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oil the Health of Small F.hiches.



from egg binding, and disease for six months in the year is

practically unknown, but in the six gloomy winter months, when

the aviary is heated with hot pipes and ventilation a difficult

matter, it was a different tale.


The winter before last I lost numbers of little birds, so

constant were the deaths that I feared I had bird fever amongst

my flock. Nearly all my Gouldians died and one or two Parrot

Finches, and none looked well. It was their first Winter in

their present aviary and I had perhaps forty small finches in an

aviary 14ft. by 12ft. and 12ft. high.


But it puzzled me why they should die in the winter and

not in the summer. Their aviary never went below 450, and

was kept at an even temperature, the water was tepid, and no

green food given, unless sound and dry, and yet they died.


The causes of death were principally enteritis, or liver

and bowel complaints, or pneumonia, and these diseases never

occurred in the summer.


I suppose how far blood poisoning is the primary cause

of these diseases is somewhat doubtful, but pneumonia amongst

human beings is constantly caused by blood poisoning.


A heated aviary in the winter rarely gets thoroughly

aired, all the birds are confined in a narrow space, and the poison

from the excreta must accumulate in the form of bad gas.


Who does not know the rather stuffy smell of a heated

aviary the first thing.in the morning before it has been aired.


I doubt if human beings would be well under such

circumstances, and surely the delicate tiny finches accustomed

to pure air, must be affected. To open a window all night

would be to court disaster, as a finch would be sure to choose

a draughty spot and die of inflammation of the lungs next day.


It is also certain that when birds can winter out of doors

they have much better health than those in heated aviaries.


I had always heard that to keep eucalyptus trees, growing

in a room, was a remedy against influenza, in any case a powerful

and natural disinfectant, as the living tree consumes the bad

gas, and keeps the air pure and healthy. I therefore, last



