ISSN 1492-8132
Issue 92, © 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!

We are now offering New Songs From The Birdroom for only $12.00, plus $2.99 shipping and handling. Order yours here!

There are some great cage deals available to bird owners, from small and large pet cages, to breeding cages, stands, and some of the best flight cages anywhere. There's even free shipping, for the continental US! See Robirda's cage reviews for more.

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

Get an insider's look into careers and businesses involving pet birds. The Companion Bird Lover's Guide to Careers will give you insights into a selection of avian-related careers and businesses, including avian rescue founder and director, avian veterinarian, veterinarian technician, freelance writer, marketing manager, bird boarding entrepreneur, as well as selling wares to the companion bird market.

This informative booklet provides profiles of people who have careers and businesses involving pet birds; dozens of helpful resources to help put you firmly on your chosen career track; and vital information to help you make an informed decision on necessary qualifications and other considerations.

The Companion Bird Lover's Guide to Careers is a perfect tool if you have always wanted to base your work on pet birds, but don’t know how or where to start. It is ideal for high school and college students, as well as anybody looking for a change in venue.

For more infomation (including how to order on or offline), and to read free articles, please visit us at P J Publications.

Remember, 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. For all those who continue to help out in so many ways, thank you for your warmth and caring.

Our next issue is due April 11th. We hope you and your birds stay safe, well and happy in the meantime, and we look forward to seeing you all then! 

Robirda
Mar 28, 2004

Welcome to Robirda's Companion Birds eZine

For breeder or pet bird owners who care.

Hello! Welcome to Flock Talk's 92nd issue. Subscribe and unsubscribe information for the email version of this ezine is at the bottom of this webpage.

Table of Contents

Website News

If you wish to receive Flock Talk by email, please check that your email filtering tools will not block emails from the Flock Talk listserver. Even if you don't have any email filtering in effect, your ISP might; check with them for details, if you have problems signing up for or receiving Flock Talk.

An ongoing puzzle for us has been how to respond to people who write us using email addresses which either reject our replys, or bounce our messages back telling us that the user is 'not their client'. If you write us but we can't contact you in return, we will not be responsible for the results!

A final note about Robirda's illness; she had another rather serious set-back recently, but there's light at the end of the tunnel; it seems her susceptibility to the continuous recurrance of the infections that have been plaguing her were rooted in allergic reactions! Steps are being taken to solve this, and things look more hopeful at the moment than they have for some time now.

Thanks for everybody's continued support and understanding; we can't tell you how much your caring and kindness have helped!

Feature Article

It's one of the oldest problems in the book, if you have ever tried breeding canaries; parent birds (particularly hens) who successfully fertilize and hatch eggs, but who refuse to feed their young. Learning to understand why this can happen, and just what can be done about it, is an ongoing education every time a breeder encounters...

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

There's lots of reasons why an adult canary hen might refuse to feed her newly-hatched chick(s), but most of them are rooted in one of two reasons.

1) (Apparent or real) lack of adequate food for the babies, or

2) Fear. Fear of any number of things can make a hen nervous, which in turn will cause her to sit tightly on the nest, rather than than relaxing enough to feed.

Let's consider these two issues in a little more detail.

The first issue, food, is more important than you might think, for not only must the breeding diet provide complete and properly balanced nutrition, to ensure proper fulfilment of the youngsters' potential, but it must also appeal to the hen's taste. All the nutrition in the world will not do your chicks a bit of good if the hen turns up her beak at your offerings!

One common reason for refusing food is due to unfamiliarity with the food being offered. For this reason, many breeders offer their hens small-but-gradually-increasing amounts of nestling food (also known as 'egg' food, whether it contains any egg or not) prior to breeding season, during the weeks when the hens are slowly beginning to come into breeding condition. This familiarizes them with one of the most important staple foods that will be needed when the chicks hatch.

Canaries will also often refuse to eat foods that do not taste good to them, or that look different from what they are used to receiving, so making sure that they are familiar with a wide variety of foods *before* breeding season starts is a good idea.

Commercially made nestling foods often contain enough sugars to be dangerous to a newly hatched canary chick, and most recommend that they not be offered to the parent birds until the chicks have reached three days of age.

This being the case, you will want to keep a variety of foods available as soon as the chicks begin hatching, so the hen will be tempted to eat, which in turn will encourage her to feed. Small amounts of sugar-free or low-sugar nestling foods may be provided (One such nestling food is described in Robirda's care sheet on Soak Seed and Nestling Food, which can be found at http://robirda.com/care.html)

Many nestling foods come with instructions to moisten with water before feeding. This tends to make these foods more palatable to the birds, but also means that they will sour very quickly, so if you are not going to be able to replace moist foods every few hours (or less, if the ambient temperature is fairly warm), it's a good idea to leave a dish of dry nestling food out, as well.

Moist foods sour even more quickly if they contain egg, as many nestling foods do. If no other foods are available, the birds may inadvertently give themselves a case of sour crop. A hen with sour crop will feel sick and will not want to feed, and if her crop - or a chick's - becomes impacted with undigestible food, the condition can kill, if left unattended.

