Aussie Finch Forum

I remember a bloke in Brisbane years ago had a colony of Yellow-billed Longtails which had dark chocolate body colour. This came about by giving them red-factor colour additive in their water when they shared a holding aviary with his red-factor canaries during their moult. The colour disappeared the following moult but it did look spectacularly different while it lasted.

How is the spirulina being fed?

Luke I'm crushing a 500mg tablet and adding it to soft food which is replaced daily. Mindful of Danny's comment re tummies they'd get it about 3 days in 5 or else week on week off just to avoid overdose. Haven't seen any ill effects by either method. It has certainly done wonders for crimson chats and longtails, and when I rearrange flights over winter I'll be putting redbrows in with the superb wrens (who have been very placid so far and have happily let painteds raise young) and adding it to the cake then as well (even though it won't benefit wrens of course).

I did some research on carotene levels in the various brands to ensure bang for buck and wound up buying this (Premium version) http://www.synergynatural.com/pages/spi ... =Spirulina at Safeway for about the same price as the cheapies off Ebay and it's guaranteed not to contain tablet fillers and stuff. I crush the tablet and then just mix through cake by shaking mix in a takeaway container which then goes straight outside to aviary.

It would be worth trying it on the painteds too I suppose and now that I'm feeding it to the other longtail flights the Gouldians will get it once they get the hang of taking the cake.