Danger in Open Banding an Adult Bird?

franny · Post by **franny** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 2:41 pm

Hi Folks,

Wanted your opinion on this. I have just my 2 Goldbreasted Waxbills. And when I bred them last fall, I was lucky that the new owner came and took the babies not a day too soon. One more day and I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to tell them from their parents.

This year I have a second cage. So I can move the parents to it, once the babies are fully weaned, if need be. I think I'd prefer to move the parents as the wire openings are a bit bigger on the storebought cage 1/2 inch. I'd worry less about escapes.

I ordered the smallest XF split plastic bands from the AACC this week, and they should be here well before this clutch (if they hatch successfully) molts to adulthood. But I thought if I could band the parents, then it would only have to be done once, not with every fledge, every clutch. I can get the lady who trims my birds toenails to help. She doesn't like banding and expressed some concern that the adult birds might be extremely bothered by the bands, and try to get them off. (Though her experience is mostly with hookbills.) She hasn't banded, but is very used to handling birds, clipping wings, nails etc. and will help me put the bands on them, but just wants to be sure I'm doing the right thing.

So what do you think? If I can get those tiny little split plastic bands on them, will it be too stressful for them? Will they frantically try to remove them do you think? This is the adults, who may be wild caught, for all I know. I really don't want to band the babies instead, and have to do it every time.

And I would rather not have to split them into separate cages.

Let me know your thoughts, and I'll go with the majority public opinion on this one, as I have no experience with banding at all, good or bad.

L in Ontario · Post by **L in Ontario** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 2:50 pm

Banding is not hard so the thoughts of doing that should not bother you too much. I would be more concerned about these being adults and have never been banded, they may well try to remove the bands and injure themselves in the ongoing attempts. I'm not sure if being wild-caught would be of any concern either. I mean I don't think it matters if they were wild-caught or domestic bred - they have gone through their entire lifetime without anything on their legs and then suddenly POOF there is this thing on their leg that should not be there (to them) and they may try anything to get it off. Just my opinion.

My babies don't ever bother with their (closed) bands as they don't know life without them. I do have a few adults that came to me with split bands but I do not know when the bands were applied. I'll be leaving them on.

Post by **Sally** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 3:32 pm

I have put split plastic bands on most of my adult birds. Especially when I have more than one pair, I want to be able to keep track of which pair is which. They may pick at them at first, but soon adjust to them.

I recently separated my GB juvies from their parents. The boys are just starting to show the eye stripe, and the hen looks sort of rough, so still easy to tell the adults from the juvies. The problem with the GBs is that they can shuck off bands so easily. In the past, I have used the XS size split bands from the NFSS, and more than half of the birds lost their bands. I had unrelated juvies all together, and when they lost their family ID, I had to sell them as related, since I could no longer tell.

I also closed banded this last group of juvies, using size A, the smallest. I was able to do this 3 days after fledging, and still, one of the juvies has managed to lose his closed band! So if you want to keep track of your GBs, you have to be very careful to keep pairs and their juvies separated.

franny · Post by **franny** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 3:43 pm

Thanks Sally,

Since I only have the one pair, and sell all the babies, I won't need to worry about telling the juvies apart. Bad enough to worry about telling them from Mom & Dad, never mind from eachother!

Glad to hear it hasn't been a problem banding your adults. I got the smallest size canadian band, and since these are adults, I'm pretty sure that once on, they will stay put.

Anyone else have any experiences with banding adults? Good or bad?

mickp · Post by **mickp** » Fri Feb 27, 2009 12:21 am

my birds dont get bands until they have fledged. havent had any problems at all, not counting trying to catch them in the aviary though

ac12 · Post by **ac12** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 9:28 pm

I just got thru banding my birds, and I'm not sure who is more worn out, me or the birds. My knees are still shaking from being crouched down at the cage trying to catch them. Got to figure an easier way.

I had the exact problem mentioned. I ordered the bands too late, the daughters beak is now orange, should have done it when the beaks were black. I could not tell mom from daughter and got them mixed up, and put the wrong color band on both. Now I have to remove and swap the colors. But at least I got the sons and father correct, as the sons have not fully molted so it was easier to tell who was who.

The 4 adults seem to have accepted the bands, it was one of the kids who was trying to peck it off.

I asked on another thread, but is there any logic to color banding.

I did left leg for year of birth (YOB), or what I think might be YOB for the older ones that I got from the store.
2008 light green
2009 yellow (2009 was going to be light green but I got the light green on an older bird...oops, so rather than try to remove the band I changed the year/color)

How do you do family coding, especially if the parents change (new mom). I only had one clutch, so I'm still OK, but wanted to know BEFORE I get the families mixed up on the next clutch.

If the bands were numbered I could record the numbers, but all I have to use is color of the band.

BTW on the zebras I used size XCS (one size up from the smallest XF) based on the recommendation on the NFSS site to use 1 size up when banding at fledg.

Post by **Sally** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 12:33 am

When the NFSS talks about using one size up on the bands when applying them at fledging, they are talking about the closed aluminum bands. That is because the babies grow so much that by the time they leave the nest, you can't slide that closed band over their foot, so you go with the next size up. Split plastic bands can be applied at any time, and are usually applied to juveniles between fledging and weaning, so you don't have to go up one size. The size they have listed for split plastic bands is the size that an adult bird would take.

There is a good article about record keeping at the FIC, linked at left, think it was under Breeding. There are many ways to keep track of the birds using plastic bands. The more birds you have, the more you need to have some sort of system.

I used to use just plastic bands--I put one color, say yellow, on the left leg of the parents. Then each of their babies got a yellow band on their right leg, so I knew which family they belonged to. The problem with such a simple system is that if the parents have 3 clutches, all the babies have that same band, and there is no way to be sure of their exact hatch date. The numbered plastic bands let you keep track of each specific bird. For the most part, it is not a terrible problem, if you regularly sell the babies, but if you keep very many, you then have to have a way to tell in what year they were hatched. This is why I went to using NFSS closed bands, as they have the year marked, plus each year has a designated color. Your system of putting plastic bands of a certain color for each year will work, too.

The most important thing is to have some way to tell parents from babies. As you found out, the babies soon look like the parents, and on some species, it happens very young, and now you can't tell parents from babies.

I still do the plastic bands to designate families, so I can easily see what family a particular bird belongs to. Otherwise, I would have to catch the bird so I could read its NFSS closed band, then look up in my records to see who the parents are. So now if I see a BCCB with a yellow band on its right leg, I know it is out of my #1 pair of BCCBs.

ac12 · Post by **ac12** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 12:09 am

One of my adult zebras decided he did not like the band, and it was funny and sad to watch. He would yank so hard at the band that his foot would get pulled off the surface he was standing on with so much force that he would flip himself over.

I was feeling so sorry for him that I was considering removing the band.

But given that he is still recovering from a move and the prior owner did not take care of him, I decided that the added stress of catching him yet again, and removing the band would be too much. So the band stays on.

I just hope get gets used to it like the other 2 adult males.

mickp · Post by **mickp** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 4:29 am

He'll get hungry soon and forget all about the band

ac12 · Post by **ac12** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 11:17 pm

About the band size.
The band XCS size (1 size up) seems to look fine for the adult zebras but loose on the juvenilles.

I'm concerned that while the XF (smallest size) would fit for the juveniles, that it would be tight on the adults. This is just based on how the XCS bands look on the adults.