Jump to content

skm

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    45

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by skm

  5. Posted

    I have a bird. She is fluffy and keeps her beak in the wings. Its not cold here and a 60w bulb is placed in the cage to provide the heat. I have felt her feet and beak to be cold. Can this be attributed to fever in humans.

    If any one else has ever faced this problem? I will appreciate if any one can suggest the medication for this. Please suggest the generic name of the medicine as this will help to find it easily.

  8. Posted · Report reply

    None of them is BF. In BF females, lores are of the same colour as the body. Both of your females have white lores whereas they should have fawn lores to be BF. In colurs other than grey, its become difficult to visually distinguish BF factor in females.

    Further, the tear mark is driven away by BB and OB gene. If tail marking is horizontal and tear mark is missing, then its definitely an OB. If tail marking is vertical, then its BB. The OB gene can be traced by looking at the small feathers inside the arm, They show a some orange colour if OB gene is present in the bird.

    Hope this helps.

  10. Posted

    Clare

     

    Beutiful pics. However, to me the nest is not a good one. Finches normally make a burrowing kind of nest but I belive the space given for the nest in not enough for the burrowing nes and they made a make shift arrangement to tell you they can give you better breed if you give them proper nesting site. This is a very open nest and there is significant high chance of chicks being tossed outside. So, be very wathcful and inspect the cage floor for any tossed chicks. If possible, give them a nest basket used for diamond doves or nest box in future so that you can have peace of mind that chicks wont be tossed outside.

     

    Good luck

  11. Posted · Report reply

    The male in the latest pic shared by Mister Finch could be a recessive light back silver. These kind of males pop up in breeding LB. This is definitle not a BC. However, he seems to be split for BB due to hour glass tail marking and extended white lores.

     

    @Trevor: Silver BC are called Isabel BC here in Pakistan. This is not the correct explaination but has become the name name here for the males shared by Mister Finch in the top 3 pics of the first post and the female sharer by Scott in post # 13.

     

    Hope this helps.

  13. Posted · Report reply

    @ Mister Finch

     

    You are also a member of Birdsplanert and Birdstalk and this has been discussed at length on these forums. However, for the sake of your ease, the following applies in case of Finches:

     - crested is a dominant gene in finches and there is no concept of crest bred like budgies. So, pairing Crested (male or female) with non-crested counterpart ideally produces 50% crested birds and 50% normal; however the figures do change in actual meaning no crested in one clutch and all cresteds in the other clutch

     - crested to crested pairing increases the probability of having cresteds from 50% to 75% but one is better off by pairing creseted to non-crested as this increases the overll number of crested birds to be produced from 2 crested birds.

    - BC or any other gene doesnot affect the crested gene.

     

    Hope this helps and wish you good luck for the new clutch. I have been able to breed BC crested in different colurs and OBBB cresteds following crested to non-crested pairing and Inshallah will produce EUMO crested in the near future.

    • Like 1

  14. Posted · Report reply

    Mister Finch

     

    Since she is offspring of grey BCs, she cant be Fawn Cheek. Fawn Cheek [FC] (as this is internationally known) is a dominant mutation, so you can not have a FC with grey BC parents. You have to learn more about the terms that are used interntonally. You are right that here in Pakistan BC are BC if its grey, FC if its Fawn, Silver Cheek if its Silver and WC is its white (it is called CFW internationally, white is called 'solid white' in Pakistan). So, try to refer to the terms that are used internationally so that forum members can guide you properly. BC internationally means that the 'cheek patch' is 'black'. Cheek patch varies from dark black to light fawn and from full patch to a thick black tear.

     

    Hope this helps.

  16. Posted · Report reply

    Ali

    From the pic that you uploaded, its not a pair. Both are females. The grey one is a female, she has got slight black flanks and stripes on the chest which is not uncommon in BC females but conisered as a show fault. The other female is Fawn Pied BC but its cheek patch is very light (watch out its its left cheek where black colour of cheek is ending before it can reach half of the cheek). She will not be a good option to breed BC as the some of the chicks will have very light cheek patch.

    By the way, wher do you live? From pics of your cage, its like asia.

  17. Posted

    I wish the parent take care of the newly hached one but I have serious doubts about it for the following reasons:

    - its very small and can be burried under the older chicks

    - it appreasrs to be CFW (pink body, white furs and red eyes), so the parents may miss him due to light mouth markings

    - it is too small to outcry the elder siblings, plus its eyes are closed and elder ones have open eyes, so they can chase the parents.

    - young chicks are fed crop milk and being fed at frequently while elders are fed seeds and are fed lesser times

    If you have similar sized chick in another nest, better shift him there. Or if you have bigger chicks in another nest, place the eldest 2 siblings in that nest provied there are not more than 4 chicks in that nest. This way the young one will be more obvious and will have a better chance to survive.

    I have been into this situation when 2 females shares a single nest. They laid at different intervals and the chicks which hatched later have not been able to survive for more than 2 days. They burried in the nest and I have not been able to find their dead bodeis as well. Since then, if there is a major differenc in the size of sibling, I move the chicks to different nests to minimize the size difference.

    Hope this helps.

    Best regards

  18. Posted

    Emmy

    You got it right 'Inshallah'. The other chciks seem to be healthy.

