ISSN 1492-8132
Issue 97, © 2004
No reprints without permission

Bird and Cage Co is having their Big Summer Blow-Out Sale - prices have been slashed, so drop by for big savings on wrought iron cages!

While you're there, take a moment to tour the new, updated, easy-to- get-around website for the Bird & Cage Co. 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 new website shows it for all the world to see.

It's almost time for the annual moult, and that means this is the time to be sure you have the accessories you need on hand. See some cage accessories Robirda recommends at robirda.com/access.html

There are some great cage deals available too, from pet cages to breeding cages, including some of the best flights you will find anywhere. There's even free shipping in the continental US, for orders over $25! See Robirda's birdcage reviews at robirda.com/birdcage.html

This issue's tip comes from a Flock reader, who writes;
    "I changed from an opaque plastic dish (a shallow food storage container) to a transparent one for my canary's baths the other day and for the first time was able to get a clear view of the action taking place below the water line.

    "While watching her perform her daily ablutions with her typical sheer birdie-abandoment, I noticed how one foot or the other would slip out from under her with every move she made. Although she seemed unfazed by it, I couldn't help but think just how much more enjoyable bathtime might be if she could place all of her energy and focus into bathing, without having to check her balance and reposition her slipsliding feet.

    "Then I thought of my hot-glue gun! -No, not to glue her little feet to the tub bottom, although that would, no doubt, ensure a solid footing... Nope, what I did was lay down a crisscross pattern (#) of glue strips over the smooth floor of the 'tub'. It was quick and easy, and the result was an effective non-slip surface!

    "Most commercially-bought bird-baths have 'footing' built in, but I think this idea might be helpful for those little feathereds now taking their first tentative steps into bathing, in home-sourced tubs, bowls, or dishes such as mine."

Get an insider's look into careers and businesses involving pet birds. The Companion Bird Lover's Guide to Careers offers insights into a selection of avian-related careers & 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 on your chosen career track; & vital information to help you make informed decisions on necessary qualifications & 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 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 P J Publications.

Welcome to Robirda's Companion Birds eZine

For breeder or pet bird owners who care.

Hello! Welcome to Flock Talk's 97th 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're hoping to to give away some rather nice prize packages beginning with the 100th issue of Flock Talk, as part of our celebration. We have prize packages ranging in value from $65 to $140.00 to give away, but we need your help to do it.

We are looking for your stories of living with and keeping your birds; beginning with the 100th issue, each issue will feature a winning story, and the author will be awarded one of our prize packages, with another being awarded with each following issue until all prize packages have been won. Check them out, then send in your stories and share in the fun!

Each story should be from 750 to 1500 or so words in length, and should be sent here.

More details - along with a full list of all our prize package details - are posted here

Bird Tail Fact

This year for the first time, I heard tail-clipping recommended to help to ensure fertility when breeding canaries. I was very surprised to hear this, as in actual fact, clipping the tail of either a hen or male canary is more likely to harm breeding fertility than enhance it.

Why? The answer is quite simple. Like most perching birds, a canary uses his or her tail for balance. Proper and complete control of balance is a necessary ingredient in both partners during the process of fertilizing eggs. Changing a bird's ability to balance by clipping the tail will affect everything that bird does, until it regrows during the annual moult.

Even the act of simply hopping from one place to another within the cage will be affected negatively by clipping off part of the tail. In truth, loss of part or all of the tail will affect how the bird flies, lands, balances on the perch, and yes, mates.

It seems that the idea behind clipping a tail to enhance breeding fertility is based on the fact that the hen canary must lift her tail high enough for the male to be able to tread her fully; the idea is that the shorter tail will be easier to get out of the way.

This idea is not as reasonable as it may sound, though, because any well-exercised and healthy hen should have no problem assuming the tails-up stance that allows fertilization during mating. If the bird is not capable of doing this, a knowing breeder will realize that she is in fact not ready to breed.

Getting canaries into full breeding condition involves quite a number of details, all of which are important to achieving the goal of raising healthy baby birds; proper lighting, adequate exercise, timely provision of appropriate foods, and more.

For more details about just what is involved, see Robirda's book, Brats in Feathers, Keeping Canaries.

Feature Article

Of all the things birds do, moulting is perhaps one of the most confusing to their human owners. Sooner or later (usually sooner) every bird owner will find him or herself asking, "What do I do now that my bird is beginning to...

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

Moulting (or molting) is this really interesting thing all birds do, where every once in awhile they will start to shed feathers everywhere as aging, hard-used feathers are replaced by new.

It's mind-boggling to contemplate the amount of feathers, large and small, that this process always seems to produce. Cleaning them up can seem endless.

