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The following article is a personal view on what can be a very controversial topic with many different and varied opinions on each of the aspects involved. Obviously we use and recommend our own products. STOCK SELECTION Ideally and if you are very lucky someone will offer you a proven adult pair who you can see with the chicks from the last clutch they raised. Two points the chances of being offered proven pairs is like having a necklace made from hens teeth, it just doesn’t genuinely happen very often and when I say “Adult” as the vast majority of breeding birds have been wild caught and imported it is almost impossible to say with any certainty how old a bird is just that its eyes have gone from baby black to adult yellow. If you think about it most baby African Grey Parrots are bred for hand rearing as pets so true British bred aviary birds are not common. Most likely you will acquire a surgically sexed pair of African Greys from a reputable dealer. All you can guarantee at this point is that you have one cock bird and one hen bird. If you are unsure about the sexes of your birds then DNA sexing is now cheap and accurate. So now you have your two birds, one male and one female, chances are that is about all you can say about them. Being intelligent, parrots have a social structure which includes relationships. The term for a pair of birds who have fallen for each other is “Bonded” Look for birds who sit next to each other engaging in mutual preening and even feeding one another. Once your pair of Greys reaches this point you are halfway there. Now a warning “Bonded” is a word used far too often by people selling pairs of birds just to encourage a sale. Always rely on your own observations not on what you are told! It can take African Greys years to bond and if they don’t like the mate you have chosen for them they will not breed. HOUSING A couple of things to consider when constructing your flight. Number One African Greys chew, then they chew a bit more and then they finish off with a good chew. Yep they are destructive little buggers. If you are going to use wooden framed panels then it needs to be internally wired, metal frames are better. Also the grade of wire needs to be strong enough to resist repeated worrying from the birds. They may not be able to bit straight through a piece of wire but bend it back and forwards far a while and it will break. The amount of space you allocate to each pair is upto you. Many commercial farms use three foot square suspended wire cages with the nest box attached to the outside, other people will make a flight as big as possible. Personally our greys are housed in cages six feet long, four feet wide and four feet high. These are elevated from the floor by 24 inch high legs. This gives (and remember it is only our opinion) room for perches, ropes and enough length for some exercise. Again many will disagree but it is a personal choice and these make a nice compromise between two extremes. Each flight is equipped with a three pot swing feeder which reduced disturbance and the chance of escape. The nest box is fitted to the end in it own little safety porch and is made from inch thick ply. Any joins in the wood are covered by metal plates to prevent the destruction of boxes in less than a season. The roof of the safety area and half of the flight have a roof. Right, birds chosen and housed so its time for some chicks right? Well not quite so fast. It can still take upto five years before your birds lay their first clutch, two or three more years after that to get the hang of parenthood so patience is definitely a virtue. However there are a few things you can do to speed thing on their way which we will look at shortly. FEEDING THE BREEDING SEASON African Grey’s do not have a specific breeding season; they can and will lay at any time of year. It is possible to manipulate them to lay when the weather is more favourable for the survival of chicks and less strenuous for the parents i.e. when it is mild and dry in the late spring and early summer. So how do we achieve this. Most birds have a breeding season which is directly linked to food availability for the young birds. In the wild African Greys have their food source available all the year round due to the climate in the natural habitat, hence no breeding season. If however there is not sufficient food they will not waste their time on egg laying just to see the chicks die and unduly exhaust the hen bird. We therefore need to stimulate a seasonal response from the birds by manipulating the way you feed. But what to feed? Obviously we use our own products and out initial range consisted of those products we have tried and tested. We feed a combination of different food items. Premium Parrot “Ideal” or “Banquet” is the seed of mix of choice. Either is suitable but our breeding pair get a mixture of both. Fruit and vegetables are offered daily (see fruit and vegetables article) onto which Psittamix Vitamin and Mineral Powder has been sprinkled. Eggfood containing berries and freshwater shrimp And our exclusive magic ingredient Parrot Palm Fruit Extract Let’s create that season shall we? November, December, January and February are generally cold wet months when raising chicks can be hard work. During these months we feed seed and fruit on a daily basis. Eggfood with Parrot Palm Fruit Extract mixed into it twice each week. This mixture provides the birds with a good all round intake which allows them to recover from breeding and to survive our inhospitable winter. Once into March increase the Eggfood to daily and increase the amount of Parrot Palm Fruit Extract to double the recommended rate. The Parrot Palm Fruit Extract is the key here. As it made from West African Palm Nuts which are one of the African Greys main food sources fooling them into thinking a bumper crop is on the way will stimulate them into egg laying. Everything should be replaced with fresh on a daily basis; you will soon be able to gauge how much your birds are eating by what has been left at the end of each day. This routine should (stress should) see eggs at the end of April. ON EGGS Your best course of action however had is to forget about the next box for about seven weeks after the first egg has been laid. When you do go to check there should be eighteen to twenty day old young in there which are strong enough to be brought in for hand rearing. By leaving the chicks with the parents this long achieves two main things, it passes on all the important gut bacteria and sorts out any weak chicks in the clutch. It may sound cruel but you reduce the viability of a species by rearing every potential runt from every clutch. HAND REARING Our baby African Greys are fed using the bent spoon method, this can be messy until you get the hang of it but we believe a better bond is formed between human and bird by trying to imitate the chicks mother. The formula used is Nutribird A21 mixed to the manufactures recommendations. We then add a small quantity of Parrot Palm Fruit Extract and have found highly satisfactory growth rates using this combination. As the chicks develop they are first introduced to Premium Parrot “Ultima” a soft mixture of peas, beans, mountain ash berries and fresh water shrimp. It has proven to be a perfect transitional food before being introduced to seed. All of our chicks leave us with at least a month’s supply of “Ultima”, a jar of Parrot Palm Fruit Extract, a bag of “Ideal” seed together with the recommendation to keep using all of them. It is impossible to dictate how the new owner will look after their bird, by giving them the best start in life you are doing all that a breeder possibly can. Note the above article is a personal view, Morley Aviaries can take no responsibility for any repercussions you may encounter if following the information within said article. |
Copyright © 2008 Junglegold®
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