Hi all
What a difference a day makes............Or in this case 10 weeks. Back in March i was almost written off by a rouge rat which entered the aviary and dined on my best selection of birds. Pied -Cinnamon and Fawn Diamonds -Blue Caps - Pictorellas-Stars and Painted.Lost about 15 to 18 birds in total. Plus two nest of young Diamonds.
It was bad enough loosing the birds and the $2500 they cost me. Remember all these birds were purchased only months earlier and had breed nothing. That is apart from one young Diamond flying and two full nests of young..... Unfortunately the rat ate them too.
So i was down on my bird population and my luck as i had lost my purchase money as well. Now the good news
My best Pied cock and fawn hen produced 8 young since March and the hen has laid again. These are normal split Pied hens and cocks Normal /Pied /Fawn
Another Pied with Cinnamon has 5 young flying and another split Fawn cock with Pied hen has 3 young. Plus a few Cinnamon and Fawns have young.
So 10 weeks down the track I have a total of 23 young Diamonds flying about the aviaries and that's a lot more than I thought I'd ever had.
I contribute 5 key ingredients to the outcome.
1. Green milk millet
2. Plenty of fresh lettuce
3 Live termites.
4. Lebanese Cucumber
5. Fresh water and mixed canary seed
From observations I found that once young were in the nest - the hen immediately attacked the termites ( eating hundreds per day) and the cock the green millet.
From day 4 to 7 I saw the cock bird introduce termites to his side of the diet. First few days never touch them. As they got older the lettuce came into play. In one aviary a pair knocking over a large leaf a day. Pied cock had a very green bib from that.
I also noted that Lebanese cucumber was knocked over and saw one cock bird actually biting large chunks out of it. At first I thought it was the Tri-colours.
Nesting material
Green couch grass to start the ball rolling, swamp grass as a liner and Emu feathers to seal the deal.
While this has been going on our overnight temp was hovering for days at -3 to 14 daily. Although I had no luck breeding from my 6 split blueGouldians they and the Diamonds handled the temp well. These split blues are on fertile eggs but there chances of rearing young under these temp are nil. But there's always next year. I plan to catch the shortly to move to a better location in the yard.
What else have I been up too. For starters give the Turbo Mazda a B....good work out and after that it's on the motorbike. So thing look good. I keep the aviaries well baited for mice/rats etc and I learn a valuable lesson in the process
