 |
|
To read any issue of Flock Talk, use the links below.
ISSN 1492-8132
Issue 130, © 2005
No reprints without permission
Sponsor's Space
Table of Contents
See the NEW Sidewalk Sale area, and save 20% every day!
The folks at Bird & Cage have made it their goal to provide bird keepers with a great selection of good quality cages and birdcage accessories for great prices, along with some of the best customer service you will find anywhere. One of their cages might just be the best pet canary cage you will ever see! See it here!
A recent customer says,"A few weeks back I went surfing...to find a more spacious cage for my Robin. She has only one useable foot, and so cannot use a perch. I loved the 2470 model except for the floor grate, and Elaine suggested kraft paper or the like to provide one-foot 'hopping stability'. This led me to trying a platform 'perch' covered with cardboard, and finding a perfect 'cardboard bedding' that I can cut to size. Robin's very happy with the platform. She can finally enjoy the world from more of a 'bird's perspective', and as soon as we get her new cage-home she will have a little room to hop around. I wanted to see that Elaine gets the thanks she deserves, and to let you know how much she helped. Finally, we are able to reward Robin for her lovely songs. Sincere thanks."
For a full selection of cages and cage accessories, visit BirdandCage.com.
Help Needed
Table of Contents
Do you know of a great bird site which deserves a review? Maybe you have a favourite tip or trick that you like to use, or know of a product that has made your bird's life better or easier to manage in some way? Why not share them with other Flock readers? Just send an email here.
A recent consultee says, "I cannot thank you enough for your kind and considerate responses to all of our questions. Your website has really been a wonderful find for us! And we absolutely love your canary CD!
"Thank you for your love of birds and your commitment for helping those of us who are learning to share our lives with our feathered friends!"
Robirda's customers find her answers to be detailed, reliable, caring and supportive. When you need help with housing, feeding, care or behavioral questions, Robirda can help you learn to understand your birds better. For more details, see robirda.com/ask.html
Links
Table of Contents
- Home
- Products
- Basic Care
- Breeding
- Photographs
- Song CD
- Flock Talk
- Canary Cam
- Birds Board
- Canary FAQs
- Books & eBooks
- Tug 'N Swing
- Care Sheets
- Bird Cages
- Cage Accessories
- The Nest
- Questions?
- Contact
- Links Pages
- Personal
- Privacy Policy
- Site Map
- Testimonials
"I love your website, your information has made me a very well-informed canary friend/owner. Thank you."
"Thank you for your love of birds and your commitment for helping those of us who are learning to share our lives with our feathered friends!"
"Robirda's website, bird board and e-zine are invaluable tools for any birdlover."
Welcome to Robirda's Companion Bird eZine
For breeder or pet bird owners who care.
Website News
Table of Contents
We only have a few of our special 15-month Canary Keeper's Calendars left, so if you want one, now is the time to order yours! Once they're gone, we'll have only a 12-month version available.
These calendars are lovely, and should be useful to a great many canary owners - in fact, the printer commented that he's never seen such an informative calendar! Order yours now, at robirda.com/calendar.html!
Feature Article
Table of
Contents
Wintering Canaries
by R C McDonald
www.robirda.com
Copyright © Oct 2005
When you're keeping canaries, it can be difficult to realize the tremendous difference the changes of season can bring to these small birds. The physical changes brought on when their bodies experience the changing length of days throughout the year can affect their actions, their health, their state of mind, and their overall quality of life.
Just how important these seasonal changes can be to our canaries is not easy to imagine; they literally can mean the difference between life and death! This was recently brought home to me yet again, when I received a letter from a Flock Talk reader of several years.
He wrote, "I put my 2 canaries on a natural light schedule for the last year, and for the first time I have had my canaries moult at the correct time of year. I hope to keep these guys for a long time. Unfortunately my first canary died in February after only 2 years. When I got him I thought it was great to have him sing late at night. I did not realize that canaries are so light sensitive. I put him on a natural light schedule, but he just never 'got right'. I guess an ounce of prevention is worth a lot more than a pound of cure. I would never knowingly have harmed my bird."
No caring owner would ever knowingly harm any bird in their care, but many birds, canaries not the least among them, can have ways that can be so alien to our human nature that it can be difficult to learn just what they need. The matter is not helped by the fact that there is so much misinformation in the few industry-published books available on keeping canaries. It can be very difficult to sort through all the conflicting ideas, trying to figure out what is right and what isn't!
In the end, too many new canary owners find out the hard way what not to do by losing their pets to one problem or another that could have been easily prevented, with the right information at hand.
The fact is that how a canary spends his winter will have a tremendous impact on his health, state of mind, and yes, his song, throughout the following year. It can seem counter-intuitive to spend the winter preparing your birds for a healthy and active spring breeding season and summer moult - particularly if you're a pet owner and not planning to breed - but the canary's seasonal approach to life means that this is exactly what we need to be thinking of at this time of year, in order to keep our canaries' health at optimal levels throughout the entire year and into future years.
