Oh and you are not wrong about the quail getting the live food! thought I had my try in the right spot, lol I was wrong. I'm in the process of building a new area for the live food.
I also only use meal worms is this best or are the better options?
Greetings from Canberra
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finchbreeder
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
- Posts: 11630
- Joined: 27 Jun 2009, 20:00
- Location: Midwest of West. Aust. Coast
- Location: Midwest of West.Aust.Coast
Welcome to the forum. Leave a patch of your garden to go wild. And pull the weeds up roots and all, and watch the finches find the tiny insects in among the roots/soil. Nice mix of birds.
LML
LML
LML
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mattymeischke
- ...............................
- Posts: 862
- Joined: 25 Jul 2011, 20:25
- Location: Southern Tablelands of NSW
Hi ACT birdy,
I live up the road a bit from you.
I use a hanging dish (designed for a potplant) to keep the livefood away from the quail.
With the birds you have, just feeding mealies is probably fine. The cordons would enjoy, and usually need, some other liveys (either maggots or termites), especially if you want them to breed.
Maggots are cheap and easy once you get a flybox set up; there are numerous topics on the forum describing this.
Termites are solid gold for cordons (and auroras, melbas, bloods and a few others).
We have a limited range of termites in our area, but they are one of the best live foods around and quite easy to harvest and use.
None of the termites in our area will eat timber, so no need to worry about them eating out your birdhouse frame.
It is ideal if you can get them from private property (any friends with farms nearby?), but discrete collection from public lands is usually possible.
Try not to take more than a quarter of a mound, and never take the heart of the mound (where the queen and the eggs are). After you've got some, cover the hole in the mound with loose dirt, gently pushed down: this makes is much easier for the colony to repair the mound. In this way, I have continuously harvested the same mounds for some years in a row, and the mounds which have been used repeatedly in this way are much easier to harvest, as they have a 'soft side' where it has been harvested before. I keep them in a green garbage bin (?60L bin), with a smear of wool grease (Vaseline works too) around the lip to keep the white ants in and the black ants out. There are other ways of manging termite harvesting, some of which can be found by searching the forum, but this works for me.
Mealies are a great livefood too, but they have a couple of potential problems: they can be expensive unless you grow your own; many finches just bite the heads off and leave the worm, causing a lot of waste; they are juvenile insects, which are less nutritionally valuable than adult insects (like termites or moths); there is also some problem with calcium:phosphate ratios which one of the vets might be able to explain (this is unlikely to be a problem as long as you have birds which take a range of items (greens seed, soft food, etc).
I feed mealies, moths, termites and maggots, depending on availablilty, to a mixed collection of finches and softbills. Many of the finches, even ones held not to be very insectivorous, breed much better with access to some live foods. They love the moths, especially the small ones. Even the Gouldians often forage in the leftover maggot/pupae bin, and they are widely held not to take livefood.
Good luck and enjoy.
Matt.
I live up the road a bit from you.
I use a hanging dish (designed for a potplant) to keep the livefood away from the quail.
With the birds you have, just feeding mealies is probably fine. The cordons would enjoy, and usually need, some other liveys (either maggots or termites), especially if you want them to breed.
Maggots are cheap and easy once you get a flybox set up; there are numerous topics on the forum describing this.
Termites are solid gold for cordons (and auroras, melbas, bloods and a few others).
We have a limited range of termites in our area, but they are one of the best live foods around and quite easy to harvest and use.
None of the termites in our area will eat timber, so no need to worry about them eating out your birdhouse frame.
It is ideal if you can get them from private property (any friends with farms nearby?), but discrete collection from public lands is usually possible.
Try not to take more than a quarter of a mound, and never take the heart of the mound (where the queen and the eggs are). After you've got some, cover the hole in the mound with loose dirt, gently pushed down: this makes is much easier for the colony to repair the mound. In this way, I have continuously harvested the same mounds for some years in a row, and the mounds which have been used repeatedly in this way are much easier to harvest, as they have a 'soft side' where it has been harvested before. I keep them in a green garbage bin (?60L bin), with a smear of wool grease (Vaseline works too) around the lip to keep the white ants in and the black ants out. There are other ways of manging termite harvesting, some of which can be found by searching the forum, but this works for me.
Mealies are a great livefood too, but they have a couple of potential problems: they can be expensive unless you grow your own; many finches just bite the heads off and leave the worm, causing a lot of waste; they are juvenile insects, which are less nutritionally valuable than adult insects (like termites or moths); there is also some problem with calcium:phosphate ratios which one of the vets might be able to explain (this is unlikely to be a problem as long as you have birds which take a range of items (greens seed, soft food, etc).
I feed mealies, moths, termites and maggots, depending on availablilty, to a mixed collection of finches and softbills. Many of the finches, even ones held not to be very insectivorous, breed much better with access to some live foods. They love the moths, especially the small ones. Even the Gouldians often forage in the leftover maggot/pupae bin, and they are widely held not to take livefood.
Good luck and enjoy.
Matt.
Avid amateur aviculturalist; I keep mostly australian and foreign finches.
The art is long, the life so short; the critical moment is fleeting and experience can be misleading, crisis is difficult....... (Hippocrates)
The art is long, the life so short; the critical moment is fleeting and experience can be misleading, crisis is difficult....... (Hippocrates)
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bobandchez
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- Posts: 6
- Joined: 01 Oct 2014, 19:41
- Location: Wadalba NSW
Hi Stuart and welcome to the Forum. 