Worse, most (if not all) singing will generally stop, and the birds can look rather frowsy until the process is complete. One canary-keeper described her birds as "looking rather like a lawnmover ran over them backwards," when they were moulting, and often that is a rather accurate description!

Many birds are subject to grumpiness during this time, and are apt to become easily stressed, reacting negatively to even relatively minor changes in their environment or routine.

Inevitably, somewhere along the line a researcher wondered if canary owners really had to go through all this every year - what would happen if conditions were such that moulting just did not occur?

It was determined that seasonal changes in lighting and heat were the two biggest triggers for the moult in canaries, and an experiment was set up that kept the lighting and temperature the same year round, with no variences. The results were surprising.

True, the birds did not moult. But - and this was totally unexpected - when their bodies were not allowed to moult in the usual manner - eventually all the birds in the experiment died!

The conclusion was that moulting, while inconvenient to the owners, was of extreme importance to the birds themselves.

So now we know that our birds need to moult occasionally. With canaries, usually that is roughly once a year, in the mid to late summer. But what else do we need to know about moulting?

Well, in canaries, the moult is mostly brought on by the light the bird sees. Lighting is very important to canaries, more so than most of us would tend to think. Canaries evolved so that their bodies respond physically to the amount of light which enters their eyes.

This light triggers changes in the bird's endocrine system, and causes the beginnings or endings to some rather extreme physical changes throughout the bird's life. How these changes are carried out can affect his personality, his health, his appearance, attitude and his lifespan.

Every year, male canaries herald the spring with increased song and mating displays. Seeing this increased amount and intensity of songs, their owners become very proud that their bird is happy, without realizing what has triggered all the singing - the longer days are telling him it is time to find a mate. In response, he begins to proclaim his ownership of his territory, and his eligibility to mate

The summer solstice approaches and passes, and suddenly the canary finds its days beginning to get shorter again.

The weather after the solstice is commonly the hottest of the year, and to some extent, heat does seem to be a factor in triggering the annual moult. But largely, the canary is sensitive to the lighting that he sees. When the long days of early summer begin to shorten again, a canary's instincts tell him that mid-summer is soon to become fall, and that now is the time to moult out old feathers, growing in new ones before colder weather arrives.

Thus the old feathers begin to fall, replaced by the new, in the age-old ritual of renewal. But in the last decade or so, we have learned that more than feathers are renewed during this time, for studies have shown that a canary's brain will grow new brain cells, at the same time his body is growing new feathers.

Most of these new cells show up in the center of the brain that controls song. Most canaries will stop actively singing much, if at all, while all these physical changes are taking place, but song still plays a very important role in their lives.

During the moult they will spend a lot of their attention listening to all the sounds in their environment, listening for sound combinations that they find attractive. Some may spend some time practicing soft disjointed phrases of song as if to themselves under their breath, practicing the feel of producing certain sounds while learning how to reproduce them.

Many of those sounds - the ones he finds the most agreeable and interesting, at least - will end up incorporated into his song, once the bird resumes singing. But the converse is true as well - if he doesn't hear much of anything that he considers to be of interest while he is moulting, he may not have much of a song by the time his moult is completed.

Stress can cause loss of feathers too - but this is rightly not a true moult. Some possible causes of stress are drafts; people (children too) or pets staring fixedly at the bird, causing him to think of them as predators; an inadequate, incomplete, or unbalanced diet; widely varying temperatures within the same day; or too much silence in the bird's environment. Birds do NOT like things to be quiet! They also don't like sudden loud unannounced noises, but a steadily noisy environment usually makes them feel right at home.

How well the moult is completed is controlled largely by the diet. Moulting increases the nutrient requirements, and very often a diet that might normally be considered adequate is not a good diet at all, during the moult.

Available nutrients can make a huge difference in overall health, and especially in the speed at which the moult is completed, because if the necessary nutrients are not available, the moult will not be able to be completed until they are.

For this reason, all birds on seed-based diets need regular vitamin/mineral supplementation. Moulting takes a lot of nutrients, and if they aren't available in the bloodstream, they will come out of the bird's bodily stores - or wait until enough trickles in through the food, if necessary.

A normal moult will usually last for at least four or five weeks, and can stretch to eight, ten, or even twelve weeks, with the normal period being in the neighbourhood of six to eight weeks. If a moult should continue for longer than twelve weeks, other factors are at play, and steps should be taken to solve them.

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

For more ideas on dealing with moulting problems, see the feature article 'Unseasonal Moult' in Flock Talk 89.

For more details on photosensitivity, see the feature article in Flock Talk 30

Canary Song

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 today!

For You & Your Birds, With Love

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 June 20th. We hope you and your birds stay safe, well and happy, and we look forward to seeing you all then! 

Robirda
June 6, 2004