In the Canary Islands, the wild relatives of our birds' ancestors experience daylengths varying by less than four hours over the year; the longest day receives a little less than 14 hours of daylight (not counting dawn and dusk), while on the shortest day of the year, the time between sunrise and sunset will be just under 10 1/2 hours.
Not exactly a huge difference! Yet canaries evolved to use these changing lengths of day to control how they live, eat, act, and sing, as well as strongly impacting their overall health and condition.
While it is true that our pets and showbirds are often as much as hundreds of generations away from their ancestral wild canaries, their bodies still rely on the age-old triggers of light and darkness to tell them what the season is, and how to act. These instincts are set so deeply into canary physiology that it seems impossible to separate them; a study done on the annual moult showed that canaries who were kept completely away from any seasonal stimuli did not moult, nor attempt to breed, and eventually died.
The study concluded that an annual moult was essential to maintaining canary health, but did not emphasize the fact that lack of exposure to seasonal change was the root cause of the deaths.
All the experienced canary keepers and breeders I have met use the annual cycles of light and darkness to prepare their canaries for seasonal changes. Some simply use daily exposure to natural sunlight, while others use artificial lighting. But if you ask any to explain their solution, it's not unusual to get a different explanation from almost every person you speak with.
Some breeders supplement the natural daylight their canaries see with artificial lights, while others arrange to keep their canaries completely away from exposure to the outdoors, preferring instead to provide artificial lighting at their own chosen hours, 'time-shifting' the seasonal changes forward by as much as two or three months through controlling the lengths of the days with the lighting.
This is thought to allow the young birds more time to mature before they will be shown, which can perhaps be an advantage at the earlier shows - but as some experienced showmen are quick to point out, these shifted seasons also mean that the birds are expecting the approach of the breeding season during the later shows towards the end of the year or early in the next, and may not show at all well, being more interested in courting hens than in displaying their traits to the judge.
Another popular approach involves a more drastic cycle of seasonal change than that found in the canaries' native islands; this approach also requires that the birds be kept where they cannot see any indications of the season outdoors.
The lights are taken up to a maximum of 14 hours or so a day for breeding, but then are suddenly dropped in late May or early June to only 9 hours of daylight. The lights are kept at this level right through the summer. Then, in early September, the length of the days is increased by a half hour or so, the same being done again in October. The lights are slowly increased at a gradual rate in this manner until breeding has begun and 14 hour days are reached, then the lights are maintained at that level until mid-May, when once again the lighting is suddenly dropped to 9 hours a day, and breeding arbitrarily ends.
For this kind of approach to work correctly, it is essential that the birds not be allowed any way of being able to tell what the weather outside of their birdroom is like. Too often this fact is not emphasized strongly enough when this approach is outlined to canary-keeping novices, which can lead to disastrous results.
If the birds are allowed to garner any clues as to the real season outdoor, novices to the hobby may instead find their birds (and themselves!) experiencing a very long breeding season, with the birds refusing to stop attempting to breed until well after midsummer or even into early fall, when the length of the days outside have lessened enough to finally impact the birds' perceptions.
By then they could well have expended so much energy attempting to breed over so many months, that they could have problems completing the moult, lacking the physical reserves that would normally be used to support them during this difficult time.
In turn, difficulty with moulting can lead to such physical exhaustion that the winter will not be long enough for the bird to recuperate properly, meaning in turn that he or she will not have the energy to be able to come into breeding condition at the proper time during the following spring.
So, whichever kind of schedule you decide to use, whether you plan to follow the normal days outdoors, or artificially shift the seasons with your schedule of lighting, be sure you understand all the aspects of the schedule you will be using before you start. If your birds' days aren't similar to what's happening outdoors, take steps to ensure that they will not be able to see and be stimulated by exposure to any amount of daylight, no matter how little.
There's another aspect to wintering canaries that is often missed. Winter is when canaries, especially canary hens, need to fly as much as possible. Flying strengthens not just their wings, but the long muscles that run from keelbone to sternum, and it is these muscles that will help her lay her eggs, when the time comes.
The stronger and more well-exercised she is, when it comes time for egg-laying, the better. Even pet hens who will not be allowed to breed are likely to lay eggs during the spring, so even if you are not planning to breed, preparation to assist her ability to lay her eggs is a very good idea.
Wintertime exercise is very important to male canaries too, especially if they are going to be used for breeding. This is because during mating, the male must hover over the hen for a crucial few seconds in order for proper fertilization to be achieved. He must be a skilled and strong flyer to be able to do this properly, so the more flight time he's had, the better he is liable to be at mating.
It's always possible to find breeders who never allow their birds much room to fly, but whose birds go ahead and breed at the proper time anyways - but it's been my experience that while yes, it is possible to breed canaries without having allowed them much if any time to fly - you'll get much better results, higher fertility and less problems with egg-binding or infertile eggs, if the birds have had plenty of practice flying throughout their winter.
