Banding baby zebras

Athanasia · Post by **Athanasia** » Thu May 17, 2007 8:29 am

Greetings from Greece. I have a question about open banding. I bought a beautiful pair of zebras four months ago after loosing my canaries to a hawk attack (believe it or not, they were killed through the bars), I couldn't possibly bear buying new canaries and when I spotted those zebras I fell in love!!! Now our family has increased by three new members who are now 16 days old!! My concern is that I want an easy way to separate them from the offfspring of the new pair I'm planning to buy any day now. I'm scared to death of closed bands so I think that a good solution would be open banding, any suggestions and advice? One last question since their mom and dad are not banded would they react if they suddenly saw bands on their babies legs? Can I band the parents too? Thanks for your patience!

StevePax · Post by **StevePax** » Thu May 17, 2007 11:20 am

At this point, it's too late to close-band your babies anyway. You can open band them with no trouble, and the parents probably won't care one bit. You can open band the parents, too, and they'll just get used to it and ignore it, with no trouble.

The hard part is catching all those birds....

Good luck!

kenny · Post by **kenny** » Thu May 17, 2007 11:39 am

i have put a link on here for you they sell closed bands and plastic open bands in all colours.they will ship also and if you ask they will send you a few pics on how to band them correctly ..as the first time is a bit daunting

http://www.achughes.com/

EmilyHurd · Post by **EmilyHurd** » Thu May 17, 2007 2:27 pm

Hey Athanasia!

I was really scared to open banding my birds at first, but it is actually really easy. The first time I did it though I borrowed my boyfriend and he held them while I banded them.

readingfc · Post by **readingfc** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 6:05 pm

I am thinking I must put some rings on my new babies or else they will all get me confused. How do you actually use the tool I've been given with the split rings? Do you lay the birds leg onto the tool and then release the split band onto the leg? can you advise me please - thank you

tammieb · Post by **tammieb** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 6:52 pm

There's a section regarding banding on the Finch Information Center...

http://www.finchinfo.com/breeding/leg_b ... eeping.php

Post by **Sally** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 10:37 pm

I have never done any closed banding, but I do open banding all the time, on adult and young birds. I use different color bands to mark families, with the parents having a band on the left leg, and their babies have the same color band on their right leg. This really helps when the babies get their adult colors, and you can't tell babies from parents any more. You can also use different colors for different years, etc. Really helps to be able to quickly tell birds apart.

readingfc · Post by **readingfc** » Sun Jul 01, 2007 6:21 am

thanks for the link and the info - I will let you know how we get on

readingfc · Post by **readingfc** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 1:51 pm

Well we did it - not too bad after all!

Thing is they only had lime green bands - oh well!