FINCHforum

OK, as you know I'm going to be setting up my swees and OCs to breed, so am experimenting with live food. I just got my first shipment from Grubco today of mini-mealies, and couldn't wait to try them out. My CBs dive-bombed the bowl (I think the OCs were understandably scared!) and decimated my little sample, so that's good news! My question is whether anybody else out there uses the Grubco mealies, and if there's a trick to getting the little buggers out of the cups easily and quickly. I took about 5 minutes with a pair of chopsticks to take out about 20, and they were eaten in seconds! If I have to serve up large amounts to several cages of birds..... Any advice would be appreciated!

Hilary

I use tweezers.

You still pick them out one by one, though? I'm wondering if there's a colander method, where I can shake out the medium and leave the mealies! I'm hoping to have 6 pairs set up. I think one pair of OCs is ready - the male has been singing, and the two keep going after one of my poor shaft tails (who used to chase THEM around the cage!). I may get larger mealies next time, too. These are about 1/2-1". The birds ate them whole so no waste, but they're so small that it took a while to take out enough for even a sample. Frankly, I could only watch out of the corner of my eye - I'm the person who "rescues" earthworms after it rains!

Hilary

I finally found maggots for my guys and the cordies LOVED them.. made little piglets of themselves. Thanks to Madhatter out there!

Next I'm going to try them on the lavenders, red ears, firefinches and indigos. None of those have been too excited about eating insects at all. If this succeeds they'll have a new favorite food that I can get all year round. Yipppeeeee...

Try maggots, HIllary!

Jeannette

p.s. regarding the mealies.. USE YOUR FINGERS! LOL

If the mealies are very mini, it's going to be a challenge finding a sifter that can separate mealworm from substrate since the substrate and tiny mealies are about the same size. HOWEVER, a trick you might find useful involves sticking a fresh 'moisture source' in the mealworm tank and waiting for the mealies to find it and attach to it. then you can pick up the moisture source (such as a slice of potato) and scrape the mealies off of it and into a dish.

I also used to use a spoon and skimmed the top of my mealworm breeding tank to collect mealies... this would pick up a little substrate, but i was keeping them on a mixture of cereal grain based flakes that I wasn't too worried about the birds possibly eating; and the birds never really seemed interested in it, anyway.

EEEWWW! (Both to the fingers and the maggots!) Where did you find the maggots - I've heard good things about those. I'm still squeemish about feeding living things, but will probably get over it! I have one pair of cordies that will eat anything, and the other ignores all of the lovely protein I provide. I also got my flightless fruit fly culture today - we'll see how that goes! I'm wondering if I should save the minis for when there are nestlings, and feed a larger size until then for ease of handling..... The things we do..... Hilary

You'd never believe me! I searched petstores after pet store. I searched stores that specialized in fish and lizards only. I tried gas stations in tiny little towns from here to the U.S. border (on one of our weekend day trips).

And after ALL that, I found it at a Husky gas station 3 minutes from my house. 100 PLus maggots for $2.19

so I bought 500 of them.. LOL

They seem to be the food of choice for the cordies so far. They even IGNORED their mealies!

As for the 'ewwww' part.. It's not that bad. You get them into your hand and they try to burrow between your fingers. It kinda tickles. hee hee...

But yeah.. WASH YOUR HANDS.. often.

OK. I'm going to try a little potato to attract the mealies - thanks Crystal! And I'm also going to try the Texaco near my folks' house for "gentles" - you can find bait right next to the processed cheese! (I'm assuming they're being sold as bait? Congrats on finally finding them!!). My folks live right on a big fishing bay, so the station should have a good selection. I'd love to make this work. If it does, has anybody signed up through NFSS for their Finch Save program? I'm deliberately picking birds that I don't think are often bred domestically (US). It's so fun to have the babies, but I think it'd be even more rewarding if I concentrate on species that may no longer be available. Hilary

I just read up on the Finch Save program. I thought they'd have a list like 'endangered species'. It seems everything but Goulds, Zebs and Javas qualify. I did read somebody was concerned about OC's disappearing from US aviculture but based soley on their price, I'd guess they're pretty common. They sure are cute!

