LIVE FOOD

[kenny66]

I thought it might be interesting for some of the newer peole to talk about live food inside and outside the breeding season. When I started out there was very little available in the way of live food. It was restricted generally to termites, maggots (using rotten fly blown meat) and mealworms. Things have progressed markedly and you can now order live food online and buy it at almost any pet outlet.
For me, I generally restrict myself to maggots and mealworms. Whilst I live in Northern Queensland, termites are becoming harder to come by and I now dont try to get them. I have a number of species which I believe need live food for successfull breeding success. Most of my birds take live food but not all, like the gouldians,need them to raise healthy chicks.

Those breeds I provide live food for, and I notice are the keenest to take them are:
Jacarinis-Red Faced Parrot finch-Cordon Bleus-Ruddies-Orange Breasted Waxbills-Painteds-St Helenas and Stars. I feed my live food out in kitty litter trays in the outdoor aviary on a constant basis during the breeding season because I find that some like the RFPF will take live food at night. Anyway, this post is just to get the topic going and it would be interesting to see what other people do, or not do in regards to live food.

[Sally]

I had been working toward a goal of no live food, and I still like to work on that with some species, but I'm thinking I would have better results with live food. I have used mini mealworms, larger mealworms, and white worms. I tried maggots, ordered online. The birds didn't eat them, and I wound up with a room full of flies! I tried wingless or flightless fruit flies, but they were difficult to supply to the birds, and they usually hopped out of the cages before the birds ate them. I tried a type of mealworm that was different than the standard Tenebrio, was supposed to be very wiggly and attract the attention of the birds. They were expensive, and my birds didn't eat them at all. I have dug up ant hills and frozen the ant eggs, and suffered many fire ant bites in the process. The white worms are supposed to be good, my problem is that they prefer to be kept at 50 degrees F. My bird refrigerator is too cold, and my house is too warm--no nice cool basement, which is the preferred location. I've also tried waxworms and Phoenix worms, no interest from my birds.

My Grens get mini and larger mealworms. I offered mini mealworms to my Strawberries, and they did not eat them (that really surprised me with the wild-caughts, as I assumed they would need live food). I found out from a friend who gave me her breeding pair that they will not eat them until they have babies in the nest, and then they will eat them. So the next time I have Berry babies in the nest, I will offer them mini mealworms. I know a woman who keeps her Strawberries outside in an aviary, and she keeps a bucket of very ripe fruit in the aviary to attract fruit flies. I refuse to do that in my house!

I haven't been breeding many of the other waxbills because I have been concentrating on the Grens and Strawberries, but I will go back to offering mini mealworms to the CBs, Fires, and Gold/Orange Breasted.

I know Candace used to stick pieces of wood in the ground to attract termites, but my neighbors would probably have me arrested if I did that! Termites are a problem in my area, part of the inspection to sell a house is a termite inspection.

I think I will move this thread to the Diet and Nutrition forum, since it deals with one way to feed our birds.

[kenny66]

I really would love to get to a stage of no live food but I think it is not possible with some that I keep. I dont offer live food outside of the breeding season and then I offer it slowly, gradually increasing the amount until they have chicks in the nest, when I supply it constantly. We had a shortage of mealworms through the outlets recently which meant I had to ration them until I could get another supply. I immediately had tossed chicks, which I think the live food shortage created. I agree with you about maggots. Unless you are removing the pupae and excess grubs constantly you end up with a room of angry black flies!!! My preferance would be to offer mealworms exclusively as they are so easy to keep and feed out but the high fat content worries me as does the calcium uptake problems if they are kept in bran. I keep mine in a wheat germ/rice bran mix to counteract this but as I said the fat content is an issue for me. I used to feed out mini mealworms but I noticed that even the jacarinis are able to cut these up for their tiny chicks. The fruit bin to attract fruit flies is a good idea, if you can stand the odour but you have to be very careful with any runoff waste with this. I have no luck whatsoever with frozen food of any sort as mine need to have it moving to take it.

[finchandlovebird]

I am feeding live mealworms (cut in half w/a spoon so they don't crawl around) to my RCCB, who (on their 5th clutch...all unsuccessful so far) now have 3 eggs in the nest & for the first time appear to be eating the mealworms. The mealworms (& cutting them in half with a spoon) give me the heevie jeevies, so this is a huge sacrifice for my birds on my part. I am next going to buy dried mealworms & soak them in water; a friend told me about this. Wonder if it will work.

