On January 11, 2008 my Colorbred Canaries hatched their first babies of the season.  The male is a Red Mosaic Agate mutation and the female is a Rose Mosaic Agate Opal mutation.  These colobreds do have some long names which all have to do with their color mutations.  I have been trying to get a couple good pictures of them, but so far they haven’t wanted to pose for the camera.

I have had many questions on canary diet, so I will just explain what I have been feeding these guys and hope that helps those of you with questions.

Because these guys are colorbred and I plan to show them in November, I have been supplementing their diet with two color foods.  According to the books and people I have talked with,  to achieve the best show coloration, you need to feed canthaxyn as well as betacaroteen.  For the betacaroteen, I used Cede Red Factor food.  I mixed it with Nekton-R which has the canthaxyn in it.  I hope that this will achieve the bright color that is needed for showing.  This is my first attempt of breeding the colorbred canaries and then showing them.  (If you are not planning on showing and don’t care about the bright red color, you do not have to color feed your birds.)

The rest of their diet has been the same as what I feed all my canaries.  I have found that with all birds variety is of utmost importance.  I feed them a premium canary seed mix from Hagen, which has a plentiful variety of seeds, dried fruit, veggies, and egg food pellets.  When they are molting or have babies, I feed a softened egg food either Quicko or Cede every day.  When they are not molting or have babies, I alternate the egg food with dark green leafy vegetables.  If I don’t have any green leafy vegetables,  I finely chop carrots or peppers for them.   ***Waring- Do Not leave the softened egg food or veggies in the cage for more than 2 hours.  Mold and bacteria will start to grow and can cause an infection in your birds.

Thanks for checking in!  In my next blog I will show pictures of banding and try to give details on how to do that.  If you haven’t ordered your bands,  I suggest you contact your club and get them ASAP.  You have to band your babies 5 to 7 days after hatching.