Diets

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 especially where birds are housed in smaller enclosures. 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" seed mixes 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 grit mix (comprising fine shellgrit, canunda shell, crushed eggshells, cuttlebone, charcoal and pink pigeon minerals) and fresh tank water.

During the breeding season I feed the birds in my breeding aviaries their "breeding foods" twice a day. Morning feed is live termites, and a half-ripe green seed mix. Afternoon feed is live termites, lebanese cucumber, red pannicum seed which has been supplemented with seed oil and yeast powder, and a dry tonic seed mix containing numerous pasture, herb and grass seeds.

The green seed mix comprises half-ripe frozen green millets (70% white-french & 30% red pannicum). I previously fed a far more diverse mix of ingredients in the green seed mix including various sprouted seeds, softfood powder and frozen peas & corn kernels. I found that as I added additional items to the recipe, less birds would eat the overall mix resulting in some uneaten leftovers remaining at the following feed in some aviaries. As a result I stripped the mix back to the half-ripe millets alone and the immediate result was every grain eaten by the following feed in every aviary. Of the more complex original mix the green millets were the most nutritious component of the mix anyway and obviously they are also by far the most palatable to the birds. I know of several other finch breeders who have also recently simplified their softfood recipes back to the more natural basics in a similar way & have experienced similar outcomes. It is a really important part of being a good aviculturist to experiment and constantly seek to improve all aspects of how we look after our finches, but just as important is to concede to the birds wishes when our trials are not completely successful. If we provide them with various options and are observant enough, the birds will show us what is best for them.

In addition to the daily frozen green seed mix additional green grass seedheads and/or edible weeds and/or leafy vegetables are fed regularly throughout warmer months (up to 3 times a day when Red Siskins have dependent young in the nest) and less often during Winter (down to about twice a week). I regard these additional greens as a vitally important component to a complete breeding diet. With these green foods I firmly believe that as large a variety as possible should be provided and we as aviculturists need to be as opportunistic as wild birds in seeking or cultivating the best range of green food options for our captive finches. The daily half-ripe millets and lebanese cucumber I offer my birds are keenly eaten but could become a bit drab if they were the only green options every day. Consider yourself the most desirable or nutritious food you can think of and imagine it was all you had to choose from for every day of your life. Not only would you find that your eagerness to partake of that food each successive feed would decline but if it was all you were eating your diet would be very imbalanced no matter how nutritious the food item was.

The green grass heads provided are either a mixture of locally available grasses, mostly green panic, summer grass, barnyard grass & others, or if fresh seedheads are seasonally unavailable I provide frozen green heads of white-french millet and green panic which I harvest and freeze in early Summer each year to ensure a consistent supply through Winter. Edible weeds fed include chickweed, milk thistle heads, fat hen, dandelion and amaranthus. Cultivated flower heads of niger, cosmos, and small-flowering sunflowers are regular offerings during Summer especially favoured by Siskins and Singers. Green vegetables are seasonally grown in our garden for ourselves and the birds. These include brocolli, bok choy, kale, spinach and loose-leaf lettuce varieties. These are fed to the finches at the baby leaf stage, flowering stage (for brassicas) and green seed-pod stage.

My breeding aviaries are each planted with a variety of perennial seeding grasses which provide small quantities of additional green seed to the birds. Grasses grown in the aviaries include various panics, palm grass, setaria, stypa, and other unidentified (by myself) species which I transplanted from various places whilst collecting termites, nesting brush, etc. These are mainly grown for their habitat value in providing nesting and foraging strata for my finches within the aviary, however they all produce seedheads in season and the variety of species grown in each aviary allows the birds to eat these seeds straight from the plant at different times throughout of the year.

This breeding 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 termites which are not eaten within a couple of hours can quickly desiccate on a warm day, hence the two 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 finch species.

In recent times I have experimented with refrigerating and freezing of termites prior to feeding. This greatly assists in extending the useful shelf-life of the termites and to conveniently allow feeding out termites regularly without having to neccessarily collect and extract the termites on a very regular basis. This is of particular assistance when someone else is feeding our birds if we are away from home. Once the termites have been extracted from their nest they are stored in sealed-lidded plastic containers and can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 8 to 10 days without killing them. When refrigerated the termites go into a state of suspended animation. Prior to feeding them to the finches I simply remove the container from the fridge, take the lid off and sit the container in a warm spot out of direct sunlight and within 2 hours the termites are lively again. Using refrigeration, termite extracting need not be carried out any more often than once a week. Freezing termites does kill them, however their bodies must contain some anti-freeze properties as they remain soft whilst frozen. Frozen termites are still quite palatable to finches although they are consumed with slightly less vigour than the live and wriggling ones. I still contend that frozen termites will give better breeding results than alternate forms of live insect food for most finch species. I have myself and know of other breeders who have achieved good breeding results with "termite birds" such as Bluecaps and Pytilias whilst frozen termites are the only insect food provided. Freezing termites is the perfect option for long-term absences where non bird people are sometimes called on to feed one's birds and even to those who are only able to go bush to get termites once every couple of months. Frozen termites can be frozen for up to 2 to 3 months before they start to shrivel up.

I have ceased feeding mealworms in recent seasons as I found that they inhibit the birds' ability to absorb calcium in the required proportions. This was shown in the occasional case of rickets in fledged young (turned in feet & legs with loss of proper function) as well as greater incidence of egg-binding in breeding hens. Since I have ceased feeding mealworms I have had no young fledging with feet/leg problems and a significantly reduced number of eggbound hens. To me, this confirms that mealworms were a major cause of these problems. Quite apart from this issue, termites give vastly superior breeding results than alternate forms of livefood for most species.

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 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 a coarser option for 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.

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.

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. A few years ago 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 mix I feed is a mixture of numerous pasture, lawn, herb and oilseeds. I use this mix 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 which wasn't chemically treated went into this mix. The seeds currently in this brew are: phalaris, barnyard grass, 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, rapeseed, sesame, aniseed, carrot and fennel. All dry seed fed including the basic dry seed and the tonic seed is mixed using a cocktail of seed oils (sunflower, canola, sesame, rice bran, flaxseed and wheatgerm) at 20ml of oil per 2 buckets of seed. The oil is used to prevent the dust rising while I mix and later use the seed as this can set off my hayfever and also as a natural amino acid supplement to the seed enhancing its nutritional value. As dry seeds age they tend to lose nutritional value over time so the oil is an effective way of offsetting any loss of nutrient value in the dry seed mixes.

I find it beneficial to regularly provide fresh grit ingredients even if the birds have sufficient quantities already in the aviary. In addition to the fine grit mix which is constantly available to all breeding aviaries provision of fresh crushed cuttlebone and charcoal particularly stimulates my Pictorellas and Masked Finches respectively. Similarly, fresh eggshells seem to especially stimulate and satisfy breeding Gouldians. Accordingly, in any aviaries containing Gouldians breeding pairs I provide separate large halves of eggshells as they depend heavily on these during the breeding season and seem to prefer breaking them off the larger pieces. Breeding aviaries containing Pictorellas are given additional crushed cuttlebone and crushed charcoal where Maskeds are housed. These are both incorporated into the nest chamber of these species as well as their diet.

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.

GRAHAM AND LEONIE BULL l COFFS HARBOUR, AUSTRALIA