    The hobby of birds keeping is always a roller coaster of emotions. Healthy birds, breeding and chicks take one to the sky and then the sick and dead birds and abondoned chicks make one to burry himself deep some where. All in all, birds keping makes ones practical about the life. We can not leave the healty breeding birds for sick one and vice versa.

    I have been into situations where the chciks are being abondoned at a very later stage meaning thereby the chciks had developed feathers all over and would be able to jump out of nest in a weeks time at the maximum. Since brooders are not available here in Pakistan and the office timings dont allow me to take them to hand rearing, I had to put them to foster parents who happily accepted the abondoned chicks and the chick fledged well.

    Every living being has to die, but we have to make every possible effort make one live as long as possible. We can only and have to make an effort, the rest is to be decided by Allah.

    Good luck.

  19. Posted

    Emmy

    I am really sorry for the loss of both chicks. Its very heart breaking to see a dead bird, especially the chicks which are so helpless. You have done every right, may be its just their fate. I wish I had taken out the time earlier to research and post.

    Inshallah, things will be fine if you are faced with a similar situation. Since, you have a neww brooder, try to take a test run of this before you have to actually use that. I have heard that brooders temp. vary if they are moved from one place to another. So, test run the brooder to see how efficient and perfect it is and what surprises it has for you.

    For the remaining chicks, I pray that the parent take good care of them but if you seem them out of nest, just put them in the nest again to give the parents a few more chances. Chicks at times fall out of the nest for a variety of reasons and its not always the case of abondoment. Further, abondoned chicks of one pair are at times happily accepted by another pair (foster parents), so this possibility should be looked out first before hand rearing.

    Wish you good luck with the remainig birds and prayers for your grand daughter.

  20. Posted

    Hi Emmy

    Sorry for the loss of one chick. Hopefully the other one will be fine and grow well. Done some googling for the chick that had air in the crop and then died. This is what I got:

    • It is a minor case of candida infection(fungus) most of the time and by the passage of time chick grows immunity overcomes the problem. It should must it in severe cases and use nystatin (nilstat) @1/8 twice a day for 5 days. It cane be mixed in formula but in empty crop it works better as it gets physical contact with fungal cell walls and dont get absorbed by intestines. Another safe method to prevent this is with Apple cider vineger in water @ 10 ml per litter.
    • The air has to be expelled out by extending the chick's neck and then gently pressing the crop. This should preferably be done when the crop is empty. Alternatively the crop has to be punctured with a sterile needle - this should be performed only in exceptional circunstances.

    It could be that the other chick is developing yeast infection in the crop due to slow digestion which in turn is caused by low temperatre. Try to maintain the temperature as suggested by Kerry. Further, add 1-2 drops of Apple Cide Vineger in the formula to act against the yeast that may be forming. To speed up the digestion, make the formula thinner and feed less at a single time - this way you will have to feed the chick more often. Also, please dont feed the chick until the crop is completely empty. If possible, weigh the chick before and after every feed, this way you will be able to judge how much feed is being taken every time and how much is being converted in body mass.

    I am not an expert of hand feedding. All the above information is gathered from net and some suugestions are from my common sense. Hope this helps.

  21. Posted

    Thanks Emmy

    I live in Karachi, Pakistan. I have mailed the company for the possibility of having NutriBird A21 Versele-Laga here. Lets see waht they reply.

    Thanks for the help and good luck with hand rearing the chicks.

    regards

  22. Posted

    Emmy

    Glad to read that you have managed to feed the newly hatched chicks. I have lost a few chicks in a couple of weeks as the parents were not inerested in feeding them and I was not sure what to feed the newly hatched ones. I have raised a chich which has started to develop pin feathers on a mix flour of wheat, red rice, black grams, millet and corn but I am skeptical if a newly hatched chick will be able to digest that. Some one advised about the yolk of chicken egg but I am also not confident about it. So, I left the chicks with the parents and eventually lost them. So, can you tell me what have you fed to the chicks and if its a branded hand rearing formula, can you name a few of its ingredients since it is almost impossible to have a good hand rearing formula here.

  23. Posted

    Can some post the pics of Panicum Yellow Millet, White Millet and Japanese Millet. Here, in Karachi, there are three types of Millet; Red Millet, Yellow Millet (bigger in size which is used for Java Finches and is considered too big for zebra finches) and White Millet (small millet advocated for Finches).

  24. Posted

    Just browsing to see the seed mix for exhibition finches. Here, in Pakistan, w donot have braned feed mix. We normally use white millet for the finches but I feel that a single seed is not going to satisfy the nutrional need of the birds. So, I will appreciate if you share the contents of the seed mix you are using. I am planning to add canary seed, linseed and rapeseed to their diet. I will appreciate if some one can suggest the proportions of each to be addded.

    Best regards

  25. Posted · Report reply

    Thanks Stefan

    I am a bit confused about a Fawn female that I have purchased as a "OBBB". Since the bird is an imported one, so the seller is unable to offer any help on genetoc side. The said female has black line along with the beak and has unicloloured tail coverts. So, she is not OB at all (as per my knowledge; please confirm).

    She is also showing the a light black line in the chest and the cheek patch is waht have explianed for BBBC. So, I am inclined that she is BBBC. I will try to post a few pics of her for guidence.

    Best regards