LIVE FOOD? NEED HELP...

[KarenB]

Betrue2yurself, I never find any that are not immediately eaten by my finches. In fact, when they see me coming with the container, they poise in excitement, ready to pounce. I don't put them in a dish. I tap them all to the bottom of the cup (which has a special lid with air holes and a mesh screen over that). Since they don't fly, I can just keep tapping them down to the bottom of the cup until I can get the lid off, and then I tilt the cup and tap some out onto the floor of the flight, usually about 20-30 at a time. I immediately upright the cup, tap them down again, replace lid. Then I get out of the way as quickly as possible, shut the door, and then the finches pounce upon the flies. They are usually gone within seconds.....YES, seconds! I also have a layer of hay in the bottom of my flight, and they sometimes make it to the hay pile to hide there, and the finches enjoy "hunting" them.

[lovezebs]

MariusStegmann
Thanks Marius. So do you have to restart this every time, or does it perpetuate itself? What happens in winter though? Can't leave it outside, and most definitly don't want it in the house . I guess it's a summer project.

[lovezebs]

Rox
Well, if your Waxbills start getting romanti, you'll know that it's my hormonal wishes coming your way.... Not mine, my birds'! LOL.
What do you do with all your baby Gouldians? Once you catch them that is. Now that my feathered kids are starting to get into serious relationships, I'm begining to wonder what one does with all these offspring if they hatch.

[Betrue2yurself]

KarenB What would be the best way to introduce them to my finches? I have never tried feeding any kinds of live food to them. Right now I have Kritter's Krumble Coconut Husk fibers on the bottom of my cage (48"Hx23"Dx74"L). I'd worry that my birds wouldn't know what they were and just ignore them at first - leaving the bugs to run and hide under all of the coconut husk.

[KarenB]

Betrue2yurself, My finches took to them right away, as if they knew what to do with them. Instinct. If they are waxbills, they will know they are food and eat them.

To introduce them, you may want to just buy a culture and see how it goes. Just shake a few, maybe ten or so, out onto the floor of the flight, back away, and see what happens.

I understand your hesitancy. I was the same way. At first I just put out a very few to test the waters, and then when I saw how they went for them, I wasn't worried anymore. Even if it takes them a few minutes to figure it out, the flies shouldn't get far. Once the finches learn what you are doing, they will be ready to grab them the next time.

[Rox]

lovezebs

A few of the gouldian youngsters will be going to Marius and another friend of mine and then the balance is off to my local pet shop. I was horrified the first time I took birds to the pet shop (my poor babies, where will they end up!?!?) but thankfully I have gotten over that part. It's still not easy and I do worry about their welfare but I need to just hope for the best. I could sell them privately but I honestly don't want the hassle of people coming over all the time to look at birds.

Now when the waxbills start breeding (power of positive thinking here!), then I will be way more fussy about which homes they go to. These little guys need way more TLC than gouldian's

[lovezebs]

Rox
That would be difficult, saying goodbye at the pet shop. However, I guess it's either that, or being over run by birds. I would have to tell myself, that they are going to good homes, and that more people will learn to love birds through them. Sighghgh.....

[lovezebs]

Ok Folks.
We have a container full of flightless fruit flies, and a tiny container of 50 mealworms of the extra small variety that you are suppose to keep in the fridge. Why? I do not know.
If I want to keep these things growing and multiplying, how do I do it? There are hundreds of these tiny fly things in the big container, so if I just take out a few at a time, will they keep breeding and multiplying?
How about these mini mealworms? Will they will just eat them as is? Or do I need to do something with them first? Cook them? As to keeping them breeding etc. do I need to give them oat meal or something (now where did that idea come from?) Must have read it here somewhere, but is that what you do? Get a container and put oatmeal in, then add the worms?
They have lots of stuff like that at my pet shop. Something that looked 'delish' were these Phoenix worms. They look like little grubby maggot things, and they wanted $15 for a tiny little box of them. Has anybody heared of them? And, are they good for the birdies?

[MiaCarter]

lovezebs -- The flies usually come with little string-type things that serve as a place for them to lay their eggs.

There should also be some fly food on the bottom. If not, you can make your own by mixing 1 part sugar and 1 part dried potato mix.

For the mealworms, you usually feed bran cereal.

For both mealworms and flies, you can do chunks of fruit/veggies too, but remember that you'll somehow need to get the dried up remnants out of the tub!

I believe you also need to do water with a spritz from a spray bottles onto the sides of the tub a couple times a day.

They'll eat the flies and mealworms as-is. You don't need to cook them. LOL

When you put them in the refrigerator, it basically slows their development and growth. So not sure if you'd want to do that? Not positive.

Take my advice on this with a grain of salt, as I've never raised live food myself; I've only researched it. I was planning on giving it a go, but then my husband said "Are you really going to have the heart to raise these critters and then feed them to the birds?" Nope. "Are you going to feel guilty?" Yes!
Alas, I stuck with the dead food.

[lovezebs]

MiaCarter
Thanks for information. Im going to see how it goes eith all of this stuff. This is a first time for me as well with 'live prey', do we'll just have to see.

[KarenB]

There are lots of youtube videos on culturing meal weekend. You need a couple or three plastic storage containers, and the meal worms will go through the beetle stage. You offer oats and a couple various for water source.

For the flies, as long as the media is there, you can in essence keep the culture going for infinity, although you would need to transfer the flies to a clean container with fresh media when it runs out. I add excelsior for more surface area for the flies. I buy the powdered media that I mix with boiling water. The prepackaged media has mold inhibitors and is reliable. You can also make your own, but you need brewers yeast among other things....

[KarenB]

You only refrigerate meal worms to slow their growth and keep them from turning into beetles. I use mine up before that would ever happen, though, but I still refrigerate them.

[lovezebs]

KarenB
Yea, I threw mine in the fridge. Hopefully son won't try to eat them.

[KarenB]

KarenB
Yea, I threw mine in the fridge. Hopefully son won't try to eat them.

We can only hope

[MariusStegmann]

lovezebs In South Africa, you can keep you flies breeding nicely in an outside shed. No heating required. In Canada, it would be a summer thing I suppose. The flies perpetuate themselves by laying more eggs in the bran / milkpowder mixture inside their cage. With mealworms if you have a lot of them, you put any kind of vegetable matter in with them. I give potato and carrot peals to mine. The substrate I use is bran or oats. The best livefood that you can give your waxbills is termites. Ants don't work because they are acid where termites are alkaline with a ph of 10.5. A popular theory is that the higher the nutritional value of your livefood, the more hens in the babies. That is why a lot of people feed their meelworms fishflakes. In Aus and in the USA you can buy frozen maggots called pinkies. They are supposedly very good for livefood. In South Africa baby mice are called pinkies.