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Hints and Tips for the Breeder and Pet Owner

 submitted anonymously by a DAS member

I’d like to share some hints that have made my life easier in the birdroom.

1. Consider having one species or family of birds. Over your time of keeping birds, this will save you hours of work. Think of the prep time in diet alone. Storage of different diets takes a lot of space.

2. Have uniform cages and dishes for easy interchanging.

3. If possible, have cages made for your height .If this isn’t practical, really think about cage design for your bird’s comfort and ease of service and cleaning for you. Sometimes a bargain isn’t a bargain.

4.  My luxury is a dishwasher in my bird room. It’s wonderful! A friend had a total kitchen makeover and offered me her old dishwasher. It was in great shape. The only thing missing was the connection for the tap. It got lost in construction. It took 8 months to find one and get it up and running, but it’s been worth the wait. Mine’s a portable dishwasher and it works for my birdroom space. A source could be the Habitat For Humanity Restore, a scratch and dent sale or a friend. It’s certainly a time saver

5. Join a bird club. It’s been a great source of help, support and products for my life with my flock.

Since my experience has been mostly with smaller birds, that is the area that I will generally be dealing with.  However, most things could apply to any bird you might have.

When you have been breeding for a number of years, some things you do are automatic and you don’t realize that everyone else may not be aware of some of the things that you consider general knowledge.  To this end, I will try to pass on information that some of our members may think is just common sense.  I have found out, however, that when something is happening with your birds and you are new at breeding, these things may not just jump to the forefront immediately.

For a cheap and very nutritious birdie snack, look no further than most backyards.  Dandelion leaves are a terrific treat for your birds, but you must be absolutely sure they have not come into contact with any pesticide and they must be washed extremely well in case a neighbourhood cat or other small animal has used your yard as a toilet.  Once they are washed well, they can be presented to your bird still wet.  Most birds enjoy playing in the wet leaves as well as eating them and this provides a quick bath for them as a bonus.

If you are planning on showing your bird and the feathers seems to lack sheen, you could try spraying them with a solution of water with a few drops of glycerine.  The glycerine can be purchased in most pharmacies.  Sometimes the simple act of spraying them (using a plant mister on fine spray) will cause them to preen and this in itself can produce the benefit of a better feather condition.

A hen may be breaking her eggs or somehow managing to carry them to the nest box entrance and throwing them out.  There are false eggs available in the market place that you can place in the nest for her to sit on.  If you cannot find these ‘pretend eggs’, you might try purchasing some marbles (I use white ones because I find them more aesthetically pleasing, but I don’t know if the hen would actually notice a difference in colour).  You simply put a few of these marbles in the nest box and let her knock them around to her hearts content.  The majority of hens become frustrated when they can’t break them or find them too hard and slippery to carry out of the box and will end up sitting on them.  The hen will then go on laying her clutch and will seldom bother the newly laid eggs either.  We leave the marbles in the nest until the last egg is hatched and the chick is big enough to stand on its own.  We have found that even though she doesn’t need the marbles in the nest once the eggs start hatching, the marbles will act as support and protection for the very small, newly hatched chicks and you have less chance of a new mother sitting too heavily on her chicks.

Another problem you might encounter is a hen that plucks her chicks.  A plucker is very difficult to stop, but sometimes adding a little sprinkle of salt to her drinking water will help.  You can also purchase salt lick wheels in the hamster section of your local pet store.  These can be attached to the bars of a birdcage using the three-ring binder clips that are carried at any paper supply store.  The birds enjoy using wheels and after a time you will find grooves they have made by licking them.  We keep these salt licks in all of our cages now, regardless of whether or not the birds are pluckers, simply because they obviously enjoy them.  We also keep iodine blocks and cuttlebone available at all times in each cage.  When a hen that plucks has chicks in the nest, we put spray millet and a mineral block in the nest box with her.  This will sometimes help.  There are, of course, times that the only solution to a plucker is to foster out the chicks to a gentler hen, but sometimes these other things can help reduce the problem.

If you have a hen that does not feed her chicks, you will have to either foster the chicks to a receptive hen or hand-feed the chicks.  Most hens that don’t feed tend to be first-time mothers and just haven’t gotten the idea yet.  These hens will quite often be good feeders once they mature a bit.  Sometimes if you can place an older chick from another mother with this non-feeding hen, she will start to feed the chicks because an older chick is much more persistent in its demands to be fed.  If you have an older, more experienced hen that refuses to feed the chicks, you will have to make sure you have foster mothers available any time you plan on breeding her.  We will only use these hens if they are better quality birds that we don’t want to remove from our breeding programme.