Luckily, most canaries tend to squabble less during the winter months, so many canary keepers will provide one or two large flight cages for their birds during this season. As long as there is plenty of individual perching spaces, especially near the top of the flight, and there are plenty of food cups and drinkers scattered about the flight cage, spaced well apart to minimize squabbling, many canaries are willing to relatively peacefully co-exist with each other for a time - at least until the days again begin to lengthen, telling them it will soon be time to begin to claim territory in preparation for breeding!
Whether you plan to breed and show your canaries, or are just interested in keeping one or more pet canaries, how they spend their winter can drastically affect a great many aspects of their lives. Understanding this can lead to a richer and more rewarding experience with your canaries, and can even help you to learn to understand, a little bit at a time, just what makes these fascinating little birds so rewarding to keep!
* * * See a schedule for lights based on sunrise and sunset times in the Canary Islands, at www.robirda.com/sunset.html
by R C McDonald
www.robirda.com
Copyright © Oct 2005
There is only a few copies left of our first-edition, full-colour, hand-numbered and personally autographed collector's version of Robirda's book, Brats in Feathers, Keeping Canaries. If you have been waiting to get yours, now is the time to act - once they are gone, they will be gone forever!
Recently this book was reviewed by Mr. G.B.R. Walker, one of the most respected canary authors and judges on the planet. His comments make it clear why it has been getting such a great response from its readers.
Mr Walker said, "...it is an excellent introduction to a first time canary owner, and a useful reminder to those that have owned a pet for a time... The chapter on training was particularly well received. I have never seen anything like this in written form before, and frankly had never considered it.
"The basics always remain the same, and you have covered them well. A new breeder following your guidelines should be successful... I loved the photos from the cam, and was most impressed by Jim's chapter."
Brats in Feathers is also available as two money-saving (but non-printable) ebooks. You can find more details on the book and the ebooks, along with a link to free sample chapters, at http://robirda.com/books.html
"Everyone always asks me why my birds are such beautiful singers and breed such magnificent babies...I tell them that I learned from Robirda! While they give their birds all kinds of 'magical' formulas, I just follow your guide to 'keep it simple.' My birds are now very healthy, and there has been no recurrence of the infection. Thank Goodness!" R.C., Florida
Song CD
Table of Contents
It's been almost two years since we first offered our latest CD of Robirda's canaries singing for sale, and it is proving to be a popular choice for many people, both for themselves or as a gift. We have received a great deal of positive feedback from our customers. Here's just a few of the more recent comments:
"My 'baby' Jingles and I are both thrilled with your CD! It arrived within days of my purchase and it's the best CD out there! I have purchased every CD available, and yours was the only one my canary responded to. He was in subsong before, but is singing his little heart out now ! The CD has attracted the wild birds outside his little garden sanctuary, so my canary has lots of vocal competition now, which makes him sing even more."
"I received the CD today... I put it on the player and our canary Mustard Seed began chirping and singing within a couple minutes. It is a beautiful recording, thanks so much!"
"Just a quick message to thank you for your prompt delivery of my CD. Your CD has done wonders for my canary, he hasn't sang for months and now he tries to out sing the CD, very fulfilling for me to watch! Thank you for a great product!"
Find out more about our Canary Song CD!
Stories Wanted
Table of Contents
Send us your stories of how your birds confuse and puzzle, interest and amuse you, and we will share them with the rest of our readers in a future issue. Just send an email here.
For you
& Your Birds,
With Love
Table of
Contents
If you find help you need in this ezine or on one of our websites, please consider joining our sponsors.
Read testimonials or find out more about becoming a sponsor. If you're looking for something different, check our home page for links to all our great products!
Our next issue is due Sunday, Oct 23rd. We hope you and your birds stay safe, well and happy in the meantime, and we look forward to seeing you all then!
"Hi Robirda! Thanks for your thoughts. My little one is singing as loudly as ever. He looks much better today. Your advice was most welcome; I'm particularly grateful about the recipes! I sent you the same amount the vet charged me; you have done no less than he did. You are a real blessing to all of us canary lovers the world over."
"Thank you so much for the book on canaries. That is a really nice book. I needed one, because I bought my Mom two canaries, a male and a female, we don't know anything about them. I'm so glad to have this book, I couldn't believe how much was in there. Thank you so much!"
"I cannot thank you enough for your kind and considerate responses to all of our questions. Your website has really been a wonderful find for us! And we absolutely love your canary CD!"
"Just a short note to tell you how great your ezine is... As a long time bird lover I thank you for your wonderful mag. Keep up the great work!"
"I ordered 'Canary Tales' by Linda Hogan last year...Although I fully recommend buying the book, I find Robirda's book much more complete, easier to read with less difficulty finding information."
"You have the most informative and helpful small bird site on the Web. I have found your information priceless and inspiring."
home Back Oct 9, 2005, Issue 130 Next
Flock Talk Archives 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
Dedicated to all those who try to help others on our journey to a better tomorrow.
Copyright © 1994-2008 by Robirda Online. All rights
reserved.
Home | Products | Articles | Basics | Breeding | Photos | Flock Talk | Questions | Contact | Personal | Privacy | Wings-Up Seal | Testimonials | Links | Map