Abstract
There are many advantages in controlled breeding quarters. The best reason is that the birds can be kept in breeding condition anytime of the year, and most of the parrots will go to nest two or more times a year and any month of the year if the babies are pulled at an early age for hand feeding.
The outside weather may change drastically from day to day with heat waves, cold spells and storms. This, in outside aviaries, can mean losing the young in the nest or not going to nest at all. This could cause the loss of a complete breeding season.
The indoor breeding quarters are much safer for the birds. When one escapes, it is still confined to a small area and can easily be caught. Dogs, cats, wild birds and animals cannot scare or kill them. Also, being quartered inside where they cannot be seen or heard should keep vandalism and robbery down, and the neighbors happy.
With the inside breeding quarters, it is much easier to keep a check on the birds with convex truck mirrors, one-way mirrors, and video cameras with monitors. I always carry a small diary and write all the important activities that are going on with each pair. In this way, you can soon tell where each pair is in the breeding cycle.
There are some disadvantages to the indoor quarters. By far, the worst is disease. For this reason, large numbers of breeding pairs should not be kept in one room. If there is more than one room, each room should have all its own tools, and when entering another room, antiseptic precautions should be taken. If new pairs are being put into an established breeding room, they should be quarantined 30 to 60 days in another building. At this time, each bird should be checked by a good veterinarian for parasites and any other visible trouble. There should be stool samples taken and checked for any contamination. The blood should also be checked to see that it is in good condition.
Another disadvantage of an inside bird room or breeding quarters that bothers me more each year is the noise. When a couple of macaws, cockatoos or amazons start screaming all at one time, it can get a little upsetting. To bring the noise level down so it does not bother me, I use a cylinder ear plug. They use these on shooting ranges, factories, and around airports. With these in your ears, you can still hear a whisper or answer the
telephone. All the loud noises are brought down so that they are no longer objectionable. These are called Sonic Ear Valves, and come in small, medium and large sizes. They are put out by Norton Co., Cerritos, CA 90701.
A lot of thought should be given to the selection of your breeding pairs. For my own stock, I spent considerable time and money to find tame and docile stock. The birds being in such close quarters have to be very calm at all times. If there is just one African gray that is a growler, it can upset all the other birds and make breeding almost impossible. It isn't only the African gray that does this. Macaws, cockatoos and amazons will all do it hut in different ways. A bare-eyed cockatoo at the Brookfield Zoo used to give a warning call just to upset the rest of the parrots in the building.
When you use tame birds for breeders, you have to reject them. Just feed and water them, and when they come around, ignore them. By doing this, the tame bird will go to the other bird in the cage and they usually soon become friends. I have only had one female African gray that would not pair off. She would fight with the first two males, and the third male was faster than she and was able to stay out of her way. She has never paired off but I think that with a very aggressive male, she would.
With the tame birds, you cannot play with them. If you do, the other bird usually gets very jealous and will either attack you or its mate. Once they go to nest, usually neither bird will want you around. I have one African gray that was handtamed within a few minutes after I pulled her babies. She will not tolerate me looking in the nest box when she has eggs or young.
One of the important things is to be sure that you have a pair. There are a few ways to be sure that you have a pair. One is to have them surgically sexed, and the other is to get a proven pair that have produced young. I bought a proven pair of double yellow-headed amazons, and after having them over six months, they had not gone to nest. They were taken in and surgically sexed, and they turned out to be two males.
Now I will tell you about the setup that I have for my parrots. They are kept in the basement of our home. The first thing that was done was to put a sealer on the cement floor so the droppings and food particles
cannot penetrate into the cement. With the sealer on, it is much easier to scrape and sweep the waste off the floor. Then, when the breeding season is over or slack, it can be scrubbed and disinfected. When the birds are moulting, I use a heavy duty shop vacuum cleaner. This vacuum cleaner has a 21/2" hose and it takes a pretty big feather to plug the hose.
For heating, there is a gas fired forcedair space heater that has a sealed combustion chamber. This means all air for combutsion is drawn from outside so that there is no chance of gas or carbon monoxide getting into the bird room. The heated air is forced through a partition into the bird room. On the other end of this partition is another hole that is on the floor. The air is drawn through this hole and circulates back through the space heater to keep the temperature at about 73 ° at all times.
If you are planning more than one bird room, it might be better to go to a hot water heater or a forced-air space heater in each room. This would help to keep any air-born diseases from spreading. There are also filters that can be used between rooms which will filter out most harmful bacteria.
When the heat is on during the colder months, the air becomes very dry. To overcome this, a humidifier is used to bring the humidity up to about 55%. This helps keep a little more humidity in the nest boxes. This also helps keep the eggs from losing too much moisture. The extra moisture also helps the feathers from getting too brittle. It also helps to spray the birds with warm water two or three times a week. This helps keep the feathers in better condition.
In the summer, the basement humidity will build up to more than 60%. When this happens, molds can build up on the droppings and leftover fruit and vegetables. When the humidity builds up to 55%, the dehumidifier is turned on to keep the humidity at 55% or a little lower. There is only one trouble with. the dehumidifier running, and that is because the dehumidifier puts out a lot of heat. If it runs for a few days at a time, the temperature will climb to 90° or more. So far, the higher temperature has not bothered the nesting of the birds. The only way to overcome the higher temperatures from the dehumidifier is to have an air conditioner running to keep the heat down. I was told that to have a system like this work efficiently, it has to be set up by an engineer.