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Some Tips For Finch Breeders By Marcus Pollard If you are sick of scouring the countryside for tea-tree for your aviaries why don't you try bracken fern instead. Cut it green and lay it out to dry on a flat surface. This way it will dry and keep its shape. Put it in green and it will wilt and look daggy in a week. Losing chicks when they leave the nest and roost on the floor? Lay some tea-tree branches (or whatever you like!!) on the floor in the back of your aviary so that the chicks can roost up off the floor. This one REALLY works. Remember nuns, mannikins, and munias should not be housed in the same aviary, as they will produce hybrids with one another. Cutthroats, Bloods, Cubans and Green Singers can be aggressive to other finch aviary inhabitants. Longtail and Parson finches are sticky-beaks and will often pester more docile species by removing material from their nests and dominating feed stations. The closely related mask finch has no such vices. When feeding greenfeed to your birds ensure that it is off the ground. Pot plants and small cat or dog food tins make excellent holders when nailed or screwed to the aviary walls. Green food on the floor of your aviaries provides a breeding ground for fungus and moulds. The best time for initiating a worming program was yesterday!! Keep any red or blue Parrot Finches? Try them on a slice of Lebanese cucumber - they love it and remember Mike Fidler reckoned that it was an aphrodisiac. Every little helps!! On red and blue Parrot Finches. Don't keep them together as they will cross bread. If you ARE thinking of doing this to get females to cross back to red cocks, remember that the hybrid from the red and blue parrot finch is sterile. Building a planted aviary and thinking of getting a pair of weavers? Just spent a small fortune on clumps of bamboo to make them feel at home'. Your bamboo should last about 2 weeks after the weavers start to breed!!!! Go out and dig-up, purchase, borrow a Genista bush (preferably not the dwarf variety). Yes, I know it's a weed - but it will take all the punishment that a colony of weavers can dish out and still come back season after season. It will still be there long after your bamboo plants are just an expensive memory! Copyright remains with the author. |