End of the year

It has been a fairly quiet year in respect to the breeding of parrots for me. I bred one more Green Thighed Caique than last year but surprised to get all girls and no boys. Last year it was all boys. Very nearly had some baby Ruppells but they did not survive, and nothing from the Red Bellied parrots again.

I am now in the process  of moving all the small African parrots into their new house and today I moved in the older Ruppells pair. They were both cuddled up in the nest box so it was quite easy to take the box out the existing flight cover the nest box hole and transfer them to their new home. Mind you they looked a little surprised when they came out into the new house. Last year they laid in January-February so I am hopeful they will try again in 2011. Hopefully with less disturbance from other parrots this time.

The older breeding pairs of Eclectus did their normal share of babies, but sadly we did not have any babies from the newer pairs of Red Sided & Solomon Island. However it is still quite early days for them.

In general this year things seemed more subdued, I felt there has been a marked decrease in interest for pet parrots and for parrots as breeding stock. So I think the effect of the 2009 recession has finially had an effect on our hobby. However I did sell all the babies I produced in 2010 some as parent reared and some as hand reared. But perhaps it did take a little longer than previous years. There was a number of fellow breeders who decided to give up or retire this year, and feeling that for a number of years we had formed a small but close family of like minded breeders it was particularly sad for me to loose a number of close contacts.

So my hopes for 2011 are that eventually I will rear some Red Bellied & Ruppells parrots. And additionally I would like to have some Eclectus babies from the new breeding pairs.

Happy New year to everyone, and especially those other amature breeders of parrots who like me do our bit to enhance the understanding of parrots and their breeding success  in captivity.

Breeding hybrids good or bad ?

I have been reading over the last couple of days a debate of sorts taking place on the emotive subject of breeding hybrids (crossed parrot close related species). In the case in question it was a Macaw hybrid which are often the most popular ones bred. However there are sometimes cockatoo or Amazon parrot hybrids bred. And sometimes this is done intentially in order to breed a more unusual parrot variety and sometimes it just is a case of a person producing a hybrid as a result of difficulty in finding pure species of the same type.

In America, hybrid Macaws are quite sort after and do generate a demand for them which generates quite high values. In Europe there seems to be less demand for them although on the otherhand perhaps they have not been purposely bred here quite so much.

Some people are vermently again such crossing of these parrots as it appears to be medddling with nature, but on the otherhand there is much evidence of crossing of similar species in nature anyway (although this is evolution over a long period).

I breed Caiques as my particular interest  and certainly there is evidence that the separate suspecies (of which there are 5) have evolved by hybridisation of perhaps only 2 original species. I have seen Black -headed caiques (from the wild) with some green thigh feathers and Yellow Thighed caiques with green thigh feathers and even Yellow Thighed Caiques with Yellow Tailed feathers. Naturally some of the territories of these parrots overlap which must give rise to hybridisation.

I also have a pet Caique which was crossed from a Green Thigh and Yellow Thighed breeding pair, as at the time I could not find a suitable mate for a Green Thighed cock Caique which I had so I mated him with a Yellow Thighed hen and the same year they had babies which were hybrids. These of course are not particularly sort after so don't have a high value but I can see how sometimes breeding hybrids can be incidental to keeping parrots rather than as an intentional outcome.

But of course some hybrids are bred quite intentional to generate a high value in much the same way as mutation coloured parrots are. My personal view is that keeping parrots in captivity is of course not the same as parrots living in the wild. Most private breeders are keeping them in collections because of their scarcity and value, so breeding hybrids and mutations is just another extension of the hobby. Certainly these parrots should not be introduced to wild populations, but in truth they would not survive in the wild if someone tried to do it. And my opinion is that the number of hybrids that are bred in comparison with the number of natural parrots do not really effect the balance of nature.

Yellow Thighed Caiques babies

I sold the 2 parent reared yellow Thighed babies today to Roger their new keeper. They were absolutely perfectly well behaved and did not seem to mind the journey at all and was quite inquisitive and not at all frightened once I got them out the flight. Mum and dad looked on as I gathered them up and I think was quite happy knowing they had done a good job rearing them.

This breeding pair has done very well with their 2nd successful clutch of the year, and this was actually the pairs first year together. At the end of last year I unfortunately lost the original cock breeding bird who died of an asmatic attack. For a number of years he suffered in the cold dry weather with occasional attacks and luckily I had always previously managed to catch him in time and help him recover. But last year in late December I arrived back home to find that he had died. By chance a friend had at the same time lost a hen who had escaped from his aviary, so I was very grateful to be given the cock Caique who I put with my widowed hen in January this year. Luckily they took to each other after about a month and had actually produced their first clutch of fertile eggs by March. This I thought was remarkable in the circumstances.

