Leg band supplier

[monotwine]

Hi all

A general search of the forum did not find much with regards to suppliers. Alas it could be my technique too.

I was just wondering who you get your bands from (closed metal or plastic split bands).

Does anyone get their's through the NFSS? I see you have to be a member to get closed rings. Is there a benefit to getting theirs or do other companies provide the same?

Is there any suggestion on who to try order from. Surely such little things can be mailed directly to me I am guessing.

I only have one place to get a variety from and they are an hours drive from me. I was thinking of buying in bulk and having them mailed to me instead.

Any help will be much appreciated.

[nixity]

The benefit of the closed bands from NFSS (and yes, you can be a foreign member and get the bands is that they are traceable.
The numbers are unique, and when a member purchases bands, the numbers are recorded under that particular member number.

So any bird you band is traced back to you.
If you sell the bird and that buyer then sells it, the buyer could contact NFSS and they would be provided with the information of the breeder (you).
The bands are imprinted with the year which means if applied correctly they lend validity to the birds' age.

There are other companies that sell closed metal bands, but most of them do not assign the numbers to the buyers or do traces for individuals who contact them regarding a specific band.
They also generally only sell bands for larger birds - Red Bird, for instance, carries only one size of metal band for finches, so it likely wouldn't work for every species.

NFSS has various distinct sizes to select based on the species you are banding.

[kenny]

this is the one i always used and you can get them by post,they just need to know what breed of bird .they do metal plastic,2 colour and numbered rings

www.achughes.com/about.html

[monotwine]

Thanks to both of you.

Nixity I did like that aspect of the NFSS. I have so few offspring every year that I would need so few bands and like the idea of banding them with an id of the year they were born. I have personally found it useful when buying birds from pet stores etc and thought to offer it perhaps to others buying my birds in turn. Now if only I could sex them before banding so they go on the right leg to avoid later having to use more bands to id sex!

I just need to convince my birds to rear young at the appropriate time of year and not leave my tally of estimated hatchlings askew.

[ac12]

Mono
I use numbered split plastic bands from Red Bird.
I use colored split plastic bands from both Red Bird and NFSS.
I'm still to new at this and am uncomfortable with using a closed band. So I will wait a while before I do close banding.

I gave up trying to make any kind of code on their legs. Any method that you use will break down sooner or later, or you will have too many bands on their leg. I just use the number to ID the bird and I record whatever info that I want for that bird/band number.

Left leg is a color coded (different color each year) numbered band for the year they hatched, or in the case of purchased birds the year I think they hatched. Example 2009 = yellow, 2010 = black

Right leg is a colored band corresponding to the unit digit of the numbered band. Example red = #2, #12, #22, etc. This makes it easier to ID a bird w/o having to read the band number, which is difficult on the plastic bands. I tried using 2 bands, but it takes up too much space on their leg, and this caused a problem w one finch, so I removed all the 2nd bands.

I use the standard electronic color code, so I don't have to reinvent a color code
0 = black
1 = brown
2 = red
3 = orange
4 = yellow
5 = green
6 = blue
7 = violet/purple
8 = gray
9 = white

[monotwine]

Thanks Ac12 for the detailed response.

I too am new to banding my bred stock. My breeding stock I have banded with colour split bands on their left or right leg depending on sex. THis purely is an id to their fact sheet which I keep for each individual bird / pair. On paper/computer I keep their history, DOB, pairing history, clutches etc. I never really sell my breeding birds unless they become problematic and if I do I sell / rehome them with full history sheet. Makes my life easier trying to catch birds in my aviary. I just look for the colour bands and avoid those. However now I am starting to breed with same species and don't want to get their offspring mixed up, so thought to band their offspring with different colours. However thinking about it, I will have to split band regardless of my want for nice shiny bling which can be traced to me. The birds I most want to band are the waxbills. HOW on earth am I going to get a close band on without disturbing the nests and causing the parents to desert at 10day old!

So this weekend I am going to do some local investigation to see who supplies what. If ultimately all I want is different colours for each clutch with individual numbers or year printed on them, I am sure there must be a supplier for such.
I will go see what is out there and then make an appropriate choice.

[lovemyfinch]

Actually, if I am not mistaken, Sally close bands her smaller waxbills the day they fledge, with bands that are one size up. Hopefully she will be reading this and tell you all about it.

[monotwine]

Brilliant. I had not thought of that option for the waxbills. Thanks.

