/owner. Thank you."

"Thank you for your love of birds and your commitment for helping those of us who are learning to share our lives with our feathered friends!"

"Robirda's website, bird board and e-zine are invaluable tools for any birdlover."

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

"I cannot thank you enough for your kind and considerate responses to all of our questions. Your website has really been a wonderful find for us! And we absolutely love your canary CD!"

"Just a short note to tell you how great your ezine is... As a long time bird lover I thank you for your wonderful mag. Keep up the great work!"

"Hi Robirda! Thanks for your thoughts. My little one is singing as loudly as ever. He looks much better today. Your advice was most welcome; I'm particularly grateful about the recipes! I sent you the same amount the vet charged me; you have done no less than he did. You are a real blessing to all of us canary lovers the world over."

"Thank you so much for the book on canaries. That is a really nice book. I needed one, because I bought my Mom two canaries, a male and a female, we don't know anything about them. I'm so glad to have this book, I couldn't believe how much was in there. Thank you so much!"

Welcome to Robirda's Companion Bird eZine
Flock Talk!
For breeder or pet bird owners who care.

Table of Contents

Website News; Birds Board update, check out our Wings Up Seal
Sponsor's Space: Save $200 on Stainless Steel cages til Nov 30!
Help Needed: Share your favourite websites, tips, and products
Feature Article: Encouraging Beneficials; helping health along
Canary Song CD: The best CD on the market, say happy customers!
Handy Links: Our latest list of links to major areas onsite.
Product Review: the 'Water Buddy', an exceptional bird drinker!
For You & Your Birds: We couldn't do any of this without you!
Subscribe & Unsubscribe information for Flock Talk.

Website News

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It's been very busy around here for the past few weeks! In the midst of the ongoing process of keeping our sites up to date, we've finally managed to upgrade the Birds Board and it's membership system. All visitors are welcome to browse or search the boards and read freely, but a Nest membership is required in order to post or reply to posts. Paid memberships allow us to keep the Board free from spammers and hecklers, offering a safe, reliable place for members to discuss what's happening with their flocks. Check out what's available for members of the Nest and the Birds Board by visiting www.robirda.com/nest.html

We're quite excited about our other new service, which allows us to let you know more about the bird products we've tried and used, and allows you to send in feedback on products you use and rely on; our Wings-Up Seal is offered only to those products which prove to be safe, effective, and helpful in keeping our birds healthy, strong, active and safe! Learn more about our new Seal, and send us comments on products you've found useful and effective, by visiting www.robirda.com/seal.html

Feature Article

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There's beginning to be more and more discussions in the news these days of the use of probiotics, and how they can be of assistance in establishing good health and disease resistance in living organisms, whether it's your own health or that of any of your pets that's under consideration.

It really is rather impressive how beneficial the use of a living probiotics culture can be. I've seen problems ranging from simple digestive upset to persistent yeast or fungal infections that resisted all medical treatment, make a sudden turn-around under the influence of a strong, active probiotic culture, in humans as well as birds.

Probiotics renew essential digestive enzymes and beneficial bacteria required by our bodies in order to properly digest food. Normally these are cultured within the gut, but stress, poor diet, or the use of antibiotics can deplete the body's natural supplies to the point where these bacteria can no longer reproduce. In order to get the gut functioning normally again, it is necessary to replace them.

But once you've done that, how do you go about encouraging them to thrive on their own, without needing constant renewal from outside sources?

Encouraging Beneficials

by R C McDonald
www.robirda.com
Copyright © Oct 2006

"Scientific facts" are changing every day, as more is learned about how the world and its elements function and interact with each other. Examples of cooperation between different elements to produce results beneficial to all the living beings involved, abound in the natural world.

Some of the nastiest diseases in humans or in birds involve problems caused by moulds. I'm personally quite allergic to many common moulds, and my body lets me know in no uncertain fashion when they're around! I've had to learn how to discourage their growth, rather than battling them - getting rid of moulds entirely is simply not possible. The stronger the chemicals you use, the most you foster their resistance, and the more they will try to grow. Moulds are very adaptable!

Moulds and fungi are interesting elements of the natural world, and although in general I don't like having them around, I have to admit they do have their place. Their presence is an excellent indicator that something is out of balance in the environment where they're appearing, because while their spores tend to be almost anywhere, they only actually appear when conditions favour their growth.

This means that those conditions are balanced to foster fungal growths, rather than the beneficial bacteria and enzymes which would normally flourish, and which help the environment - without as well as within our bodies - to achieve it's own state of balance.

