FINCHforum

What do you do about chaff?

I have the gravity vacation seed hoppers, so all the chaff (most of it that is) goes into the hull drawer. Before I had those, I would take the seed cups outside and blow off the chaff, but it is easy to get some in your eyes if you aren't careful. Then I would top off the seed cups and return to the cage.

I blow away all of the hulls on the floor and then vacuum them up.

Lucille

I used to blow the hulls off into a garbage bag, got them in my eyes and all over the place. Then I used to use a straw to blow them into the bag? Choked on them a few times, Inhaled them another time. Then I would wait till I had a bucket full of 'used seeds', take them outside and use a blow dryer on low setting. Now this works pretty good, if you have a larger quantity.

Then I noticed that the sparrows would come nosing around the hulls for a stray seed, and started tossing most of the leftovers outside.

Now I have my own flock of sparrows, some chickadees, the occasional pigeon, the occasional magpie, squirrels, and a field mouse family.

I dump my seed every day into a container and start over with fresh seed. The old seed gets put outside for the wild birds. So I don't have to deal with chaff.

Mine gets given to the garden birds, along with any seed still left over. Easier for me and the garden birds don't mind

I use the blow dryer and take the dishes on the porch and blow out the hulls

I dump the seed and chaff into a bowl.

At first, after a few days I would take it outside and blow off the chaff and put it back in the seed cups - but after a few rounds I found that I was effectively concentrating it down to all the stuff they just refuse to eat no matter what - which boils down to anything other than white millet, canary grass seed, and the odd oat groat.

Flax, rape seed, nyjer, red millet, anything resembling a pellet, and even the dried fruit chunks are all rejected.

For now I have a big bag of the fancy mix (that has the pellets and dried fruit bits and flax seed and what-all in it) that I dumped in with the garden variety finch mix I got at a local non-chain pet store (white millet and canary grass seed as far as I can tell is all that's in that). Basically about 1/4th of what is in that mix is stuff they won't eat.

I have several feeders in the cage which I do not fill but only put a thin layer of seed. Thus I don't get a thick layer of hulls on top of seed.

In the morning I dump the leftovers out for the wild birds and refill - or rather re-sprinkle - the feed cups with fresh seed.

For now, since there is so much stuff that they utterly reject in the mix, I don't bother to blow off the hulls and give it back.

But when this mix is gone - which will be awhile, there's a lot of it at this point - I will go back to dumping the seed in a bowl at the end of the day and taking it outside to blow off the hulls (making sure I'm not facing into the wind, because "You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't blow seed into the wind ...". And then put it back in their seed cup as there should be nothing in there anymore that they're likely to reject.

So right now it's "feed it to the wild birds" but ultimately it will be "blow off the chaff and give it back to them". So I marked "other", LOL!