^Rascals's _Chat

Happy New Year folks. We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. 

 Four years into writing a Monthly Journal for  you's we have decided to give a little face lift with the start of the new year.  

This month, means we are feeding red belly babies, we figure it would be a grand month to load you with information on these little guys and also with pictures.  In our minds, there is no bird cuter than a red belly at 3-6 weeks.  Little Panda Bears!  The most famous joke between Jo and some of her friends is about Arbie and Muffin, the pair in our  Living Room. Muffin is a baby we raised and Arbie is the boyfriend we have flown in from Quebec for her. There are very few words that within a couple days they are not repeating once hearing a few times, believe me.  Yesterday Jo yells out the front door for Louis.  What does she hear behind her, but Arbie just hollering LOUIS!   Big mistake, Jo laughed.  That was all he needed, all night long we heard LOUIS, LOUIS, LOUIS!  Showing off would be another of Arbie's traits lately.  Let company walk into the house and say HI to him.  Immediately the foot goes way up with a big HI.   Oh, I suppose your still waiting to hear the joke here.  Well these two are supposed to be breeder birds down the road someday!  Spoiled rotten breeder birds Imagine!!  And demanding.........  In the morning  Jo hears "want breakfast", then she hears "wanna watch cartoons", then she hears "want supper"  "move get out of the way", then she hears Nite Nite Honey Bun, ready to go to bed, I love you, gimme a kiss, smack smack!   Never, never at a loss for words. Now while Arbie might get all the credit, Muffin talks every bit as much as Arbie.  She gets so excited, you hear Gimme, gimme, gimme, smack smack!  These two are not allowed out of their cage as  they are fully flighted.  Being on ground level, wood stove, 20 foot windows,  it's not the ideal room to let  these  two out in.  The original plan  was these two were to go into the Breeding Room with the rest of  the breeders.   Never quite worked that way.  They are such comedians and we enjoy their antics and chatter so much, they have remained as part of the Living Room detail.

As noted below all our hahns babies are reserved with the exception of one little boy.  These have to be the ultimate parrot for a smaller parrot with large personality, absolutely wonderful temperment, talking capabilities, intelligence, oh we could go on and on.  The babies leaving the end of the month already have vocabularies of Step Up, Hello, Come Here, and ah, ah, ah. Four of them would be quite content to just lay in your hand, feet up.. inspecting and playing with their totties.  Jo laughed at Christmas as with 8 of them in the Babies Room, she  would  say "who needs a decorated christmas tree, all I have to do is   walk in the Babies Room and  I look like a tree decorated with hahns.  Perfect colours, dark green and red!! LOL  UPDATE: Hahns babies all SOLD.

We are very excited to say we have two meyers babies!!  They hatched 6 days apart, so poor Sophie was totally confused when she found this new little bundle in her nest!  She was not sure at all what she was supposed to do with it, so guess who took  over and is feeding?!!  So far all is well.

Five hahns left last weekend for their new homes and folks are thrilled.  We had one chap fly down from Alberta to pick up his new little companion and personally fly him home.  A wonderful chap as this also meant "Levi" got to fly with the passengers instead of in the cargo dept.   Just one excerpt from one new owner who was also delivering another baby hahns to his  new home...........

RECIPES

Rascal's Special

A lot of pumpkin

bout five eggs

bout 3 cups of mixture of pre soaked and cooked beans

a lot of yellow cornemal

bout a cup or two of good flours something like kamut, bean, rice flour, splet flour, 12 grain flour

maybe some raisins

maybe some currents

maybe some chopped sweet potato

maybe some, even maybe lots of chopped nuts

maybe some pellets

maybe some flex seed

maybe some rolled oats

maybe some raw chopped veggies

maybe some chopped fruits

some cinnamon

some tumeriac

we don't use any salts or baking soda /power in ours

maybe some blueberries

you got the drift yet

maybe keep going and add some 12 grain cereal

maybe add some mash if you gots some cooked in the fridge waitin to be used

maybe some carrot juice

put some parchment paper or maybe some virgin olive oil powdered down with cornmeal in bout 4 large rectangular pans.

wash your hands if you did not do so yet and dig in and mix all this well.  When we are done, ours is a thick consisentency almost dry.  Our guys like their breads a crumbly type, not moist.

Spoon in and pad down into  your  huge pans

Bake bout  1 hour at 350.  This would be enough to feed our flock of over 30 for a week at supper with their veggies/fruits. 

I know we are not nice, giving you a recipe with no exact ingredients, but we do not measure!!  We just mix it all in, till it's a moist consistency. 

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Rascal'S BreakFAST

bout 6-7 eggs. Put in a large pot of water and boil hard for 20 minutes.

bout 8 slices of multigrain or flex or protein bread /bagel toasted.  Then Jo cubes into small cubes. 

Mash eggs well. 

Grate some raw carrots. 

mix in with eggs,

then toss this mix with toast and serve up.

 Sometimes we will add cinnamon

and/or blueberries

and/or apples/grapes/oranges/

and/or raisins/currents.  Soak these first if used in ater for 10 minutes or so, to soften the juices.

HEALTH     

CRITICAL CALCIUM

There are lots of old wives tales told about splayed legs in cage and aviary birds and rotating legs in larger birds like emus and ostriches.  Whilst a few instances have medical or environmental causes the majority of cases have calcium at their root.  This article is intended to explain how calcium is involved in and how proper calcium supplementation can prevent its occurrence.

We are all aware of the role of calcium in bone formation.  In the rapidly growing chick the bones are consuming large quantities of calcium.  If the diet is deficient in calcium, or vitamin D3, there may not be enough calcium to go round the whole body.  If the nerves and muscles go short of calcium they stop working properly.  For nestlings this means that the leg muscles are unable to hold the legs together and support the chick's weight. 

For larger birds uneven muscle function tends to cause the leg to twist outwards at the hips until the toes point out sideways.

Leg rotations are virtually impossible to treat.  CalciBoost will stop the problem getting any worse but is unlikely to reverse the deformity.  For splayed legs setting the legs into an appropriate splint and simultaneously treating with CalciBoost will normally return the legs to their normal condition if caught early enough.

As usual prevention is better than cure.  This is achieved by addressing the calcium levels of both hens and chicks.  This simply involves a weekly dose of CalciBoost to all non-breeding birds and hens prior to breeding.  For Eclectus and African Greys we recommend twice weekly administration.  During egg-laying we increase the frequency to five days a week and continue this through the chicks' growth period. CalciBoost is designed for use in conjunction with Daily Essentials3 and other Birdcare Company breeding products.

Do not give CalciBoost every day.  Providing good quality calcium every day can actually have the reverse result to that you desire.  If all the birds' maintenance calcium requirements are satisfied from the gut then the bones slowly lose the ability to quickly pump calcium back into the blood.  Egg-binding can result from this over supplementation in hens.

Because of the role of calcium in egg shell formation it is critical to hen health.  Using give CalciBoost routinely will increase clutch sizes, improve shell quality and hatchability and maintain much healthier hens.

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The Birdcare Company

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