So, Hil, you're looking for Owls, too? I'm thinking we could have our own little "Save the Owls" breeding program happening within our forum group. What species did you register? The Swees and OC's? Keep on that owl breeder!

I'm not registering for any species until I figure out if I can entice them to get romantic, though as I said my OCs have changed their behavior in the last week or two (though no eggs). I also caught one of my newly-shipped swees on top of another the other day (wish I could figure out which ones they were - I have 4 to a cage until I get my new cages!!), so they're settling in pretty quickly! Sally, where are you located? Save the owls!!

Hilary

Re: mealies: I found if i put a sheet of newspaper (folded over) in my mealie tank, the mealies would chew a few holes through and hide in the gap between the pages. to harvest, simply pull out the paper an shake them off into a dish...

Well done with the maggots guys! Good to hear. The flightless fruit flys are a great idea too. I tried them once myself, But found themm difficult to feed out. they can climb anything and just wont stay put in the damned dish! Perhaps a jar with a small hole in the lid would work - sort of a slow-release system!

Edit:
Also, Hilary: Get some different coloured split plastic or aluminium rings. Put a different colour on each of your swees - no more identification problems! (except when you can't see the rings )

Mad -

I'll try the newspaper trick - thanks! I'm also trying to think of a good system with the colored bands. I've read that some folks have fairly elaborate systems with multiple bands - I'll have to find that again. Right now I'm keeping track of the little guys by the amount of plucking, though I'm hoping that Feather Up will take care of that!

Hilary

Hilary - I think the article you might be talking about is: http://www.exoticfinches.com/mypubs/publish-banding.htm

I came up with a different idea that is more based around being able to tell who is related to whom instead of trying to figure out what colors correspond to what bird number, and then having to look that number up...

My method only works for a small # of generations and is best suited for people that only have a small number of breeding pairs.

I'll try to briefly explain it using 2 pairs as an example..

I band all of my unrelated breeding adults with a unique single color split band.

Hen 1 has a black band, Cock 1 has a white band, Hen 2 has a green band, Cock 2 has a red band.

The babies produced by any 2 paired adults will have a single dual-color split band that has the color of each parent's band.

Babies from Hen 1 x Cock 1 would therefore have a band which is both black and white, and babies from Hen 2 x Cock 2 will have a band which is both green and red.

If I bred black-white babies to red-green babies, I would give the resulting offspring 2 bands (one on each leg)--one black and white band, and one red and green band.

I know that I can pair any 2 birds together as long as they do not share any color(s) on their leg bands.

So if in the future I decided to pair Hen 1 with Cock 2, their babies would have black-and-red bands, and I would know just by looking at the birds that I could not breed the black-and-red babies to the red-and-green babies or the black-and-white babies because some colors are shared.

Etc.

Because you can put up to 2 leg bands on each leg (for a total of four bands) this method can work for up to 3 generations of offspring (not including the original breeding adults).

Unfortunately not all dual-colored split bands come in all color combinations, so you have to be careful with what solid colors you select for the original breeding adults. This is also the main constraint for why this method only works for a small # of breeding pairs--there are only so many solid colors available to start with.

You can also get solid colored split bands with #s on them--which will help when identifying individuals as opposed to identifying relationships between individuals. Unfortunately, I don't think the dual-color split bands come numbered, but I could be wrong.

I wonder if plain, closed aluminum bands could have nailpolish applied to them to give you more color options, or if the nailpolish would not hold up...

Anyway, if you find other articles and ideas for banding methods, please pass them on!

Excellent Crystal! Thank you so much! I'll let you know if I come across anything else, but since I'm trying this with limited birds it should work great! Bands are cheap - I'm off to look for dual-colored ones!

Hilary

http://www.redbirdproducts.com/legbands.htm

has a good selection. :)