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Post by donna713 on Sept 10, 2011 17:32:55 GMT 10
Hi, I was wondering if any canary breeders can tell me if I can keep two males and two female canaries in the same outdoor aviary without any fighting. I have a 1.5m wide x 1.5m long x 1.8m high aviary. I have read I need to have either 3 males and an extra female, Or 2 males with extra females.....I am getting confused, because on another forum I have been told I would be able to keep the two pairs together and they would be fine. I don't want to put my second male in with the male I have and the two females if this is going to cause trouble....I would really appreciate any help I can get on this matter......
Thanks
Donna
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Post by Robyn on Sept 10, 2011 19:07:53 GMT 10
I have only ever kept a pair myself. I have a couple of friends that colony breed their Canaries & all seems well with their birds. I guess you could try & put them in the aviary but with hold the nests until your sure they all get on.  |
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Post by donna713 on Sept 10, 2011 19:18:03 GMT 10
Thanks for that, sounds like a plan. There is just so much different information about how many males to females, that it gets very confusing when the messages are the opposite to each other....Would give me an excuse to buy another bird though.....Getting a bit hooked.
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Post by anzac on Sept 12, 2011 11:09:29 GMT 10
Well until recently I would have said 2 males to 2 females is fine. I have had the canaries with many various males to females ratios over the past 10 years or so and all has been fine until I introduced this last flock of canaries. Basically he is a complete bully and now my resident male and him fight non stop. I think the real difference with this one is he came complete with his own flock, him and his 2 girls so they were already established. In the past I have had no trouble with having a few males in the colony with the females and although they fight a little, they were nowhere as bad as this new guy. The other problem may be that this new lot are Borders as well and as such are much bigger than all the rest of the other 7 canaries. So to sum up my lot I have 4 males and 6 females so not sure how that fits in with the "recommended" ratio. Until now my resident male Rocket has accepted all my new males but one of the other males is his son. I have thought about putting the Border male in the other aviary that houses the turks but we are about to put a nesting box in with them so I don't want to upset their nice quiet aviary atm. I must say though, that the fighting has only started since it is now nesting time and one of "his" girls is on the nest with eggs so he is particularly protective of her. Outside of nesting time they all get on fine.
So to sum it up I'm with Robyn. They probably will get along fine, my did for many years and then get some nests or have a back up plan to give the male back or to some-one else if they don't get along. Eventually, if my turks ever do breed we will get another aviary and I'll put him and his girls in a communal aviary with the baby turks.
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Post by donna713 on Sept 12, 2011 15:45:00 GMT 10
Thanks for your help. I put them all together yesterday and they seem fine so far, I think I will get another girl anyway, good excuse to get more birds.
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Post by anzac on Sept 12, 2011 17:10:54 GMT 10
Sounds good to me ;D any excuse for new birds. They will probably be fine, mine were for many years. May I ask where you are getting your canaries from? I am just asking as it's just that some breeders sell their older birds to pet shops that are past breeding age while alot of the breeders you visit at their place generally sell off their birds from last season. Well that's my experience in WA at least.
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Post by donna713 on Sept 12, 2011 18:14:28 GMT 10
My fist two birds were 10 months old when I got them just over a month ago and the second two are last seasons. I don't really know how old last seasons are, I am assuming they are the same age as my first two. I was sold a girl and a boy the first time round, but a member from the other forum I am on said my girl is a boy from the markings. She says it is a yellow mosaic. Been googling that.... I brought them from a breeder who has a shop in South Australia....they have a very good reputation....One of the other people on this forum is from SA and he sells his excess stock to this breeder...He also said they are a good place to purchase them from...I wouldn't buy from a pet shop becuase they don't really know much about what they are selling unfortunatly.......
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Post by anzac on Sept 12, 2011 18:18:00 GMT 10
Guessing from that they all might be a little too young to breed at this stage, are the males singing yet?
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Post by donna713 on Sept 12, 2011 19:31:21 GMT 10
No. My orange one is doing a half whistle if you could call it that, maybe more of a quarter....the yellow one that was supposed to be a girl is sort of doing the same thing.....But in saying that the two girls I purchased later on don't just chirp either......So I am a bit unsure what is going on...I am a bit worried if the man at the shop got it wrong with one of them I hope he got the others right, otherwise I could end up with a few fights going on, for example if I end up with three boys and one girl. Can you tell me when they are supposed to sing....at what age, from what I have been reading they should be singing by now...But nothing.....I am hoping they will do something soon so I can work out what I have and then work on building up my birds with the right sexes...to balance things out......I have another question for you...If they do have babies how hard are they to find homes for...I was thinking if they did to advertise them on gumtree and see how they go...Also how much should I ask for them...I would give free to good home, but when you do things like that you never really know if people want them because they will love them, or they just want them because they are free...
Thanks for you help I appreciate all the help I can get
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Post by donna713 on Sept 12, 2011 19:32:07 GMT 10
I can post pictures of them but not sure how to do it on this forum.....