These beneficial bacteria exist in one form or another throughout the entire environment, wherever life is found. With a little care and attention, we can foster their growth, and when we do, their presence (and the slightly acidified environmental conditions which encourages and supports them) alone will discourage most harmful moulds and such from appearing. Some fungi thrive in slightly acidic conditions; mushrooms, for example. Some of those are friendly. But that leads into another area of discussion, so we'll go back to moulds for now!

Moulds growing on soaking and/or sprouting seed can be very discouraging, particularly to a new birdkeeper! It IS possible, though. to discourage them from showing up. There's various methods that work fairly well, but two of the best involve adding natural cider vinegar, or GSE (grapefruit seed extract) to the soaking and rinsing water, as well as using them for cleansing anything in the surrounding environment. GSE, while very effective, is rather expensive, while cider vinegar is relatively cheap and easy to get.

If you're using GSE, just follow the instructions on the bottle. But if you plan to use cider vinegar, first you'll need to figure out how much acidification your water supply needs, to achieve a roughly 6.0 - 6.5% or so balance. Plan on acidifying all the water you use - including the water used to soak the seeds, the water you clean your counters with, the water you rinse the soaking seeds with, etc. Because of this you'll be working with fairly large quantities, so be careful to use enough cider vinegar - a little too much is better than not quite enough.

There's lots of ways to test your water. Some drug stores still sell litmus paper, an older time-tested method, and many pet stores sell water acidity test kits for use with fish tanks. These tests generally work well on ordinary water too! Just add cider vinegar a teaspoon or so at a time to a couple of cups of water, stir until its blended in, and test, until you find the right proportion of cider vinegar to add to your water.

Using raw, natural, non-pasteurized cider vinegar fosters and assists the process of establishing beneficials, because it is itself alive with beneficial bacteria; they are concentrated in the 'mother' of the vinegar, which forms near the bottom of the container, but also exist throughout the entire batch. Using this natural source will help to establish the process much more quickly than using diluted acetic acid (which is all most white vinegars are).

Another assist to the process is to use wooden chopping blocks and cutting boards, counters, etc, wherever you can; most wood is naturally slightly acidic, and this helps to foster beneficial bacteria and discourage the unwanted kinds. Cure the wood with lemon oil and maybe a little beeswax or linseed oil, and you will have a lovely finish to the wood that will itself tend to encourage beneficials.

The nice thing about all this is that if you persist in adapting this 'acidification process' to the whole home environment, making an effort to sustain a slightly acidified balance throughout, eventually you will get to the point where you won't have to worry about problems with mould anywhere! I regularly mix up a small cup of agar-agar with some water, and leave the mix sitting out on a counter or a shelf for a few days; if there is any mould spores in the area, they will find the agar and begin thriving.

Usually, all I get is a leaf of dried-up agar, after a week or so. That confirms that the beneficials in that room are doing well, even I tend know that already, as my allergies will begin acting up the moment there's even a few more than normal mould spores around. In that case, the agar will offer me a chance to catch and identify the culprit, before it gets well established.

I used to get sick for months on end from moulds and mould allergies, before I learned how to discourage their activities in my household environment. That doesn't tend to happen much anymore. Nowadays I can grow soak seed for my birds trouble-free, and not have to worry about their encountering heaps of mould spores when eating it. That could cause big trouble.

Some birdkeepers will tell you that soaked seed mixtures are dangerous to use because without proper care, a batch might become contaminated with moulds. But avoiding healthy foods because there might be a problem, reminds me of the kind of reasoning that might be used to say, for example, "Breathing pure oxygen is dangerous. Let's get rid of all the oxygen, so we can breathe without danger!"

While such logic can and does sound silly when stated in such a manner, similar logic is used every day by far too many people, as an excuse for avoiding substances or foods that could be of great benefit, if used properly.

In the case of soaked seed, all that's needed is to prepare the soaked seeds in a way that will not encourage moulds to form in the first place. There's plenty of reasons to use a good soak seed mix, as many wild birds of a wide variety of species could tell us, if they could talk!

Soaked and sprouting seeds are a naturally-occurring wild food in many areas of the world, particularly during spring and fall. They assist in enhancing overall condition and health, and they are widely used by a great variety of avian species in the wild as an essential ingredient of a natural nestling food. Our birds love eating soaked seeds, and youngsters raised on a good soak seed and nestling food mixture will wean naturally and easily.

In short, a properly used soak seed mix will provide excellent results that are difficult to achieve any other way.

