True Experience With Birds

By G.A. Abbate, Hillside NJ

Tuesday, April 18^th, I left the pleasant 76 degrees temperature in the beautiful Island of Marco, Florida and I drove to New Jersey. As I drove across The Carolinas, Virginia, and eventually arriving in New Jersey in temperatures reaching 80 degrees only for yesterday April, 20^th. Overnight, here in Union County, the temperature dipped into the 40's. Nevertheless, the Garden State is in full bloom, yellow flowers or dandelions everywhere, plus flowering trees everywhere, everything looks beautiful! Even the birds outdoors love this climate. 

Yesterday, and as well as today, myself together with some of the helpers picked about three or four hundred pounds of various greens, including dandelions, chickweed, Sheppard purse, canola rape greens, and others. We placed all these nature bounty on a huge screen and we thoroughly sprayed and saturated the same with a mixture of one part of bleach and nine parts of water. Then we thoroughly washed and we grinded the same, placed them in plastic bags, and placed in the freezer so we will be using them during the winter months in the production of the bird food. 

At this time of the year, every time we produce bird food we use fresh greens straight from uncontaminated outdoor fields. 

We collect a tremendous amount of seeding heads of the dandelions, chickweed, and other wild greens and we fed them to all the European Finches, the Gouldian Finches, as well as all the other birds including Siskin and Green and Gray Singers. As we fed these seeding heads, it was obvious the appreciation of all the birds. The Gouldian Finches fed their youngsters with the seeding heads and a short while after we could see the fresh seed showing through their crop. 

My Gouldian Finch pairs have babies everywhere; unfortunately I do not have enough empty caged to house the youngsters. The Gouldian Finches take too long to get in color and determine the sex, and in order to trade them to other fanciers they demand full color youngsters. 

The European Goldfinch pairs look simply beautiful and colorful. The males are singing their hearts out, yet no female Goldfinches have attempted to build a nest as of yet. The European Green Finch some pairs are sitting on eggs or building a nest. The rest of the Carduelan finches are getting ready. No one can push a bird forward, nature and climate will guide all birds breeding activity. 

Although we have a plentiful supply of fresh wild greens, we do not over feed our birds with too much greens. Seed eating birds must eat a high percentage of dry seed in their daily diet. Too much greens and especially high water content greens could be detrimental to their health. Too much of a high water content food and greens may cause the birds to lose a lot of body weight and become weak. As a precaution, we feed a small amount of dark greens each time we feed them. Definitely avoid the feeding of ice burg lettuce or any other type of high water content lettuce.

Contagious diseases carried by the wild birds including Pigeons, Sparrows, Starlings, etc., which are bountiful in the outdoors everywhere, that may spread disease to our birds in our bird rooms. To minimize the danger of spreading the diseases, we soak, spray and saturate all the greens with a solution of one part of bleach and nine parts of water, then we wash thoroughly under running cold water, shake the excess water out and it is fed to the birds with confidence. Minimizing infecting our birds from contagious diseases should be a daily priority of every bird fancier. Remember do not store bird food in a refrigerator that also contains raw poultry meat, other meats, and especially raw eggs, all of these can and will cross contaminate bacteria and viruses. A lot of diseases that no one can identify cause the birds to simply die when they get sick. No medication or remedy will cure virus infections and even some bacterial infections, which are very hard to cure. Remember that two cents of prevention will be worth millions of dollars in cures. 

Avoid the abuse of antibiotics. Unnecessary administration of certain antibiotics will further deteriorate the health of the birds making them more prone to disease of unknown origin. Good sensible diet, good environment, and good management will keep the birds healthy and they will stay healthy and disease free. 

Well, this is all for now, if you have any caged bird related questions, address them to the COM editor or to me personally, and I'm sure we will try to respond to the best of our ability.