Colour Feeding Live Food

[Tiaris]

I think the commercial sources of canthaxanthin come from capsicum/chilli fruit anyway. I've heard of softbill breeders injecting it into mealworms but if you've already tried it with no joy there's no point to that I guess. The carrot juice with maggots is an interesting prospect. I suggest that the caratene levels could be further boosted by trying beetroot juice. If I were trying this I'd soak the bran/pollard/millrun substrate in it & that way they will get it through the whole eating cycle.

[E Orix]

My male Crimson Chats are Blood Red all they get is whats in the aviary and standard livefood.
But in my big flight I have a pond made from an old bathtub,it has some reeds growing in it and some largish rocks fror the birds to stand on to bath as well.
Also at times there are clumps of Algae and you would be surprised what birds actually drag it to the edge and eat it.
In particular Painteds, St Helenas and the Chats, I would stack my Painteds up against any for depth of Red.By the way the Algae is a natural form of Spiralina
which is the reason for the colour intensity.
Also there are several water bowls around with clean water in them and they are rarely used,all back to the unchanged water in the bathtub
Also Crimson Chats get far deeper red when going into breeding condition

[natamambo]

I'm sure the spirulina "on tap" is a help. We human birdkeepers always "panic" about giving our birds clean water, and while pooped in water isn't good for them generally, many outback birds cope with water that has been stagnant for long periods. I've seen birds drinking from waterholes in the West Macs and the Flinders that have clearly been visited over many moons by all kinds of beasts first. The amount of algae in the puddles suggest that there is at least some life in the water though, even if we'd class it as "yucky".

[Nathan Morleyy]

Good luck mate,
I hope you find a way to keep the colour in red back wrens. I would love to get a pair of wrens one day but unfortunately I am not experienced enough yet so I will have to wait a couple of years but one day I would love to build a softbill aviary.

Thanks Nathan

[Gerry Marantelli]

However, this thread is less about finches and more about the insectivorous chats and wrens, so I doubt they would take salad. They would probably take it in bug's guts, though...

If we are talking about color in wild insectivores versus captivity, we need to look at what they are eating normally. We have been involved in research on frog skin chemicals and their origins in diet and many species immmediately lose the capacity to make certain chemicals in captivity simply because they are denied one aspect of their diet that happens to contain the critcal precursors to the chemical in question. Deficiencies recorded have been found to be the result of lack of ants, annelids, collembola as well as crustaceans and in some cases these are not major parts of the diet. Conversely imbalanced diet can lead to too much of something too and there are countless examples of this - some obvious, some less so.

To make a good red canary, you must not only give red-producing feed; you must also exclude lutein-containing foods (lutein is the precursor for the lipochrome (canary yellow)). If not, the best you'll get is like a terracotta orange colour

may well be true and we also see this in green frogs ranging from almost blue through blue-green to vibrant lime - it has nothing to do with green - but everything to do with how much yellow! Frog natural color is blue, due to light reflection and refraction through the skin, on the way out the light passes though xanthophores that contain yellow pigment - less of these and the frog is more blue, more and it can be almost (but never quite) yellow. perhaps the red wren problem really is too much of a good thing rather than too little.

it raises interesting questions - are yellow mealworms too high in the precursors for yellow? are other livefoods lower in the chemicals that lead to yellow pigment? perhaps the successful red wren people are not supplementing feeding with chili, but using insects low in yellow?