both two foster children have grown into healthy birds. One captive bred pair consists of
offspring from my own wild caught birds. This hen produced (infertile) eggs at the age of two years. The next years this pair produced two chicks once and three chicks the other year. Unfortunately, the following two years the hen only produced infertile eggs. Last year she even laid seven eggs in one nest. This year I was luckier, the pair produced two beautiful youngsters. So for the third time a second generation C.n. libs has been born in my aviary. Almost all other hens in my collection
have laid eggs, recently and in the past. Unfortunately infertile every time. Except for one young female C.n. nigra, that produced eggs for the first time and let them drop from the branch, all other hens laid eggs in the nest box and incubated. Because breeding in colony both with me as with Mrs. Louwman, has not proved
When being late, the males fail. They immediately stop feeding the hens, they are only interested to mate for a short period of time. Then, when hens don’t want to enter the nest box, chances are gone. Wishing for better luck next year…
successful, I switched to a different strategy. Throughout the year I keep birds in a group together. Once the birds will feed each other, I watch which hens are most commonly fed by one or more males in particular. These birds I separate. The timing in separating the birds seems to be crucial. As mentioned earlier, the birds are sensitive to stress and they need plenty of time to get used to the new situation. Moving them to another aviary is counterproductive, but even placing partitions in the aviary also provides robust stress. However, when this is done in time, there is a reasonable chance that the birds will proceed to breed after some time. In my old aviary, where two pairs are housed this does well every year. In my larger aviary with a group of about a dozen birds this sometimes goes wrong. Sometimes I’m too early and then the pairs don’t fit (still put the wrong birds together), and sometimes I’m late. When being late, the males fail. They immediately stop feeding the hens, they are only interested to mate for a short period of time. Then, when hens don’t want to enter the nest box, chances are gone. Wishing for better luck next year… As previously mentioned in this article,
this year I put three males together with two hens separately. This resulted in two nests, both with four eggs. The hens have been breeding steadily.
20 BIRD SCENE
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