Aussie Finch Forum

Nice effort Dano. Plenty of good info in there.
Cheers

dano do you change their diet at all during the year to combact obesity

Good profile Dano. Glad you made the point of them sitting in nest boxes in the cold. I had a few young ones and a couple of spare cocks together in a small aviary. Went in to check them one day before I knew of this habit and thought they were all dead somewhere. Was in the process of searching for bodies when I was startled by about 10 of them coming out of 1 box.

Bgould wrote:dano do you change their diet at all during the year to combact obesity

Hi Bgould,
yep sure do, maybe I should have mentioned that!

Ok, during winter I add a little hulled oats, linseed and Niger to their seed mix. I cut live food, egg food and softfood all together. I still give them lots of greens and some milk seed every other day.

The extra seeds are actually to help them warm up - they are high in oil but not too high in protein. It is the over eating of protein that will make your birds fat. Oils will also do this however they would have to eat a lot. As I have mentioned in previous posts, Hull Oates are the McDonalds of the finch world. So limit how much you give them and they will be fine. Too much protein is also not good for their hearts!

So the only time any of my birds get a high protein diet is when they are breeding. Usually this is spring to autumn for me. They tend to restrict themselves from breeding during the hottest months Jan/Feb but I keep the breeding diet up all the same.

When I separate the sexes I put them on an austerity diet for 6 weeks - just seed, water, calcium mix and some broad leaf greens every other day.
During these 6 weeks I also put them all on my 40 day quarantine medication regime. At the end of all this they are more than ready to start breeding again and are in tip top health!

I was reading a Mike Fidler article in JF&S where he mentions that he feeds little or no canary seed to help avoid obesity. He suggests a maintaince non-breeding diet of 75% mixed grass seeds and 25% mixed millets as well as cucumber and vitamins etc. I have noticed when changing their seed that there appears to be a higher proportion of canary seed husks.

Question - what seeds would you suggest for the mixed grass and mixed millets?

iaos wrote:
Question - what seeds would you suggest for the mixed grass and mixed millets?

Fresh grass seeds: Panic, Johnston Grass, Pitt Pitt grass or anything else that grows around where you live (don't use road side grasses - yucky!!)

also try frozen milk seed

white millet frozen green milk seed
red millet frozen green milk seed
Siberian millet frozen green milk seed


Dry Millets: white and red millet mixed 50/50

Thanks Dano, yeah they are getting plenty of green seed, i thought he was referring to dry grass seeds.
Cheers