Leng Lim's Border Canaries

June 15, 2010

A nest of four chicks that are ten days old.

A very late nest of three chicks that hatched two days ago.  The breeding season in my birdroom is over as all the cock birds are moulting.

A 27 day old chick and its sibling.

This chick appears to have good size and hopefully it will develop into a good show bird.

A few of the older chicks.  The chick on the left is the chick pictured by itself in the May 9th post.

These are the four chicks that were pictured under the hen in the previous post.

May 9, 2010

A heavy variegated chick that is about to leave the nest.  There were 3 chicks that hatched in this nest and I almost lost all 3 chicks to mites that came back when they were a few days old.  Luckily I was able to kill the mites in time to save 2 of the 3 chicks.  I think the mites are gone now but I have to keep treating the nests and birds.  The chicks don't grow when there are mites in the nest sucking their blood.  They look pale and weak.  After the nest and birds were treated with anti mite products, the chicks immediately started to gain their strength and grow again.

The only hen that I bred last year with 4 of her chicks that I have already banded.  It is still early but I didn't expect that all 4 would survive to 7 days old.  She only produced 1 chick from the previous nest.  Borders are so difficult to breed.  Their fertility is not very good and when the eggs are fertilized, some chicks die before hatching and when they do hatch, some die within the first few days...very frustrating!

These two chicks from two different nests are both 31 days old.  So far I like the one on the right a lot and the mother of this bird is the hen pictured above.

A nest of healthy 2nd generation fife/border crosses.  I am trying to produce a few hens to use as fosters for next year.  They hatched several hours after the nest of 4 border chicks pictured above but they are bigger and look healthier.  There was a 5th chick that hatched almost 2 days after these 4 chicks but it was squashed by the bigger chicks.

 April 4, 2010

The black mites appear to be under control since I do not see any signs of them.  I plan to treat the birds and spray the cages again when it is time to do so in a couple of weeks.

The single chick is now 21 days old and appears to be doing well.  It was moved to the same cage as the two older chicks shown below.

The two older chicks are now 25 days old.  The chick in the foreground is still begging for food and is being fed through the wire divider by the cock bird.  The chick in the back seems to be a little quicker and is eating on its own and no longer begs for food.  The wire divider is used to protect the chicks from their parents.  The cock and/or hen will start to pluck feathers from the chicks at about 17 to 19 days old.  Notice that the chick in the back has some missing feathers on the top of its head.  The parent birds had already started to pluck before I got a chance to put the wire divider in place.  The hen usually pluck the chick's feathers to make a new nest and the male plucks the chick's feathers to chase them away from the nest.  I guess it is mother nature's way of forcing the chicks to learn to eat on their own.  The problem with the cage is that the chicks and parents can only keep apart from each other as far as the two furthest corners of the cage so the chicks have no where to go when they are being plucked or are attacked. The mother of these two birds laid her 4th egg today and is now incubating the eggs.

March 26, 2010

The three fertilized eggs all hatched and 2 chicks are now 17 days old and 1 chick is 13 days old.  They are growing well but last night, to my horror, I found mites on the rim of the nest pan holding the single chick.  I immediately made a new nest by spraying the new nest pan with Pestex before putting the nest pad and nesting material on top. I Sprayed every single tray and I sprayed the entire cages that were empty.  I also treated every bird individually. When I saw the mites the first thing that came to mind was when someone told me "You have to treat your birdroom like you have mites".  I think it was Paul Dee who said that.  The lesson learned here is no matter how clean you keep your birdroom, you have to treat your birds and birdroom for mites before the breeding season.  I did spray my birdroom in the winter but I didn't treat each bird individually like I did last year.  Bad mistake.  Hopefullly I have caught the mites early enough and it won't ruin the breeding season.

I took the pictures below about 3 days ago and there were no signs of mites at that time.

There were no signs of mites 3 days ago but last night there were small clusters of black mites on the rim of the nest pan, yuck!  They would have been visible in the picture if they were there.  This poor chick has made it to 13 days without a nest mate and now it has to deal with mites.  Usually single chicks do not have a good survival rate because they don't have nest mates to help beg for food.  They also get squashed by the hen when they are on their own.  When this chick was 2 or 3 days old it was very weak and didn't raise its head much.  I think this chick survived because of the hen.  She would call the chick until it raised its head to feed.

To my surprise there were no mites in the nest pan holding the two chicks but I made a new mite-treated nest and replaced the dirty nest (pictured above) anyway.  Their cage is right beside the one with the mites.