Dolly & Banjo laid 2 new eggs this week

Dolly and Banjo (pair of vosmaeri Eclectus) have laid again, they are quite persistent even in this very cold weather. Unfortunately their last attempt in late November was unsuccessful and no chicks hatched out. I had this breeding pair for 3 years and so far they have laid consistency but usually only have one fertile egg and one clear egg per clutch. I don't know why this is ?

When I bought them I had only intended to buy one of their offspring, but when I went to visit the breeder I found that the owner had only this pair alongside pairs of large Macaws. Dolly (the hen) was really tatty with hardly any feathers on her front at all, so I made an offer to buy the parents and daughter all together. Whilst we were getting them out the flight I found that the nest box was completely empty of any bedding, and it was likely that poor Dolly had pulled out all her feathers in order to make a nestbox bedding for her eggs.
Since she has been with me she has slowly improved her feather condition but still far from perfect. Even Banjo was a little tatty when I bought him but he now looks quite splendid. Unusually he has some individual bright yellow feathers around front of the neck. I had other Eclectus cocks with these occasional yellow feathers and not sure if this is just natural or if it signifies some kind of defficiency (perhaps vitamin) ?  However Banjo is always looking fit and active and produces youngsters so I guess he is OK.

All the Eclectus hens were out this morning

It is an unusual sight to see the Eclectus hens out in the flights with the cocks in the morning, but today they were all out perhaps enjoying the very slightly higher temperatures and abit of sunshine. However I think this respite will be shortlived as colder weather is again on the horizon. We have one pair (Lullabelle & Scottie) who are with eggs but I have checked and they are clear. I only introduced Scottie to Lullabelle around October so I know it is a little early to expect eggs. Also after I bought Scottie, I had various tests carried out on him and found that he had a very low vitamin A level, indicating he previously  had a poor diet and was not likely to become fertile for a while until I can build up his vitamin level. However he is already behaving in quite a macho manner so perhaps it will not take so long before they have some babies.

I have a pair of parent reared Yellow Thighed Chicks (brother and sister) which are now ready to give to another breeder, I will meet Roger on Wednesday weather permitting who will find unrelated partners for them. I have another breeding pair of Yellow Thighed Caiques who are sitting on eggs which should hatch out in the next couple of weeks early in 2011. I will consider hand rearing this next clutch for a couple of people who have asked me for pet Caiques. Just before Christmas I received a video from Rash who bought Piku a Yellow thighed Caique early in the year and who now seems to have settled in very well.  Many thanks I have put the video on the blog.

I am going to look at moving the small African parrots on Thursday & Friday (weather permitting) into their new house. I am concerned about moving them at this time of year but I feel in general they will be better off in the larger flights.They will still have some inside heating which will be activated if the temperatures fall below zero.

A change in the weather ?

The weather has been the worse for many years here in Nottingham. And for the parrot breeder this has brought many additional worries. With temperatures below freezing since the beginning of November our parrots appear to have managed throughout, but we have lost two chicks from the Indonesian Eclectus parrots which did not emerge from the eggs (I guess because of the cold). It is the first time in 25 years that the water bowls (which are kept inside the birdrooms !) have frozen solid. The birdrooms do have tubular heaters which come on automatically below 0 degrees C but even this was not sufficient to stop the water freezing.
The lowest night temperature we seen since November being -12 degrees C.

Also the parrots need feeding in the evening, so I have been out in all weathers every night feeding them and checking they are all right. Most mornings the Eclectus cocks are ready to emerge into the frozen day, the hens prefer to remain in the comfort of their warm nestboxes, but who can blame them.

I also keep South American Caiques (another type of smaller parrot) which have the comfort of inside accomodation in a converted brick built garage. They are well protected from the weather but still have inside tubular heaters which come on in this severe weather. The only problem with this type of accomodation is the attraction to small field mice which again this year are finding their way in. But so far have not disturbed the Caiques.

And finally I have some small African parrots (Ruppells & Red Bellied) which at the moment are living in the same inside accomodation with the Caiques. This is not ideal as I believe that they are nervous about being in close proximetry with the Caiques because they are from a different continent and the same applies to the Caiques. So far the Red Bellied parrots have not gone to nest which I think is related to this problem.  I also have a pair of Green Thighed Caiques which are so disturbed by a nearby pair of Ruppells that the hen has started to pull her own feathers. Ihad planned to move the Red Bellied & Ruppell african parrot pairs into their own accomodation this year in November but the weather turned so quickly that I was unable to do this then. However I am now hoping to do this in the next week or weeks  if the weather looks warmer so as to not shock the parrots by moving them in the cold.