That is why many breeders, particularly if they have a job which takes them away from home for several hours during the day, will see that there's plenty of alternatives to soft foods available to any birds with youngsters, items such as dry nestling food, greens, rolled oats, etc. This ensures that if the soft food goes off there's still something for the hen to feed her babies.

Given a choice between sour food and no food, many birds will feed the sour food, but if there is something else available they will feed that instead, giving the breeder a chance to return home and renew the soft food supply.

One thing to remember, and that is that if a hen will feed anything, she will feed greens. If possible, try to always have plenty of nutritious dark, rich greens available to a hen with new chicks, to help get her in the mood to feed.

Any of the kales are a good choice, and so are collards and leafy broccolis, especially broccoli raba, or rapini. The leafy endives and chickories are also appreciated by most canaries, and they are almost as nutritious as the kales, so you can let the birds eat all they like.

I don't recommend that anybody try it because it's not really an adequate diet, but kale is nutritious enough that it is possible to raise canary chicks with the parents being offered a diet consisting solely of a standard canary seed mix and a continuous supply of organically grown kale! (Yes, I have seen this done.)

Such a diet lacks protein, and so the youngsters mature more slowly, but the fact that it is possible at all points out just how rich in nutrients this lowly green vegetable really is.

But what if the non-feeding issue is not being caused by foods?

One common problem tends to happen most often with a younger hen on her first nest. She's not experienced enough yet to know exactly what is going on, but knows that her eggs are precious and must be guarded. If she suspects that her humans or her mate are interested in her eggs, she may tend to feel that they want to harm them, and so will feel she must remain on the nest and guard them.

New breeders in particular often have problems with this, as they tend to hover over parent birds with newly-hatched chicks, anxious to know that the youngsters are being fed. Especially if they are trying to closely watch the nest while being as quiet as possible, the bird's instincts will tell her that they want to eat her babies. Some new breeders will go so far as to use their hand to force the hen off the nest so they can see! This is NOT a good idea, and simply reinforces the hen's supicions.

Be very careful to never disturb a nervous hen while she is on her nest, and be sure to make some noise, while you are looking at her - this will tell her in the most basic terms possible that you are not hunting her babies.

Sometimes the hen is afraid of the male, rather than her human associates, but whatever the reason for her fear, the results are the same; she will stay on her nest as if her life depends on it, and will not get off until the 'danger' has passed.

If it doesn't pass soon enough, she will continue to follow her instincts, which will tell her that it has become unsafe to raise her babies, and that she must allow them to die and abandon the nest.

What this means, is that after you've made certain a proper food supply is available, and the hen is familiar with it, the next step in dealing with a non-feeding parent bird, if she is sharing a cage with her mate, is to temporarily remove him. If he has been feeding the hen while she is on her nest, then it's best to leave him in the same cage with a wire divider between them, so that she can still be fed by him through the wire partition.

This solves a few problems. Firstly, it makes the hen feel more secure; she can still see her mate, but she knows that he cannot access her nest, and so can't (inadvertently or otherwise) harm her chicks. Secondly, it means that she will now have to get off the nest whenever she is hungry; either to eat some food on her own, or to go to the wire divider and be fed by her mate.

This does not seem like a big deal, but it means that when she has finished eating and returns to the nest, the 'thump' of her landing on the nest edge will cause the chicks to raise their heads and beg to be fed. This sight (combined with her new feeling of security and a crop full of good, nutrition-laden food) is often all it takes to convince a hen to start to feed.

It's not usually necessary to separate the male for more than a few days or so, in such a case. By then, the chicks will have begun to grow rapidly enough that the hen will be noticing her youngsters require quite a lot of work to keep fed, and in most cases, she will welcome the aid provided by the return of her mate.

As long as he has been feeding her all along, and the chicks are still in the nest when the divider is removed, usually there will be no problem with his providing assistance to his hard-working hen.

Some hens won't allow the males to feed the chicks until they have begun developing feathers, but will instead require him to feed her, then she will turn around and feed the youngsters.

Like us, each of these little birds has his or her own personality, and like us, each tends to have his or her own way of doing things. Bottom line; if it is working for you, don't change your system trying to 'improve' anything - not in this breeding season, at least.

If you must introduce changes in your care system during breeding season, make sure that they happen slowly enough to give the birds plenty of time to adapt. Remember, our birds are not as adaptable as we humans. Too many changes can destroy their sense of security and in turn affect their willingness to breed or feed.

It is up to us, their caretakers, to provide our birds with an environment in which they feel safe, and comfortable enough to feel encouraged to raise babies.

If we haven't succeeded at that, they will let us know by either not trying to breed at all, or by not feeding. More often than not I will find that a non-feeding hen's problem is a reaction to something in her environment that makes her feel threatened. Once this is corrected she will generally do just fine.

It is far easier to blame 'age', or 'the genes', or simply write a bird off as a 'bad breeder' than it is to do such systemic analysis and problem-solving - but if you wish to be successful in the long term with your canaries, you will learn to practice routine analysis first, and let the rest take care of itself.

Then you can sit back and watch those chicks grow!  

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

Some useful resources: