Article kindly provided by Glenn Johnson
When the winter bite has hit with some rather low night and early morning temperatures hitting our birds hard, what to do?
Well, there are a number of options that may help:
- Replace tea-tree brush with fresh brush before the worst of the winter weather.
- Add higher protein seed to your seed mix during winter eg. Canary hulled oats.
- When building aviaries, make sure you line the interior of the shed area.
- Consider insulation when building your aviary.
- If you have prefab aluminium aviaries, the use of tarps or bubble wrap to cover shed areas or to cut down wind may be considered.
- The supply of seed covered in Cod Liver Oil and Wheat Germ, once a week is desirable to help cut down on egg-binding.
These are just a few points off the top of my head. If you have more ideas or suggestions please write them down and give them to me and we can add them to the list.
P.S. Another thought, I just bought a bag of Finch Mix and the price was up by $4 from the week before. This is a yearly occurrence with the price of seed, each winter the price of seed sky rockets, with excuses of droughts making seed crops fail and seeds becoming scarce. This happens every winter and the drought is only part of the excuse, much of the seed is stockpiled, as when winter is coming to an end and before any seed harvesting is done the stockpiled seed mysteriously begins to drop in price, presumably to make way for the up coming fresh seed.
How to get around this problem?
Easy, buy more bags of seed before the price goes through the roof and store it over winter. Screw top drums are cheap to buy and by placing bay leaves in the seed, keep it clean and moth free.