[dan78]

Well Kenny another good idea for a thread. Cindy your lady friend is right as strawberries are not interested in live food until chicks are just about hatched, have wasted alot of live food till I found this out personally. As for my birds which eat live food, Cubans ,st helanas ,painteds ,strawberries ,rc cordons ,BC cordons ,red billed fire finches , melbas ,crimsons and siskins, these ones always visit live food dish when young are around and a few other will have a pick hear or there but not so interested. As for live food I use the reliable mealworm, maggots and micro crickets or very small ones. Also tried to get a vinegar fly trap working but very hard to keep up a constant supply so I dropped that idea. To me a constant supply is very important as birds will be expecting what they normally get supplied so try and not use insects that can't be given all the time. I started my own mealworm colony a while back but instead of bran I used something readily available to me which is seed husks, grow mine in a tub with seedhusks and add some vegies and paper for food. When feeding my mealies I place a small amount of calcium powder to them and just mix them in it so as to coat them and when birds pick them up to eat they get a small amount of calcium with every bug which doesn't hurt and i do this every second feed.
Kenny your lucky that your gouldians take live food mine don't, how bter do the young fledge.

[Angeldov222]

I thought it might be interesting for some of the newer peole to talk about live food inside and outside the breeding season. When I started out there was very little available in the way of live food. It was restricted generally to termites, maggots (using rotten fly blown meat) and mealworms. Things have progressed markedly and you can now order live food online and buy it at almost any pet outlet.
For me, I generally restrict myself to maggots and mealworms. Whilst I live in Northern Queensland, termites are becoming harder to come by and I now dont try to get them. I have a number of species which I believe need live food for successfull breeding success. Most of my birds take live food but not all, like the gouldians,need them to raise healthy chicks.

Those breeds I provide live food for, and I notice are the keenest to take them are:
Jacarinis-Red Faced Parrot finch-Cordon Bleus-Ruddies-Orange Breasted Waxbills-Painteds-St Helenas and Stars. I feed my live food out in kitty litter trays in the outdoor aviary on a constant basis during the breeding season because I find that some like the RFPF will take live food at night. Anyway, this post is just to get the topic going and it would be interesting to see what other people do, or not do in regards to live food.

When I had cordon blues, they loved mealworms? I have zebras now and havent tried mealworms Sandy Buffalo, NY

[Sally]

I think live food is so much easier to supply with an aviary. With cages in the house, I have to worry about insects getting loose. I've heard crickets are good live food, but have no idea how I would keep them in the cages long enough for the birds to catch them.

That is interesting about the Strawberries not being interested in live food till they have chicks. I had offered mini mealies to the new wild-caught Strawberries when I set them up for breeding, but they weren't interested, so I wrongly assumed they would not eat them at all.

[Sally]

When I had cordon blues, they loved mealworms? I have zebras now and havent tried mealworms Sandy Buffalo, NY

My CBs loved the mealworms, but I got tired of them just biting off the head and tossing the rest aside. I did get some of the Blue-caps converted to no live food, but my Red-cheeked tossed hatchlings.

I have been keeping my mealies in wheat flour, which makes it easy to scoop them up in a fine-mesh strainer, leaving all the bedding and worm poop behind. I give them slices of potato or carrot to eat.

Some of my birds will accept freeze-dried bloodworms (in fish department) in place of live food, but that is on an individual basis.

[kenny66]

Well Kenny another good idea for a thread. Cindy your lady friend is right as strawberries are not interested in live food until chicks are just about hatched, have wasted alot of live food till I found this out personally. As for my birds which eat live food, Cubans ,st helanas ,painteds ,strawberries ,rc cordons ,BC cordons ,red billed fire finches , melbas ,crimsons and siskins, these ones always visit live food dish when young are around and a few other will have a pick hear or there but not so interested. As for live food I use the reliable mealworm, maggots and micro crickets or very small ones. Also tried to get a vinegar fly trap working but very hard to keep up a constant supply so I dropped that idea. To me a constant supply is very important as birds will be expecting what they normally get supplied so try and not use insects that can't be given all the time. I started my own mealworm colony a while back but instead of bran I used something readily available to me which is seed husks, grow mine in a tub with seedhusks and add some vegies and paper for food. When feeding my mealies I place a small amount of calcium powder to them and just mix them in it so as to coat them and when birds pick them up to eat they get a small amount of calcium with every bug which doesn't hurt and i do this every second feed.
Kenny your lucky that your gouldians take live food mine don't, how bter do the young fledge.

