Aussie Finch Forum

Hi, I bought a group of birds from gumtree to-day someone selling off the rest his birds among them were a pair of Red Factor Canaries. I have finches plus yellow and Fife canaries in my aviary. My question what do I feed the Red Factors and will I have to keep them separate from the other canaries. I only have 1 male and he is in another smaller aviary with a female. In the big aviary I have 7 females. In the non breeding season I put them all together and have had no problems with them getting along. Any advice would be appreciated.

When the birds start moulting, I would start putting a liquid colouring agent like Club Red in their water. If you give water in bottles little is wasted.

The other option is to feed colour food in the softfood. Colour feeding will turn your yellow canaries orange and it is up to you whether you think it is worth the cost of feeding your entire aviary. The birds should pretty much keep the red (or orange) colour after they have finished moulting without additional colour feeding. That said, if I was showing red factors, I would colour feed from before eggs were laid until the end of the show season.

Becxause of the colour Feeding and colour is Expensive, I would keep the Red Factor Canaries separate from the other Canaries. In non breeding season canaries behave
well towards each other, but in breeding time males can be quite lively.

Color feeding is not expensive if you use the right ingredient for water solution or if you use natural colorants. Try feed paprika, cherries, red apple skin, red raspberries, etc and you'll get a good color out of it. Of course nothing like the solution, maybe try bull supply from poultry farms. There is bogena and canthaxathin are the two most popular agents here I don't know if Australia allows it or not, but it is used here.

You could also try grated carrots, red lentils, red sweet potato/ yam and and more.

thanks everyone for all your replies.