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Finch Diets - A Natural Approach
In deciding what is the best diet for
breeding finches I believe we need to look no further than what are the
dietary triggers for breeding in wild finches. The obvious answer for
most finches is green seed and live insects. Our captive finches are
just as responsive to these triggers, so in my view a diet with an
overwhelming emphasis placed on providing consistent quantities of the
best green seed and livefood available does not require artificial
supplements and protein substitutes in the vast array of products and
recipes that are available and often promoted as necessities. If many
finch breeders put as much effort and expense into providing more green
seed and live food as they put into obtaining or making many of the
softfood supplements, I firmly believe they would achieve better
breeding results. I also believe that many of the softfood recipes are
far more likely to cause obesity rather than the livefood which is often
blamed. I should clarify that I am assuming that the basic dry seeds,
grits, etc are available to the birds at all times.
While the dietary choices in aviculture seem to be rapidly expanding
with commercialisation and innovation it seems all too easy to become
caught up with trends and hype surrounding the next "best thing"
available to us as consumers and bird breeders. Some new products or
recipes are marketed or promoted with such zest that we can feel as if
we are irresponsible if we deprive our birds access to them. A few of
the recent trends in finch diets and commercially available products are
proving themselves to be outstanding improvements to the diets of our
finches. The best of these, I believe, are the one's which provide more
of the best natural foods to our finches. Frozen green seed and "Greens'n'grains"
are a fantastic way to provide consistent quantities and quality of soft
and dry green seed to our finches at any time of the year irrespective
of the local availability of wild or cultivated seeding grasses. The
commercial availability of these products allow us to provide our breeding
birds with consistency of supply of green seed from one day to the next
even throughout the cooler months when fresh seeding grasses are very
scarce. This consistency of supply with the crucial breeding foods is of
massive importance to breeding success.
The basics which are available to my birds at all times are a dry seed
mix (comprising 2 parts red pannicum and 1 part each of white-french,
plain canary, and jap millet), fine shellgrit, crushed eggshells,
cuttlebone & charcoal and fresh tank water. I feed the birds their
"breeding foods" 3 times a day. Breakfast feed is live termites, green
seed heads, sprouted seed and lebanese cucumber. Midday feed is live termites, live mealworms
and tonic seed. Afternoon feed is live termites and frozen green seed. My
breeding aviaries are planted with various perennial seeding grasses
which provide small quantities of additional green seed to the birds.
This diet is based on my rock-solid conviction that termites and seeding
grasses are by far the best breeding foods obtainable for the
overwhelming majority of finch species. So I've structured the diet so
that in each breeding aviary the birds have access to live termites and
green seed at all times during the breeding season.
I use a tumbling machine to extract the termites so that no lumps of
nest are left into which they could hide. Shaking and tapping them out
gives a similar result. This allows the birds to fill up quickly on the
termites without having to hunt around for them. It also means that any
that aren't eaten within a couple of hours can quickly desicate on a
warm day, hence the 3 feeds a day as I want them to be constantly
available to the breeding birds. These are the staple live food given
and by far the best livefood in my view for most insectivorous species.
Mealworms are limited to only about a dozen a day to each mixed species
breeding aviary. These are only given primarily to provide a bit of
variety in the diet and to stimulate those species which like them. I
breed my own mealworms using pollard rather than bran due to the higher
protein content.
When fresh seeding grasses are provided, these are pegged up near the
door at the front of the aviary. When seeding grasses are just thrown
onto the floor of the aviary they can quickly become a disease hazard to
the birds as they become fouled by droppings or simply coming into
direct contact with a wider range of bacterial or fungal sources which can
proliferate on aviary floors. If I can't provide fresh seeding grasses
for the green seed component I use frozen green seed. This is simply
spooned out onto a clean dish on the feed tray at the back of each
aviary. The frozen seeds I use are a mix of 50% commercially available
millet (mostly white-french) and 50% green panic. These two are among
the best seedheads available. If you are contemplating growing any of
the commercial birdseeds during the warmer months, I highly recommend
white-french millet - it is accepted eagerly by most finch species and
can be very productive if fertilised and watered well. I pick large
quantities of green panic when it is plentiful in early Summer and my
wife and I tediously strip the green seed off the heads and freeze it.
