Kweek 2008. Hoe zit het bij jullie?

[Softbill]

European starlings cannot be more difficult than African species (glansspreuwen).
All species are fed only crickets here and they rear young OK.
2 days ago, 4 driekleur hatched here - they looked very good this evening but I am sure that the parents are feeding them mostly dog food - the crickets are not disappearing fast enough.
The only problem I have with starlings is in the last week in the nest. The parents are given very few insects then - the young are fed mostly on dog food. The problem is the faeces are often not in a sac - so the nest gets very messy, and some young die. I am changing the diet a little this year to try to solve this problem.

[White_Blackbird]

It's not that simple Softbill. African starlings sp. threecolored are a whole different ballgame than European starlings. I can give you a list of differences between both species concerning behaviour and feedingpatterns, but let me tell you this:

A friend of mine breeds a lot of African starlings and never managed to breed Europeans. In fact, all the people I know who keep threecolored breed with them year in year out and that's someting you certainly can't say of the people who keep European starlings (see the story of Gaai).
In Holland there's only one person who breeds mutation starlings on a regular base and he puts all the eggs in the wild!(nestboxes in the garden) After that it's handrearing offcourse.
In your country it's more or less the same story. Only one man was succesfull with Eur. starlings: Roger Caton, the so called bird expert/advisor.
The problem with the Eur. starling is their continuing search for different fooditems. Dogfood is in my opinion much too constant and boring for them, allthough the nutricious value is certainly very good. Unfortunately the birds don't care about that fact. They are searching for an extreme variation of diet when they have chicks in the nest. Telling you this bear in mind I don't say breeding threecolored starlings is easy!

[Softbill]

This is news to me - and very puzzling. Wild starlings have ben studied for many years by many people and they do not feed a varied diet to the young - they have preferences for particular insects and will use one or two species in preference to all others if they are available.

Dog food is in many ways not as good as insects for feeding young, but it does mean that there are no defficiencies to worry about - minerals, vitamins etc. etc. - with insects you always have this problem in an aviary.

I have bred collared starlings - sturnus nigricollis - and they are not as easy to breed as lamprotornis species - they sometimes fed young, sometimes not - they would use earthworms, crickets and mealworms. How do people breed pagoda, and other sturnus spp?

[Softbill]

If sturnus are looking for different foods this is like sunbirds and hummingbirds - and others - they are searching for live food that is high in certain nutrients. This is usually spiders - which are high in taurine.
If starlings are also looking for something extra - perhaps crickets etc. can be used but extra added to them. Starlings do not hunt for spiders, so they are not looking for taurine. It could be useful adding some nectar powder to crickets etc - this has sugar, but also all the correct amino-acids and other nutrients - it would stick to live insects very well if the insects were damp. Woth a try? It would have to be tried with very young chicks, for a few days because the adults probably look for a clue from the chicks to decide if the food is good or not.

[White_Blackbird]

Certainly worth a try sticking nectarpowder to the insects, Softbill.
I've just returned from the aviaries and spend half an hour observing the starlings. It's not easy to understand all of their behaviour. F.i. there is a tray with a mixture of cooked maggots, cooked buffalo's, frozen crickets, live mealworms and live buffalo's They didn't touch this for an hour or more untill I took out something and threw it on the floor. Immediatly the food was taken and they even went to the tray and filled their beaks. As if a button was pushed! Then there are the white mealworms. Once dropped on the floor they jump on it as if they are golden coins. Five minutes later you throw them in again and they are totally ignored.
Sometimes they refuse to eat out of a tray for hours, forcing me to throw the lot in the sand. Anyway, the chicks (5 normals, split white and 2 spotless divided under 2 hens) appear healthy to me and must be rung tomorrow...Another couple of days and it's handrearing time.
I emailed with a pagoda and white shouldered starling breeder and I 've got the impression it's easier breeding. This breedingseason I start with 2-2 pagoda and 2-2 white shouldered, so interesting to find out if this 'easier breeding' is true

[Softbill]

If the young look well and normal, you worry too much about what the adults do.
Part of the "problem" is perhaps the amount of insects that you provide. Here, the adult food is still eaten in the same quantity when the adults are feding chicks - I give only enough insects for the chicks, plus a little. Your starlings can sit and do nothing - life is too easy.
Also - if you watch starlings in the wild - they will often sit and do nothing for ages - even when in large flocks. Then they will all do the same thing at once - here in my garden many starlings will sit in the trees, then, suddenly, they all want to use the bath at the same time. Also, even when breeding, starlings will hunt for food in small flocks, and they will also sit in trees before they all feed together. I do not think that your starlings are behaving strangely.