Using soaked and/or sprouted seeds that include mould spores can lead to problems with disease and going light; but this won't happen if the soak seed mix is used and prepared properly. I haven't had a problem with any of my birds going light for going on close to two decades now.

The natural world, with it's multitudinous and interactive systems, has had eons to work out its checks and balances and arrive at efficient, workable results. More often than we know, it contains solutions to our commonly encountered problems in aviculture, just waiting for us to notice them. That is, if we can learn to understand just what it is we're looking at!

by R C McDonald
www.robirda.com
Copyright © Oct 2006

Product Review

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The Water Buddy Drinker

http://www.woodlandbird.com/text/WBuddy.html

Rarely do we get as excited over a new product we're trying, as we did over the Water Buddy drinkers. These drinkers are, quite simply, the best we've ever tried! They don't leak, drip, or squirt, and can be bounced around and even shaken, without any loss of the contents. The tips are simple to dissasemble for cleaning, and just as easy to reassemble. Water stays clean and untainted for days, and even your trickiest little brats won't be able to get foreign matter into his or her water supply.

Best of all, all the birds we've tried them on learned to use these drinkers easily and quickly. They are simple to use, and even the smallest birds can quickly and easily learn how to operate them. If you'd prefer an automatic watering system, rest assured that the specialized tips on these drinkers can easily be adapted to such purposes. Our search for a contaminant-free water delivery system is finally over, hooray!

Do you know of a good or bad bird product? Why not review it for Flock Talk readers? We will be reviewing foods, cages & cage accessories, toys, and other bird items, in upcoming issues. To arrange for a review, send us your inquiry and a brief description of the product(s) here, with the subject line 'Product Reviews'

Song CD
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Do you like to keep your canaries singing? Encourage your canaries to sing more with our CD, featuring Robirda's canaries in full song. Or, use it to call more wild birds to your yard, or to make your pet parrots more comfortable in your home.

You'll get 12 16-bit true-stereo tracks, each averaging almost 5 minutes long, for a total of over 58 minutes of canary songs, with no distracting background music. We've even posted a short sample for you to listen to!

We receive many positive comments from happy customers, so we're sure you'll be pleased. One recent customer told us:

"Thank you for creating such a beautiful CD. I just purchased 'New Songs From the Birdroom' for my cockatiel to listen to whenever I have to leave him alone for any period of time. The CD is absolutely fantastic, thanks again!"

Another says, "My 'baby' Jingles and I are both thrilled with your CD! It arrived within days of my purchase and it's the best CD out there! I have purchased every CD available, and yours was the only one my canary responded to. He was in subsong before, but is singing his little heart out now ! The CD has attracted the wild birds outside his little garden sanctuary, so my canary has lots of vocal competition now, which makes him sing even more."

Find out more about our Canary Song CD here.

For You & Your Birds, With Love
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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 one of our websites, please consider joining our sponsors.

Our next issue is due Mon, Nov 6th. We hope you and your birds stay safe, well and happy through the end of the month, especially during any Hallowe'en festivities!

Remember, chocolate can poison birds, and sugar is not much better, so be sure to keep all such candies well away from your birds! We look forward to joining you in early Nov.

Robirda
Oct 23, 2006
Kelowna, BC, Canada

"You have the most informative and helpful small bird site on the Web. I have found your information priceless and inspiring."

"Everyone always asks me why my birds are such beautiful singers and breed such magnificent babies...I tell them that I learned from Robirda! While they give their birds all kinds of 'magical' formulas, I just follow your guide to 'keep it simple.' My birds are now very healthy, and there has been no recurrence of the infection. Thank Goodness!" R.C., Florida

"I am so impressed with your site. I've learned a LOT from it, the greatest thing being that canaries are solitary birds and I don't have to get him all kinds of buddies. Thanks for all the great info!" F. Clement, USA

"You have been so helpful, I can't thank you enough for being so patient with me and my questions. I love your site and use it a lot for links and info...."L. Kasheta

"Hi there! Your site looks GREAT! Love the easy maneuverability, lots of good photos..." P. R. McSorley

"Your website has really been a wonderful find for us! And we absolutely love your canary CD!Thank you for your love of birds and your commitment for helping those of us who are learning to share our lives with our feathered friends!"

"SUCCESS!! Our little guy is chirping happily and well again... We felt that we had to thank you for giving us access to save our little boy. We love him dearly and ...did not want to have to take him outside and worry about the 'shock' issue. So a sincere thank you for giving us the information to do surgery, with a happy outcome. Good work, keep it up."