Feeding Your Canary Bird A Good Nutritional Diet

Feeding Your Canary Bird A Good Nutritional Diet

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There are manufactured diets available that provide our caged birds with a selection of the vitamins and minerals they need. Thus, balanced, good nutrition is found in every bite, and many diet manufacturers make formulated diets in a small size that canaries can eat. Finding a supply of formulated diet, converting a seed-eating bird to it and offering sufficient variety in your birds daily fare then become your challenges.

Formulated diets are available at pet stores, feed stores, bird marts and through mail-order catalogs. Be sure to get the right size diet for your canary bird. Larger diets do not crush, they turn into powder. To ensure that you have a supply of food available when you need it, consider feeding two different kinds of formulated diet. You never know when a merchant may run out of one brand. It is also a good idea to keep some feed stocked in the freezer or refrigerator.

If your canary was raised on a seed diet, it might not recognize that the diet you are offering it is food. For this reason, it does not usually work to offer seed and a new formulated diet at the same time. The bird chooses what it knows is food, which is the seed it is used to eating. If you convert your bird to a manufactured diet, there are several tactics you can use. Simply removing a birds seed and offering a different diet does not work. You do not want to starve your avian companion; you want to do what is best for its health in the long run.

To stimulate your bird to try a new diet, sprinkle a few pellets on a canaries veggies or put some in a dish, sprinkle with lemon juice or fruit juice. Bake them into bird bread so the diet is incognito. Once you have a canary that eats a formulated diet, your maintenance will be much lower and cleanup will be easier. You will also know that you are doing the best you can to properly feed your bird.

There is a caution to remember. If you feed a seed-based diet, it should be supplemented with vitamins because seeds lack some essential nutrients. If your canary eats a formulated diet, do not offer vitamins. Though some vitamins are good, more are not better!

Diet Storage and Use

Formulated diets may come in a package larger than you can use in a couple weeks. You can safely refrigerate the diet to store it, or even freeze part of it to maintain its freshness. Be sure to store the diet in dry, airtight and vermin-proof containers. When you have emptied a container, wash it and dry it before refilling it. That way you are not mixing older diet with new, avoiding any problem with mold or bacteria.

Remember, too, to avoid contamination by using a cup or scoop to fill food dishes. Do not ever dip the dishes into a container of feed. There are all kinds of convenient containers for feed that keep it dry, dispense it or allow you to see how much you have.

Fresh Treats

Whether you feed a seed-based diet or a formulated diet to your canary, greens, fruit and vegetable treats should be a regular part of what you feed. They do not contribute a great deal of calories to a birds daily intake, but they are a diversion, enjoyable for the bird and offer it variety in its diet. You may offer a canary bird various fresh foods, including apples, broccoli, canned corn, carrots, chickweed, chicory, comfrey, dandelion greens, grape halves, leaf lettuce, nasturtium blossoms, orange, peas, spinach, squash and sweet potatoes. This list is by no means complete, and it does not represent the many ways in which you can present food.

Canaries usually are fed more vegetables than fruit, but will enjoy bits of whatever fruit is in season. Remember that they can not break up large pieces of food, so cut fruits with tough skins. To feed carrot, sweet potato or squash, you could microwave it until it is soft, or finely grate it for your canary bird. You may boil seeds and carrots together for your birds as a treat, then freeze what you do not use right away. Other foods can be micro-waved, cut, chopped, grated or baked into treat bread. If you have frozen vegetables to feed, such as peas and corn, thaw them under hot running water to present to your canaries. Many of the deep green vegetables, including dandelion greens, are highly nutritious. Carrots and squash contain carotene and, along with red peppers, are a natural color food.

The Traditional Seed Diet

For centuries, canaries have been fed seeds. There are numerous companies making products to aid you in feeding your canary. If you are set on carrying on this seed-diet tradition, here are some of the basics.

The seed-based canary diet consists of a mixture of canary seed and millet, both high in carbohydrates, and other high-fat seeds such as hemp, rape and niger. When their staple diet is seed, canaries should be fed greens and receive a powdered vitamin or a condition food containing vitamins.

Breeders also usually supplement the canary diet with egg food for breeding birds. A canary going through the molt will also benefit from an increase in protein in its diet. It has a lot of new feathers to grow. Though there are numerous recipes for egg food, there are also commercial egg biscuits and conditioning supplements for your canary. The combination many canary breeders feed is hard-boiled egg, dried bread crumbs, grated carrot and wheat germ. Other mixtures contain vitamin supplements.

Molting Diet

The time of the year when you should supplement a canaries diet with extra protein is when it is molting. This usually happens once a year, lasts four to five weeks and occurs sometime between June and September. Males usually stop singing when they are molting, which is the process of gradually and systematically losing their old feathers and growing in new ones. For canaries, the head feathers are the last to grow in.

Young canaries, during their first year, may change color slightly as they attain their adult plumage. Young birds do not replace their tail and long wing flight feathers during their first molt. In the show world, these birds are called UNFLIGHTED.

Your molting canaries will appreciate their baths more than ever. This is also a good time to keep your canary bird warm and stress free. Offer it extra nutrients from oily niger, flax and rape seed, as well as egg food or a nestling food.

Your main job, besides making your molting canary comfortable, is sweeping up feathers, which fairly rain down from a molting bird. This is a stressful time of year for your canary, but with general good health and a little extra attention and feeding from you, you will both be fine when it is over, and your canary will have a glistening new set of feathers.

About the Author:
For more information on Canaries and to download a FREE Report on The 3 Most Common Mistakes Made By Canary Owners, please visit our website Canary Bird http://www.canary-bird.co.uk
Article by James Pilgrim



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


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