8o CANARIES 



that one means unlimited quantities of egg food. That 

 does not necessarily follow. Egg food is generous it is 

 true. It is also rich, in many cases too rich, yet the 

 majority of fanciers feed regularly upon egg food, although 

 in recent years there has been a growing disposition to 

 use one of the many proprietary foods, and from the use 

 of these many have discovered that they have had better 

 results than with egg food. 



Why Birds come Patchy in Colour. 



The egg food which I gave in the chapter on breeding 

 as being my own particular composition, whilst it is 

 generous is not too rich, but egg and biscuit is, in my 

 opinion, both rich and generous, so rich that many birds 

 cannot assimilate it, and as a consequence digestive 

 troubles arise, and the moult is interfered with. This is a 

 serious matter, because it means that the birds come out 

 patchy in colour. Many breeders wonder why their 

 birds are patchy. It is because the hver becomes over- 

 charged, does not function properly, and therefore the 

 colour is not abstracted from the food given them, and 

 the deposition of colour is not regular. In the chapter 

 on breeding I gave a recipe for a compound food. This 

 may be used most successfully during the moulting 

 season. It is a food which builds up the body, also the 

 bone and feather. 



Special Moulting Cages. 



When one is moulting Lizards it is necessary for each 

 bird to be moulted in a separate cage if the very best 

 results are to be obtained. This need not be done with 

 every bird in the stud, but only those that promise to 

 make winners. The loss of a flight or a tail feather is such 

 a serious handicap to a Lizard when it comes to be shown 

 that the risk of moulting more than one bird in a cage is 

 too great to venture upon. Indeed, in the old days, 

 Lizard breeders were so particular that they not only 

 used to moult each bird separately, but they used to 

 cover the perches with cloth and the front of the cages 

 with a glass shutter. Few of them go to this trouble 

 nowadays but they do let each prospective winner 



