FINCHforum

I have some silos on order which will get here next week. I want to switch from water in cups to the silos, but I want to make sure that everybirdy is on board with the silos before I remove the cups. How long do you think that will take?

It is hard to say, as sometimes the birds have been used to silos in the past and so they adapt immediately. I've had birds catch on in hours, and I've had others take days. The best thing is just to watch them closely. Once one bird catches on, the others usually quickly follow suit.

What I have done, and you must be monitoring while you do this, is remove the water dish from the cage, and watch to see if any of the birds use the silo. After about an hour, I replace the water dish. You will need to keep an eye on the birds till you are sure ALL birds in the cage are using the silos.

Lucille

I offer a choice of both.

Elana

It didn't take mine long to get used to the silos for water. My society and owl finches were the first, and then the gouldians copied them.

With a new bird in the quarantine cage, I dip its beak into the trough of the water silo/tube, so it knows that is water. That is it, there is no bowl/tray of water.

I gave up on tubs of water a long time ago. Zebras would bath making a mess all over the place, and poop into it YUK. So the tubes were a cleaner setup.

In your case, I would dip the beak into the trough of the silo, so the bird knows it is water. Then do as others have said.

My zebras and bengalese all went to silos almost immediately when we switched over. Once a few were doing it they all hopped on board. I'm in the process of ordering larger ones as I have to replace them daily but there are so few shops with bird supplies around here and most online places won't ship to me. I noticed this post is a bit older, hope yours have adjusted well!

The problem that I have run into with these tubes are the width of the trough at the bottom of the water tube. Many of my cages have the bar spacing narrower that the width of the trough, so I cannot or have difficulty using the tubes on those cages.

I have some older tubes with narrow troughs, but not enough.
On some cages, with LOW feeder doors, right down at the cage floor, put the water tube down there, I lift the door just enough to slide the trough under. So the birds stand on the cage floor and drink.

What I find funny is when the gouldian try to take a bath out of the tough. They stick their beak into the trough and flap their wings.