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Fesding parents will have their palates tickled ! They like to 

 please their taste at the same time as they fill their crops. These two 

 opportunities being- granted them, they prepare for further indulgence 

 by disgorging their too ample store into the mouths of their dear 

 ones. Dry and hard seed, the taste of which is only appreciated when 

 the cravings of hunger must be appeased, is not readily taken up, 

 mashed in the crop, and disgorged. The old birds, on the contrary, 

 prefer to wait for the more palatable egg food, and thus the majority 

 of young exist, and apparently thrive, on nothing but sweet, soft 

 mixtures. Many authorities now pronounce against this too artificial 

 substance, predicting consequent troubles. The Germans condemn it 

 unanimously, and prevent evil consequences to the birds in adult life 

 in the following way : — 



By keeping their birds when not breeding on the one staple food 

 of rape seed, all other grain becomes a luxury to them ; an unusual 

 treat, a palate tickler ! When, occasionally, it is offered to them, 

 they partake of it with as much relish as the sweetest egg food or 

 green meat, and if they have the young to feed, they will readily carry 

 it as an unwonted dainty to the nest. To maintain at this period the 

 necessary eagerness on the part of the old birds, mixed seed is only 

 given once a day in limited quantities. For the same reasons as the 

 Poultry-man uses grain as the best evening meal for fowls, the Canary 

 man supplies seed to his charges as the final meal of the day. It is 

 offered two hours before sunset, and left in the cage or aviary until 

 the first morning meal, when all but the rape seed is removed. Egg 

 food, left from the previous day, would have become stale and 

 repugnant by that time, but seed is still relished by the feeders as 

 much as on the previous evening. The necessity of rising at daybreak, 

 Which many fanciers have to do in order to furnish their old "birds 

 with fresh egg food, is thus quite obviated. In this manner the brood 

 is partly reared on seed. The grain used in Germany is much the 

 same as we use in this country, but there they use 



OATS, 



shelled and split, to a much greater extent. However fattening such 

 may be to a bird kept in inactivity, yet when used for breeding birds, 

 and then only for a few hours every day, there can be no more 

 nourishing and digestible food than oaten flour. Oat-meal is not so 



