most economic and nutritious way of supplying our birds’ seed requirements is to use a millet-rich budgerigar mixture – which also happens to be the cheapest in the suppliers range. There are more good proprietary, eggfood mixtures on the market now than there have ever been before. We find it difficult to understand why breeders buy a specifically-balanced product and then add other foods – such as more eggs or carrot – to them. Our grit mixture consists of small mineral grit and oyster shell, in equal quantities. Cuttlefish bone is also provided as are millet sprays. As already explained, we offer filtered tap water. The only additive we feed is a mineral/vitamin supplement that is added to the drinking water at the


16 BIRD SCENE


rate and frequency recommended by the manufacturer. Again there are lots of good products of this type on the market. With a good, balanced diet such as the one we have described we see no reason for feeding other ‘extras’ – home grown, collected from the wild or purchased.


BREEDING ZEBRA FINCHES One of the many challenges of breeding Zebra finches is that no two breeding seasons are ever alike. For example, in both our birdrooms, at the start of one season we had problems because the birds were too fit. This manifested itself in hens laying another clutch of eggs before they had finished incubating the first.By the second and


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