FINCHforum

about 3 weeks back I purchased a few pair of pied cordons. it's looking good at the moment and maybe 2 pairs have built nest and possible one pair is setting on eggs. I decided to put all 4 pair in the one aviary and see how they go.

these will be trialed under outside aviary conditions for the breeding season. cordons are not easy to breed -easy to get them to nest and lay eggs but not easy to get young flying about.

livefood is very important to these birds and the best live food of them all is -termites......and you require thousands of them.... yesterday I headed out to the scrub which was about a 70 mile round trip by car to secure some live food for the inmates.

termites are pretty hard to keep alive for long periods so I decided to do something a bit different. the live termites were collected and stored in Chinese take-away food containers and upon arriving home all were placed in the deep freeze for safe keeping

today I brought out a container and although the termites were dead once I placed them in the aviary it took the cordons roughly 15 minutes to source out their meal and they were right into it. prior to dark I gave them a second helping and they arrived at the feeding station much quicker.

termites are far better than mealworms and they can eat huge amounts with no ill effect from the feeding. at this stage maggots are out of the question as I just can't stomach the thought of breeding and feeding them. I tried it once and that was once too many

see below photo of the country in which the termites reside

anyway at the moment I am a bit bored with breeding gouldians and have sold a few pair of my rarer mutations to concentrate on other birds. shortly these sold from $1500 each to an average $1000 each but they were rare mutations. although I did keep about 20 pair.

I might see if I can grab a few photos of the pieds and upload to this thread.

wildbill

That's a pretty "red bird", lol.

Good luck with the CB's and the termites.
I wouldn't know where to even start looking for any around here, so my guys have to make do with mealworms and flightless fruitflies.

Do tell about the "great maggot experiment" .

here's a photo of the cordons. I have more and will upload later

Very nice Wild Bill. I just think the normal CB's are nicer looking, but rare has an allure on it's own. In South Africa pied cb's are not readily available.

wildbill

Nice to see you again! They are very pretty and the cheek patch sure does "pop" in that mutations! What a trip for some chow!

wildbill
Agreed, termites are the trick. I had a steady supply for a while around my property but now are gone. When it warms up a bit I will go on the hunt for some again. Love the pieds...they are beautiful...and I am drawn to the rare also! I've never seen any here in Texas, only the photos you post.

Good luck with them and keep us posted!

Saw this photo on Facebook.

wildbill - Where did you find the termites? In dead wood or were they subterranean ones? How did you harvest them? We have plenty of termites here in southern California but most of them seem to be happily chomping on our houses. Wouldn't know how to get to them. The valley behind our house has tons of eucalyptus trees in it - should I look for termites in old fallen wood?
Iso

Pretty birds wild bill i have only seen pictures of pied cordons, but would love to see them in person.

I have heard stories of near white cordons here in OZ but never seen them. although I once went very close to breeding a white diamond fire tail but unfortunately it was found dead in nest and almost fully feathered too.

around this neck of the woods the termites I chase live in mounds in the ground about 1 to 3 feet high. its estimated and I don't know who did this that 1 to 1.5 million termites live in an average size nest with one queen only doing all the egg laying.

the other day I tried something completely different. I used the usual pick to open up the nest. plus I bought along with me about a dozen plastic containers to store the live food it.

so the procedure is as follows. the nest is open and termites are running everywhere. I placed the empty Chinese food container within the nest. I added a bit of the crushed termite nest to the bottom of the container and then grabbed a bit of fallen timber. I used this to bang on chunks of termite nest and in doing so let them drop into the container and when satisfied I have enough -lid back on.

I guess it took about 20 minutes to do while the wife sat in the car although she did complain I was longer than I said I would be. I guess that's because she was sitting in the car and I am about some-one paddock poaching termites I don't think it would worry anyone much.... it's not as if I was cattle napping

after I had collected what I wanted I placed all the rubbish I had dug out of the nest back in the hole. I also added a few of the small timber/twigs I'd been using - gives them something to chew on and then totally covered and packed down the nest. by doing this and not going deep into the nest I don't do any harm to the queen and more importantly I can come back to this particular nest every 3 months or so and re-harvest.

if you go too deep and take the queen the nest usually dies out in a matter of months. it's also very important to seal the gaps in the nest with dirt to stop water should it rain from entering the nest. if water entered the nest it would go moldy and again -wipe out the nest.

termites don't last all that long once you dig them out of their nest. I use to store them in a 20 litre containers but within a week or so the nest got moldy and they eventually all die out....and your back out in the scrub again

so this time I decided to use Chinese container and once I got them home they were placed straight into the deep freeze. time will tell how this pans out but I have read that they can last several weeks in the deep freeze before they go off and end up a mushy goo!

so far it appeared to work. I placed live termites in with the frozen ones and after they ate the live termites they then got into the dead/frozen ones. three days on I am now feeding frozen termites only

next trip to the scrub I will photograph a termite nest and the inmates.

wildbill Here in South Africa, we take out the whole termite hill. We take this home and keep it in big plastic drums. You put rotten wood in it as food for the termites. Every time you want to feed some to the birds, you break off a piece of the nest and give it to the birds.

It's interesting that pied markings in say, zebra finches cover the cheek patches but in cordons only the brown and blue markings are affected.

a few years ago I used to do something similar to the nests and bring the lot home. but on 3 occasions I must have picked up the queen too. within 24 hours the complete nest of inmates vanished In the end I thought i'd better not keep doing this or I might not be although I don't think I greased the top of the container and that was probably my downfall.

meanwhile the pied cordons or at least one pair built a rough or flimsy nest you could almost see through then lined it with white feathers. the other day I noticed 3 or 4 eggs in it after the cock bird flew off as I inspected a gouldian nest box for eggs.

today that same cock bird flew off the nest again so I thought i'd take a look. I didn't have to touch anything as I could clearly see - 2 young had just hatched so I retreated quickly out of the aviary and back to the freezer to collect a container of frozen termites.

placed a few in a dish and as I write the cock bird is in that dish eating the frozen termites. it will be interesting if this frozen termite idea works as well as I have read. I know the chances here in OZ of rearing cordons without live food is about nil to none

I've also been told pieds are a lot harder to rear than the normals...time will tell there. anyway I have a good supply of the frozen treats and the best thing frozen live/dead food lasts a lot longer than my once weekly trips to the paddock to collect termites.

I read somewhere they can last a good 6 weeks but after that they turn to a mushy compound and are useless. but if I can get 6 weeks i'd be pretty happy.

either way I will be keen to see the end results with this frozen treat idea. if successful in the future it might be a stepping stone for me to venture into a more rarer and expensive finch.

wildbill I see that there are no end to rarer and more exotic birds. Lots of the people in my finchclub are now keeping sunbirds, cardinals and weavers. To get sunbirds to breed, you have to provide spiderwebs! They also love eating spiders.

MariusStegmann

ive heard of sunbirds but not here. cardinal were about once too. they would be in short supply and rather expensive. weavers have dropped in price now. some were $2500 a pair a few years back but their breeding program took of well and those birds are not sitting at about $700 a pair

pied cordon still have two young and today apart from the frozen termites I started them on live mini mealworms. these I collected from the floor of the aviary. a few weeks back it was rather hot here and killed most but since them eggs have hatched and they are starting up again.

I will now use both forms of alternate food to keep them interested in feeding their young