FINCHforum

Hi all,

Just wondering what maggots are best for finches. I have; orange breasts, cordon bleus, gouldians, canaries, st helenas, green singers, and rf parrot finches. I know a lot of people feed theirs bush maggots, but this site only sells housefly and blowfly maggots - which is best?

Cheers,

Fraudster.

what site?

jimenezl https://frogs.org.au/live-foods/ - an Australian website since I'm from there

Sorry fraudster , didn't know where you were from. I know you guys down under prefer the termites, at least for the Cordons and Blue Capped waxbills. I do visit the http://www.aussiefinchbreeder.com/and https://www.aussiefinchforum.net/ sites; great info there.

The only maggots I've heard of for feeding to finches are the black soldier fly maggots.

Don't bother with maggots, give them grated hard boiled eggs.
Protein is protein, and that is what you are wanting to give them, I assume? I had Pekin Robins and they loved meal worms and large worms. I had to get rid of them because they were tossing them out of the flight cage and I was finding them everywhere. Also it gets expensive even if you find a supplier that sells in volume.

Just my thought.

Jerry

Feeding just egg food to various foreign finches and waxbills is a complete waist of time, especially if you wanna do well breeding,

These birds are quite highly insectivorous when it comes to rearing and maggots are perfect, egg food by all means should also be given but should never expect certain species especially waxbills just to try and rear on egg, I know egg is high in protein and for some birds acts as a substitute but birds that normally rear with live food really should this available at all times when rearing

Never heard of all these funny named maggots, bush maggots and black solider fly maggots.....what ever there supposed to be ....lols

Basically there are three types of maggots, I use em in vast quantities and are an awful lot cheaper than mini mealworms,

These are the maggots :

Blue bottle ( normal size maggot )

Green bottle, called pinkies ( small size maggot )

House fly, called squats ( very small size maggot )

The pinkie and squats are what we use here in the uk and most of Europe.

I'm an experienced match angler and use a lot of of maggot and obviously know how to properly clean and use em,

Incidentally I often clean and freeze the maggots and put 1/4 pint into small freezer bags, I normally buy in excess of about 2 gallons at a time which is about 16 pints and at least 1 gallon will be frozen.

To freeze the maggots, never freeze with added maise meal or saw dust as the maggots will turn to a mush when defrosted and will then be useless,
I always add any powdered maise meal after I've defrosted em as it will now dry them nicely and look more presentable

A lot of British finch breeders here use vast amounts of the pinkie maggots with total confidence and the results are normally very good

I wish we had the resources you have in the UK and Europe, as well as in Australia. Termites aren't as readily available in the U.S as in Australia, and maggots aren't readily available either. We can get some maggots, but not like you can in the UK. That is why most finch keepers in the U.S. rely on mealworms.

Sally wrote: I wish we had the resources you have in the UK and Europe, as well as in Australia. Termites aren't as readily available in the U.S as in Australia, and maggots aren't readily available either. We can get some maggots, but not like you can in the UK. That is why most finch keepers in the U.S. rely on mealworms.

I can fully understand and respect that Sally, shame you can't get the maggots really as over here they are about £3.00 per pint, that on average would last one pair of birds nearly 1 week when rearing which to me is cheap as chips

However mini mealworms I rate quite highly, maybe a little more money but worth it,

Incidentally I also highly rate the use of a fruit fly culture, this is simple enough to do, any old fruit will suffice but bananas are best, you can have several tubs of this on the go and keep simply topping up.

The small finches and waxbills will definitely thrive on this when rearing their young and the best bit about it Sally is that a fruit fly culture costs next to nothing,

All fruit should be placed in tubs with some 1/2 x 1/2 inch avairy mesh placed on top of the tubs to stop the birds from getting at the rotting fruit, this is crucial, these tubs can be placed in large flight cages and avaires and the birds will sit on the mesh of the tubs and feed quite happily