The stripped heads are then packed loosely into feed bags to dry and
used throughout the breeding season as nesting material. A reasonable
amount of seed (about 20%) remains on the dried seedheads as it is very
difficult to efficiently strip large quantities without leaving some
behind. When this is put into the aviaries as nesting grass this seed is
eagerly eaten by most finches. The green seed is taken by every species
of finch in my aviaries. I have previously experimented with mixing
various softfood mixtures with the green seed. Each time this simply
resulted in less species eating the green seed.
I find that the use of half-ripe green seed has several major advantages
over soaked or sprouted seeds. The main advantage is its nutritional
content and palatability to all finch species. Also significant is that
the soaking and sprouting processes are fraught with bacterial and
fungal infection possibilities. I know that there are chemicals used to
address this problem, however I don't believe it is possible to
regularly feed over long periods such highly absorbent foods treated
with anti-bacterial solutions without it having detrimental effects on
the beneficial microbial populations within the bird's gut.
Recently I have been persuaded to use sprouted seed using a disinfectant
called Virkon S. Most species have taken readily to the sprouted
seed, however I still provide two feeds of green seed per day so the
sprouted seeds are given to add variety to the diet rather than
substituting other important rearing foods.
The feeding of lebanese cucumber is a recent trend which is now very
popular and I must admit to initially being very pleasantly surprised by
the eagerness with which most species take to eating it. I've only
fairly recently been feeding cucumber (since 2005) and now regard it as
a very important part of my birds' breeding diet. I don't know whether
it is a particularly valuable feed nutritionally, but its high
palatability with a large range of species in addition to its value as a
constant source of something green and moist for the birds to pick at
throughout the day make it invaluable. I have seen Bluecaps with young
go to the termites for a couple of minutes then straight to the lebanese
cucumber to top-up their crop and then directly to the nest to feed the
young - I see this often. When I started to feed cucumber, its
acceptance by many species you would not generally associate with eating
fruit or vegetables was impressive. Fairly recently a friend delivered a
cock Bluecap to me & we released it into an aviary which had a piece of
cucumber hanging up. Just as I was saying to him about how many
species liked it, this bird flew up to the cucumber and started feeding
freely on it. He said that bird had never even seen cucumber before. The
likes of Parrotfinches and Singers absolutely demolish it, but this is
not surprising given their liking of fruits and greens.
The tonic seed I feed is a mixture of 50% greens'n'grains (primarily
half-ripe barnyard grass plus various other seeds) and 50% of my own
mixture I make up comprising numerous pasture, lawn and oilseeds. I use
the tonic seed to provide my birds with a greater range of choice in
their dry seed diet and to give them access to the wider range of
nutrients available in such a diverse seed mixture. Any small seed type
I could obtain from a produce store that wasn't chemically treated went
into this mix. The seeds currently in this brew are: phalaris, rye,
fescue, cocksfoot, green panic, bambatsi panic, carpet grass, kentucky
bluegrass, purple pigeon, blue couch, sabi grass, gatton panic, broadleaf paspalum, signal grass,
linseed, chicory, black lettuce, white lettuce, maw, niger, siberian
millet, and rapeseed. All dry seed fed including the basic dry seed and
the tonic seed is mixed using an oil-based product called "Breeding
Aid" (Vetafarm). This is used as an eggbinding preventative and to prevent the dust
rising while I mix and later use the seed as this can set off my
hayfever.
I find it beneficial to regularly provide fresh grit ingredients even if
the birds have sufficient quantities already in the aviary. Provision of
fresh crushed cuttlebone and charcoal particularly stimulates my
Pictorellas and White-eared Masks. Similarly fresh eggshells seem to
stimulate Gouldians, Bluecaps and others. As with all food types it
really should come as no surprise to us that our birds prefer the
freshest foods - we do as well and for exactly the same reasons. It
tastes better, is cleaner and better for us nutritionally.
Some people will try to imply that to feed a wholly natural diet to
finches is a hit and miss approach, or that it isn't scientifically
based or that you really should use "such and such" powder,
crumbles or
liquid in a truly balanced diet. This is what the marketing would have
us believe. As long as we give our birds consistency, freshness, quality
and choice using the best natural foods our breeding birds' diet will
want for nothing.
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