They are so tiny when they fledge. I have Senegal Firefinch fledglings at the mo and they are so teeny compared to the RH Parrots who are a week younger but almost double their size.

I remeber buying BC's with printed split bands when I first started out. I think they may be through an aviculture club or something. I will find out this weekend hopefully.
Ultimately I still like the NFSS sizes and identification, although I don't know how involved breeders from here are with them (if the bands would be recognised and worth it) I don't know enough about the aviculture "culture" to be honest, so am going to ask those that do know more about it. Usually here birds for sale are not even ringed at all. Parrots yes, finches rarely have split bands for sexing / identification. Sexed birds are tatooed and you id them that way.

[Sally]

Yes, I closed band my waxbills at fledging. I am in the same situation with them--if I tried to band in the nest at the proper time, the parents would likely abandon, so I won't chance it. The NFSS recommends that you go up one size when banding at fledging, which is what I do, and you have to band that first day of fledging, or they may get too big. One exception: Goldbreasts are so tiny that they can be banded with an A band up to 3 days after fledging. The first time I banded them with B bands at fledging, they had lost those bands within days, and I was still able to reband with A bands. NFSS has ten sizes, from 2.20mm to 4.48mm (which is more for softbills), and I believe they get their bands from AC Hughes, the link that kenny gave in a previous post. The advantage with NFSS, especially for those of us in the U.S., is that if you buy a bird with an NFSS band, you can contact NFSS and find out who the breeder was, as they keep records of who bought which closed bands.

Almost all of my breeding birds are ones I bought at marts, from other breeders, etc., and almost all of them did not have closed bands, so there is little to no history on them, or any idea of age. I am in the Finch & Softbill Save group, which is working to build a database of breeders so that someone can find another breeder of their species in order to swap bloodlines, and one needs to have a means of identifying each breeder (yellow split band, left leg really doesn't do it). So I have just ordered numbered split bands, all brown (since I don't use this color for families), and once these have arrived, every bird I own that does not have a closed band will get one of these numbered bands. Every bird that I raise gets a closed NFSS band.

When I started with a few birds, it was easy to keep track of them, but the more you have, the more complicated it gets. And since I often move birds around with different mates, trying for the combination that works, numbered bands will make it a lot easier to keep track of each bird that doesn't have a closed band.

[monotwine]

Thank you so much for answering Sally.

Yes I see how useful the NFSS bands are to you especially with swapping out breeding lines etc.

I don't have a huge breeding programme yet, but still want to band my youngsters. Even if people cannot trace me in the long run, they can at least know the birds age. I am going to try see if there is some sort of identification society here. There is a big aviculture club upcountry, so I am going to find out from some of the parrot / finch breeders I know how it all works here. I may just find out they are NFSS too, but I have never seen those rings about only ones with SA & numbers printed on them.
Currently my birds will be destinguished enough just having permanent bands. LOL well at least planning on such for my 2011 season.

Thank you all for your input it is much appreciated.

edited to add:
I see AC Hughes actually provides for quite a few SA bird clubs already. Don't see any finch clubs on there though. There is hope.

[kenny]

you may like to try this link,because it supplies numbered yearly closed rings if you are serious about your breeding

www.zebrafinchsociety.co.uk/ -

[monotwine]

Thank you very much Kenny

[Ameza]

Since this is in the dicussion I don't want to make a new thread.

I have been thinking about banding my future youngs, there are not many breeders here in Iceland but I think that makes it even more important to know where the birds come from, so we won't be pairing up too related birds

But yes what I was wondering about, you who use closed bands, I suppose you have written on them year and number of bird and such but do you use different colours or just silver ones? I was looking at the NFSS site and they have a colour sceme for each year, is this like some international colour rule or just within NFSS? Are many different year colours going on?

[mickp]

I have to agree with Kenny on this, in regards to a leg ring supplier.
cant beat Hughes's in the UK.

[monotwine]

Ok went about to look into the situation here. Basically only clubs band or those that want to.
It would seem that the SA printed green split band rings I have been seeing on birds, the trader is guessing, is banding done during quarantine of imported birds.

So the door is open to me to do as I please, although one trader did say he thought that trade was going in the direction of banding, so I will perhaps just be a step ahead.

Thanks Mick for the vote of confidence on HC Hughes. I will probably go that route for now and have bands made specifically for me for next year and first try out my breeding attempts with those.