June 30, 2017

June in the Bird Room -- Month by Month Journal



June
Month by Month
Journal
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 COMMENTS are enabled for these journal posts so please jump in with your advice or questions!
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This month was a month of DON'Ts and mistakes!!!
      There were some exciting, big events happening in my family, and I was needed many places besides the bird room.  I had made plans for several SHORTCUTS, that I thought would let me spend less time in the bird room.
     Well, I discovered there is no substitute for TIME.
     First, the things I did right:
  • I had placed a calendar on the wall of the birdroom, with three pencils!  : )  That made it easy for me to jot down when a hen began laying, when I returned the eggs to her nest, etc.  Definitely will do that next year!
  • I also made an 'egg box' to store/organize the eggs as I took them out of the nests.  It was simply a large cardboard box, with a piece of paper as a lid.  ( I will do something a little more sophisticated next year!)  I padded 12 little foam cups with cotton balls, numbered them and 12 clothespins.  Inside each I placed 4 plastic eggs.
    When a hen layed her first egg, I put a clothespin on her cage, placed her egg in the corresponding cup, and placed a fake egg in her nest.  When I got busy and wasn't paying as much attention, the four eggs were a reminder that I was supposed to return all her eggs to her nest.  Sometimes if I was busy, and saw there was only one plastic egg left in the cup, I would simply return all the eggs to her that morning.
    The box also was a reminder for me to check the hens' nests.... I counted how many little cups had hen eggs, and would make sure I had check that many cages.
    You can tell how rushed I was!!!!!
  • I also made sure I was stocked up with everything I would need for breeding:  extra nests and nesting material, extra bags of feed and seed, etc. 
  • I also recommend, if you are rushed on time, to have twice as many feed dishes and waterers as needed..... this way, you will have a clean dish without washing the same one.
    Just remember, a tray of dirty dishes and water tubes do not wash themselves!  One of my chores just before bed was washing a sinkfull of canary stuff!
     Now... on to the things I did wrong!
  • I did not schedule days to band chicks... sometimes chicks in each nest grow at different rates  and of course, different hatch dates mean clutches are ready for bands at different times.
    I just didn't have time for banding... but I do think two scheduled days each week would have made it possible, even with little time to spend in the birdroom.  Next year.....
  • I did not feed softfood twice a day every day.  And the hens that were raising a nest by themselves, a poor feeding pair, and an older pair did not do well by themselves!  I did lose 4 young chicks that I think were because I did not provide softfood as often as was needed.
    :(  That was a sobering lesson to learn.
  • I did not sweep the floor every day, and there was birdseed all over the rest of the house! 
  • I did not write down my observations right that day.... and when I did scribble something on the calendar, often times I cannot read my writing or do not understand what I meant!!!
    I do remember which hens fought with which males, and which males were good fathers, etc., but I did not have any observations about the youngsters, which I will miss!
  • I left some chicks with their parents too long.  Several hens plucked the tail feathers of their first kids while building their second nests. One hen is a sweetheart, and still has two of her first clutch while she is nesting now, but I am taking them out today!
     Got the bad out of the way, now on to the GOOD!   I was very pleased with my pairing plans.... I have some great youngsters!  I have already begun making plans for next year.  But more on that in the next two months!

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