A friend in Alberta decided to allow her budgies to colony breed in their very large flight cage and got a couple of surprises.  Although she had provided a number of extra nest boxes to avoid any fighting over territory, two of her hens decided to take up housekeeping in the same nest box and settled down quite amiably.  Both of these birds sat the eggs although one was much more intent on the job.  Strangely enough, the other hen, who had been a notoriously poor feeder previously, took on the major part of the feeding role once the chicks started to hatch.  At the time of this writing, both hens were still content in the shared accommodations and were raising all chicks jointly.  In a further twist to the story, one of the cocks in the flight had taken on the task of mating with two hens, one of which is the nest-sharer.  He mated with this hen and another that took up residence in her own nest box.  This male is flying to both nest boxes and feeding both of the hens that he bred with.  For obvious reasons, colony breeding is not suggested if you are planning on keeping any of the offspring to breed and/or wish to keep records on relationships among your flock.  Under these circumstances, it would be almost impossible to know which chick is related to which hen and cock, especially since budgies are bred with so many mutations in them that a visual check on the chick would tell you little.

Another breeder had left nest boxes lying around her bird room where her budgies had free-flying time.  Although she had not planned on breeding her birds at that time, her birds had other ideas.  There have even been incidences of birds setting up a nest in a hole in the lining underneath a chesterfield.  It would seem that the natural instinct to find something and make do can take over even our domesticated birds when the breeding urge hits.

When we want our birds to breed, it is sometimes beneficial to give them a helping hand.  Large or awkward birds can benefit from the provision of flat perches for them to use when mating.  Also, if a bird is heavily feathered in the vent area, which makes contact more difficult, these feathers can be plucked or cut at breeding time.

Sometimes we can encourage recalcitrant birds to breed by seeming to make it more difficult for them to do so.  With the larger birds, a piece of wood can be placed over the nest box hole with a small hole drilled in it.  This encourages them to chew out the hole, which is a natural stimulant to breed.  For smaller birds like budgies, you could try a piece of thin cardboard such as from a cereal box.  If they think they are creating the nest, it sometimes helps stimulate the birds to breed.

Very occasionally a breeder will encounter a problem with a chick called ‘splayed legs’.  A chick with this condition looks like it is doing the splits, with its legs stretched out to the sides in opposite directions.  If the condition is treated early enough, a large number of these chicks can be saved and although we do not keep these birds for breeding they make just as good a pet as a bird that did not have splayed legs.  Treatment consists of double banding the chick… that is, placing a band on each leg.  You then run a piece of string under the first band.  Taking the other end of the string, you run it under the second band and tighten the string until there is only about a half inch of string between the two bands and tie a knot to hold the string in this position.  This string should be left holding the legs almost together until the baby is able to stand on its own and move around a bit.  Once the chick is between two and three weeks old and the legs and hips are in the proper position, you can cut the string and remove it.  At this point, the chick should be almost indistinguishable from its nest mates when standing and moving.  Although this does not always work, it has saved many birds from having to be put down.

For simple first aid, you can use Polysporin cream for very minor cuts or abrasions.  Eye infections will usually respond well to Polysporin Eye and Ear Drops.  Both of these items can be found in most pharmacy first aid departments.

If you have a bird whose foot has swollen and/or you need to remove his band, band cutters are the ideal solution.  If you do not have these little notched scissors, you can make do with embroidery or nail scissors… the smaller the blades, the better.  Remember to cut the band on both sides so that it falls away from the leg, rather than cutting on one side and perhaps injuring the bird further by trying to pry the band open.

To help to keep your birds in top condition, you can feed them soft food.  We feed this to all of our birds, whether breeding or not.  This will help bring some of the birds into breeding condition, help the breeding birds with feeding the chicks, assist birds in a moult, and return the birds who have just bred to proper condition.  Our soft food changes, depending on what we happen to pick up.  We might include stale soya vegetable protein, mineral supplement, hemp seed, flax seed, poppy seed, oat bran, oyster shell, bone meal, fish meal, chick starter, wheat germ, soaked oat groats, pro-biotics, Hagen breeding mash, and Hagen egg granules.  This is all mixed together and put into a bowl with defrosted frozen corn and/or mixed vegetables, apple slices, and romaine lettuce.  This is given fresh each day and the birds enjoy it so much that they hang on the front of their cage watching as it is being distributed and waiting anxiously for their turn.

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