[White_Blackbird]

Softbill,
Today, I was planning to rung the four young starlings in one of the two nests and discovered they stopped growing. I could rung only one in another nest(2 chicks) of the same age. I put one chick out of the bad nest in that of the single hen that's still feeding well and I started feeding the young birds myself, three times a day leaving them in the nest. You can see the change in the parents behaviour. Getting less active. Picking livefood of the floor and drop it al the time.
Not a real surprise to me. Typical European starlings... But I wish they'd stop feeding a couple of days later. Now it's too early for handrearing.

[jupiler]

de eerste 3 jongen van de driekleur glansspreeuwen zijn zelfstandig en pop heeft terug nieuw legsel
de grijskap lijster heeft het nest af met 3eieren en zal uitkippen rond eind volgende week

op de rest wachten we nog

[Softbill]

I think that a problem may be too much food. The adults are stimulated to feed the young if the young are hungry and noisey - wild starling young make an enormous noise when they are in the nest, and after.
By coincedence I found a magazine with an article about European starlings in aviaries. It was not by Caton, but he is mentioned. He uses/used movable aviaries for his starlings and they search for food in the grass - new grass each day. (This is probably similar to how pheasants for shooting are reared here on grass - in English - game rearing pens).

[White_Blackbird]

Yes, I know the system of Caton. He describes it on his website (Roger Caton, the British Bird Expert) Frankly I can't take such a method seriously, can you?
My flights are the opposite of mobile, haha.
No, there must be other ways to deal with these funny birds. At the moment I handrear them in the nest, three times a day and let the parents do the rest. Today I saw them feeding a cricket and some Dendrobena's for the first time. If they go on with that, the problems are possibly over...
By the way, they refuse to take cat or dogfood.

It's getting busy overhere: 6 different species on eggs and 4 more are building.

[Softbill]

I do not see any problem with what he claims - it is simple to do, but you need space. I use a similar arrangement to rear galliformes here.

I have never had a softbill that will not eat dog food - even ones that I have bought from people who said that they will not eat dog food. All softbills here eat dog food - and all that I have kept in the past ate it - waxwings - 1 species, starlings - 6? 7? 8? species more?, thrushes - 3 species, rollers - 1 species, jays - 1 species, tree-pies - 1 species, buffalo-weavers - 1 species, laughing-thrushes - 2 species, magpies -1 species, nightingale - 1 species, pekin robin, waders - 5? 6? 7? species, cranes - 1 species plus??????? - my old memory is not so good. Some are better with ferret food, but all will eat dog food.
It takes 2-5 days to get birds to eat dog food here - except imported rollers - they took 6 weeks to change from mealworms and minced beef to ferret food (but I now give them minced turkey, after they were OK for over a year on just ferret food). A captive-bred roller from Belgium was eating the same as my birds within 5 days.

Only 2 species of VI on eggs or chicks here, but lots of other species have eggs or chicks.

[Gaai]

Hier voorlopig, buiten wat heen en weer vliegen met nestmateriaal, nog niets.
Vooral bij de inca's kijk ik met volle verwachting uit naar het eerste ei.
Als het er komt tenminste.

[White_Blackbird]

I have to be more specific. Offcourse they eat dogfood. Every jay, magpie, thrush or starling overhere eats dogfood. The only thing is: so far they don't feed it to their chicks and they don't eat it as long there are insects available. Maybe I should take away all the livefood and frozen insects? But I think that's not very clever in this stage, don't you think?
I have a very large garden, Softbill(apr. 2 footballfields) but I think it's crazy to build flights that I can tow all over the place. It's reminds me of people keeping a rabbit...

[Softbill]

No bird except rollers here, feeds dog food to chicks until they are ~7-10 days old, except second or third clutches - after one or two nests, they are used to feeding dog food to chicks and will start when the chicks are 2-3-4 days old.

If something works, why not use it (even if you fel like you are keeping rabbits!!)?

[Gaai]

Bij tuinders bestaat een systeem waarbij serres op rails staan. Theoretisch is dit ook te doen voor volières. Alleen stel ik mij dan de vraag waar het gaat eindigen. Je kan de vogels nooit 100% aanbieden wat ze in de natuur krijgen.