Community |
Articles |
Shopping |
Contact |
Home |
View Cart |
Checkout
|  Before one can fully understand the importance of our bird's diet, I believe that it is important to understand the cycle of seasons that our birds should experience throughout each year. This yearly cycle would include the Resting, Breeding and the Molting Seasons. An additional cycle might be the Juvenile phase because it has its own special needs, especially when it comes to diet. These cyclical changes in birds are influenced by three factors of the Lighting they receive, the Temperature they experience and the Diet they eat. Some species of bird are influenced by one of these requirements more than another. For example, some birds, like the Lady Gouldian Finch, are not triggered to breed based upon day length, while their annual molt is triggered by day length and temperature. These birds are more susceptible to the quality and quantity of the food available to trigger the breeding response. Other birds, like the Canary, are triggered to breed in response to the day length, whereas they will automatically molt once breeding season ends. This is why it is important, above and beyond the information in this article, to know everything you can about the species that you are keeping as caged birds. So many times I have been asked, "When should my birds breed?" The answer to that question can be difficult to answer if your birds experience a constant temperature, constant lighting and the same food, day after day after day. Their seasonal cycles are totally intertwined, so even if they do decide to breed and lay eggs, often times the eggs are infertile, abandoned, or the babies that hatch are pitched out of the nest. If we consider the seasons that wild birds cycle through each year, we realize that nothing about their lives is static and consistently the same. The length of their daylight hours change as the seasons progress one to another, as does the amount and quality of their food when the rains come or the cold weather advances. Wild birds raise their young when food is plentiful and of good quality. Otherwise all the effort that goes into this endeavor would produce weak offspring or no future generations at all. Length of Days
If your birds are in a room where outside daylight can be seen, and if you do have additional lighting supplied to your birds by either fluorescent or incandescent bulbs, the lights should be on timers. I personally use UV lighting on all my flights and large cages. The UV bulbs will not supply enough UV intensity for the birds to synthesize vitamin D3 through the skin around their eyes and on their legs. However, this isn't as much of a problem for our pet birds because the supplements available today have added D3. The reason that I use the UV bulbs is because experiments have shown that there are UV reflectance properties in the feathers of some birds, notably the Lady Gouldian Finch. It is logical to assume that this plays some role in mate selection for birds with these feather characteristics. It has also been shown that lack of proper UV lighting can result in agitation, feather picking, muscular weakness, breeding problems and metabolic disorders. The timers should be adjusted to coincide with the daylight hours in your time zone so that they come on slightly after daybreak and go off shortly before dusk. Thus your birds will experience a natural waking and settling down time each day. You want to prevent your birds from being abruptly awakened each morning or suddenly plunged into total darkness each evening. Specific setting times cannot be given for everyone as the times will vary depending upon where in your time zone your city location is positioned. Basically they should coincide with the increasing advancement of daylight (in the Northern Hemisphere) after December 21st and the decreasing day lengths after June 21st each year. This would be just the opposite in the Southern Hemisphere. I realize that this morning wake up may not be possible when the birds must be fed before you leave the house. A gradual lighting intensity may be necessary with several lamps to allow a natural wake up.
Temperature Control With an effort towards energy conservation these days, perhaps your homes are cooler in winter and slightly warmer in the summer. This would be ideal for your birds. Always remember that your birds will be stressed if the temperatures fluctuate too much from day to day. A gradual cooling in winter and warming in summer would be best, with the temperatures remaining fairly constant throughout each day. I do believe that if birds can gradually adjust to cooler temperatures throughout the winter, they will be hardier overall. But in our homes, these cooler temps may never be very practical for our own comfort. If your birds have their own "bird room" where the temps will not affect the rest of the home, acclimation to the cooler winter temperatures could be a life saver if your electricity goes out and they are unable to be maintained at their usual temperatures. Many species of birds can be acclimated to outdoor environments and temperatures.
However it should be noted that breeding should be stopped if they don't naturally do it voluntarily, as hens are especially vulnerable to egg-binding during colder weather.