When I first started all the aviary on meal worms 2 years ago the goulds never looked at them. Now the goulds fight with the others to get to the tray first. I have been relatively trouble free with good clutch size and healthy chicks which is O think partly due to the M/W. I have noticed though that the OBWB and Ruddies are throwing much bigger clutches on M/W. Its the first time ever I have had an OBW clutch of 6 fledge.

[cindy]

Sally, I pm'd Kenny about crickets. The fly size young ones. We had these on hand for newly hatched agamas, geckosa, crest geckos and uromastyx hatchlings (which were amazing to watch eat...they would stlk the cricket like a cat with a mouse, wiggle the end of the tail and then pounce like a cat on the tiny crickets. These fed on live food until a certin age then went to veggies and soybeans).

We had a supplier in Ft Myers that shipped overnight 1000 to 2000 of the vrious size crickets. My husband and his entomology background set "farm" up for us.

The smaller fly size (and any mealie or cricket) can be gut loaded with the foods you want the birds or reptiles to eat. One way to offer small fly size crickets is to fed, chill them for a few minutes in the fridge and serve in a high sided container that the crickets can not get out of but the birds can get into. you can contruct a clear plastic bowl with another inverted ontop with holes cut out of the top bowl with perches inserted for the birds to land on and get into and out of the container. The hoole need to be as close to the upper part od the inverted bowl so that the crickets can not get out.

the chilled crickets have to be just cold enough to slow them down but not enough to knock them out or kill them...they do warm up fast so if the birds take to this it may work.

The man we used for years is loocated in FT/Leigh area....I can see if he still ships crickets. PetSmart will order them in for you in quanity but they cost way more than getting them from a supplier.

If you want to try the fly size see if a local pet store/reptile place has a small quanity to try first.

[cindy]

This site we looked into while ago...live and dried foods

http://www.oregonfeederinsects.com/Aviarysup.html
http://www.oregonfeederinsects.com/feederinsects.html

[cindy]

Note I was reading an article on feeding crickets to finches...they said crickets that are bit bigger than fly size can be offered but de-legged. Not sure I want to sit and de-leg crickets but it may be worth a try!!!!!

[CandoAviary]

Kenny, I was able to wean some waxbills off live foods. At first they would only rear with termites, wingless fruitflies and mealworms that I offered. Then after noticing that their favorite mealworms were the freshly shed white ones I decided to shred boiled egg to resemble these worm delicacies. It took about two days for them to try the egg and when they grabed the strip to shake and the end would come off with ease...they were veryconfused looking. But within the week they were consuming the egg strip over the darker and tougher meal worms. All of the species I keep at this time raise young without any live foods.
I would of course go back to rearing live food if I obtained a new species, especially if it was wildcaught or accustomed to live foods. Then I would go about trying to trick them too
An example of my immitation worms


Now they will eat eggs like this... though I usually add crumble with it.

[Dayna]

That is very interesting Candace, and looks so realistic too. Great alternative to the real thing. I could do live food in my house if I ABSOLUTELY had to but the thought of having them escape and having worms and other insects running freely around my house gives me the creeps lol. I would rather keep mice.

[dan78]

Sorry sally my last post I put down the wrong name. Its funny how based on my strawberries which aren't wild caught don't touch any food that contains protein outside of breeding season/young in nest, personally like you I believed that they didn't require it but only stumbled on the answer by accident which was in one flight they were housed with birds which required it and one day I saw them eating it while in other flights they didn't get any and young were tossed, I found that they loved maggots and ate them with gusto and crickets were next oj the list and mealies were last to be eaten.
Well I find all my cordons will only eat the heads of the mealies and won't be bothered to eat much more than that part.
Crickets I place them in a large ice cream container place in fridge for about 10min and then feed.