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Post by anzac on Sept 13, 2011 13:47:19 GMT 10
Canaries are notoriously hard to sex and even the experts get it wrong. I purchased 3 supposed girls off a well known member of the Canary Club(all club rung) in Perth and 2 turned out to be male! Canaries are best sexed at the height of breeding season (now) so many people get it wrong as they sell the young ones at the end of that breeding season to reduce their numbers. For me I basically wait to they sing or not to see if they are male and for some that may take from 1-2 years. Girls make chirpy noises as well so it's full song you need to wait for. As for finding homes for them you may have to wait and see how they actually go rearing their babies. Many canaries are simply not very good at it and you'll may not get fledged babies especially if they are all young birds. The best canary I had that reared his babies (yep he was a boy) came from a breeder that said he was an, older experienced boy and he was. I still have his offspring today and they are about the 5 year mark. (Unfortunately my best breeding girls were taken by rats when they invaded the aviary a few years ago and they were sitting on eggs and were taken and killed  ) I don't generally got too many fledglings each year but I have given them to friends or sold a few via our Quokka (like the Trading Post) explaining they are aviary raised birds and so will not cope being placed in a small cage. Price for selling canaries vary from $15-25. The last breeder I bought mine off (thank god one is definitely a girl as I only try and buy girls now has got 1 right as she mating now) charged me $10 per bird. The only true way to successfully breed canaries is to use breeding boxes and separate out the males, that's how all the "show" birds are raised. My advice is just to let them be for this year at least. Give the females a choice of nests as the like to pick and choose their one, I have 5 nests in my aviary. They'll work it out in their onw time. Good luck with it all and I understand where you are coming from as I am newbie turk owner and am about to embark on their first breeding season (perhaps) |
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Post by anzac on Sept 13, 2011 13:57:07 GMT 10
I can post pictures of them but not sure how to do it on this forum..... Personally I use "Dropshots". Load your pictures onto their website then click on the photo. A selection comes up underneath the photo. Use the "blog" button and then highlight and copy the url. Come back to to the forum and paste it (the URL) in and hopefully the image will appear. I'll use one of my rat photos as an example of how it should appear (don't have any pics of my birds).  |
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Post by donna713 on Sept 13, 2011 16:46:28 GMT 10
I am hoping any rats and mice will struggle around my aviary, I have as my first one the Bunnings fowl house, so had metal back and sides and the front just under half way up then the mesh....my perches are all up high and their is nothing they can actually climb on to get them. The lowest twig is half way up the cage and the height of it is 1.8m. We also have 2 dogs and they usually keep all the creatures out of the yard. So hopefully I will be lucky....
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Post by anzac on Sept 13, 2011 17:29:51 GMT 10
Unfortunately the whole front of my aviary is wire so I think they tunneled their way in, climbed the wire, jumped onto the perches and then went for the nests. I still shudder to think how my girls died, I hope it was quick At least with mice they just get in to eat the seed. We have now cemented the aviary in so we won't be moving it in a hurry. My cat helps decimate the wild population hence why I have to keep my pet rats away from him. Funny enough if I presented my pet rats with a bird they would just flee from it in terror. |
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Post by donna713 on Sept 13, 2011 20:12:36 GMT 10
I have concrete pavers on the floor of my aviary with roadbase underneath them so give it a solid base for the pavers...Seems to work ok, my aviary has a shelf it it and thats where I keep their seed, hopefully its too high for the mice to get to, they only have the scraps on the floor if they do get in..I am hopeing it is set up well enough to keep the pests away....I guess I will have to wait and see....I am hoping to extend my aviary in the future and put a double door on it to enter. At the moment I only have a single entry door, so I have to be really careful. But they seem to stay up on their perches when I enter and don't try to fly near me when I enter and leave....I guess they know where their food comes from....I hope so anyway.....Do you know of any breeders in South Australia I would be able to purchase mosiac females from....I really like these birds and would like to look into them further,,and am finding word of mouth is the only way to find breeders without joining a bird club....
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Post by anzac on Sept 14, 2011 10:32:05 GMT 10
I have lost a few canaries cos I only have a single door as well and every finch I had in there flew away as well. One of my canaries who I had for many years flew out and then just hopped along the ground so I could pick him up. The others just flew off, not knowing what fate awaited them with the many crows and wattle birds we have around our area I now use a mozzie net with my other half to stand guard as I do with the turks. Apparently the chain system works a treat too, as in hang chains inside the door. I am from WA so maybe some people from SA can help you but I think the majority of people on here are from NSW & Vic?? I think for mosaics you may have to go to a specialized canary breeder. In WA I know the WA bird society meet once a month at a hall and all the breeders come along and sell their birds, maybe SA has a similar meet up? |
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Post by anzac on Sept 19, 2011 14:41:03 GMT 10
So now I have 2 silly females sitting on the same nest  One of the females laid her eggs in there (4) and another one of my new females has decided she wants that nest too, but she hasn't laid an eggs in there I guess as there are only still 4. So they both are sitting on the nest, sitting on top of each other! Boy those eggs are going to be incubated. Be interesting to see if they do hatch, who actually rears them. Never seen it before in my canaries, has any one else seen this in any of their birds? |
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) I don't generally got too many fledglings each year but I have given them to friends or sold a few via our Quokka (like the Trading Post) explaining they are aviary raised birds and so will not cope being placed in a small cage. Price for selling canaries vary from $15-25. The last breeder I bought mine off (thank god one is definitely a girl as I only try and buy girls now has got 1 right as she mating now) charged me $10 per bird. The only true way to successfully breed canaries is to use breeding boxes and separate out the males, that's how all the "show" birds are raised. My advice is just to let them be for this year at least. Give the females a choice of nests as the like to pick and choose their one, I have 5 nests in my aviary. They'll work it out in their onw time. Good luck with it all and I understand where you are coming from as I am newbie turk owner and am about to embark on their first breeding season (perhaps)
One of the females laid her eggs in there (4) and another one of my new females has decided she wants that nest too, but she hasn't laid an eggs in there I guess as there are only still 4. So they both are sitting on the nest, sitting on top of each other! Boy those eggs are going to be incubated. Be interesting to see if they do hatch, who actually rears them. Never seen it before in my canaries, has any one else seen this in any of their birds?