Since temperature controls for our birds will most likely be based upon our comfort, this is probably the one seasonal cycle that will be slightly out of kilter in comparison to their "wild" cousins. But if the other two can be duplicated as closely as possible, the birds will not suffer any harmful side effects. Diet and Exercise Strive to Duplicate Nature Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that all Gouldian babies will never be pitched again if we follow nature as closely as possible. I believe that there are other factors involved in "pitched" babies. Gouldians are not the only species to pitch and kill their offspring. I have had the proverbial "best parents in the bird world", Society and Zebra finches, pitch their own babies. Age, diet and security play a big part in this behavior. What I do believe, however, is that when we get our caged birds ready for the breeding season by building up to it through a proper resting and molting season and then patiently wait until the birds have come into breeding condition, they are much more likely to raise their own babies successfully. When their natural seasonal cycles are consistently followed, they will be as ready as possible to be healthy, good, dependable parents. In order for you to get the seasonal cycle correct for the species of bird that you are raising, you will have to investigate the requirements for that species of bird. There are three distinct breeding patterns among the finches we keep as caged birds: temperate, tropical and opportunistic. Finches classified as temperate-type, breed during the Spring/Summer. They depend upon day-length intervals to trigger a breeding response. They live in areas where winter rainfall patterns and warmer temperatures bring about an early flush of seeds in Spring through early Summer. Once the heat of Summer starts and day lengths reach 14 hours they naturally stop breeding and begin their molt. Most Canaries are classified as temperate-type breeders. Those finches classified as tropical-type breed during Autumn and early Winter until temperatures become too cold. They depend upon the Summer rainfall to stimulate their breeding response. The green seeding grass-heads will ripen at about the time their first clutch of chicks are ready to be fed. The Lady Gouldian Finch, Blue-faced Parrot Finches, Masked Grassfinches and Green Singing Finches fall into this category. Day lengths vary very little from season to season in their part of the world so this is not an issue for tropical-type finches. Extended day light hours in the aviary are not necessary. In the wild, they are not out looking for seed to feed the chicks at 10:00PM. Tropical-type finches naturally molt in Spring or very early Summer as the wet season approaches and temperatures are rising. The past season's youngsters will be going through their first juvenile molt at this same time. Opportunistic breeding finches live in very, dry, almost desert regions of the world where the opportunity for seasonal breeding and molting is severely limited. These finches have an almost continuous molt throughout the year which allows them to take advantage of breeding whenever there is a food supply suddenly available, such as following a drought breaking rain. Zebra Finches and Bengalese Finches fall into this category. In captivity, since these finches sleep in their nest at night, their nesting boxes/baskets and a good food supply are always available to them, so they will breed all the time. But it is not healthy to allow them to breed year round in captivity. Summer would be the best time to stop opportunistic breeding and allow them a complete, natural molt. You will have the best breeding success if you house birds with similar breeding patterns together. Several reference books that I can suggest which give good requirements for varying species are Dr. Marshall's Gouldian & Finch Health, and Keeping and Breeding Seedeaters by Russell Kingston. Remember to pay attention to the seasons that are referred to in books written by authors from different hemispheres as regards to molting, breeding and resting, not to the months of the year. The seasons and corresponding months are almost an exact opposite from the northern to southern hemispheres. There will be slight variations depending upon how far north or south you live in the hemisphere. That is why the seasons (moisture, warmth and coldness) are more important than the months. Importance of Molting The diet is very important during both of these (breeding and molting) nutrient demanding times. Reducing the high-energy foods should naturally stop breeding, but this does not mean that an austerity diet should be implemented. Quality nutrition is essential for a successful molt. My hope is that you are beginning to see how day length, temperature and diet are intertwined completely to allow as natural an existence for our caged birds as can be possible. Captivity can never be as good as freedom, but with our help, the caged birds that we live with should be happy, healthy and strong. Austerity Diet? Many Diets Available I will now introduce each system to provide a choice to you and your birds. Dr. Rob Marshall's Health Program Article © lady gouldian finch.com 2005 |
Mother Nature's Cycle
The daylight cycle of short Winter days and long Summer days with Fall's decreasing day length and Spring's increasing day length adjusted accordingly, is probably the most important part of your birds' lives next to their diet. It is one of the things that we can have control over when our birds live indoors with us. 
We can bring back some of this nutrition by soaking and sprouting the dry seed, but extreme care must be taken to ensure that soaked and sprouted seed does not spoil during the process and make our birds ill. At the point that the root just barely pokes through the seed hull during the sprouting process, it regains much of the nutrition that was lost during the ripening and drying process. If you do not want to risk feeding your birds contaminated sprouted seed because you know that you just aren't the type to carry this procedure off properly, there is a company whose products I have used and tested on my birds that will provide your caged birds a good and balanced diet without the need for sprouting seed. You can read about these products from the link below to Dr. Rob Marshall's Health Programmes.