Canary 
Management. 
( 68 ) 
THE BIRD WORLD. 
Treatment of Breeding Birds. 
The best time for pairing the birds is the first 
week in April; this is quite soon enough, and 
gives plenty of time for the hens to rear three 
nests before the moulting season sets in; a great 
many of the failures which occur every year are 
through breeders being over-anxious to pair. A 
week or so before pairing, the birds should be 
given a more nutritious diet than their ordinary 
food, such as stale bread-crumbs or powdered 
biscuit mixed with hard-boiled eggs; the egg 
should be grated through a small sieve. Also a 
few grains of hemp, and a little niga seed, and 
water-cress given every other day will be found 
very beneficial. This extra nourishment brings 
them on to lay much quicker, and greatly assists 
in fertilising the eggs. 
Management of Laying Hens. 
The birds having been paired a few days, you 
may look forward to the hens building their 
nests. The hen generally lays her eggs be¬ 
tween five and eight in the morning, and these, 
as a rule, are four in number, but sometimes 
five; they are all laid one every morning, but 
sometimes a hen may miss one morning and 
lay the next. The best plan is to take the eggs 
out of the nest every morning as they are laid, 
and put them carefully in some dry bran in a 
box kept for the purpose and divided into sec¬ 
tions, these being numbered to correspond with 
the cages. Put the eggs back again into the 
nest in the evening of the day the third egg is 
laid; by this means the young birds will gene- 
rallv hatch out at one time, which is a most 
desirable thing, as birds which are hatched a 
number of hours before the others, of course 
get more food, and consequently grow and get 
much stronger than those hatched later. 
Egg-binding and the Remedy. 
If, on the morning you expect a hen to lay, 
you find her at the bottom of the cage with her 
feathers ruffled up and breathing very hard, she 
is most probably what is called egg-bound, and 
must be attended to at once. Get a little castor 
oil and warm it at the fire, and apply a little to 
the vent, placing the bird gently back again 
on the nest. This will generally relieve her of 
the egg in about an hour; if not, she should be 
held over a jug of boiling water for about ten 
minutes, the steam being allowed to penetrate 
all round the abdomen. Bv this method the egg 
will sometimes be laid in the hand, or it-will drop 
in the jug, or very soon after she is placed in 
the nest. Great care must be taken in handling 
the bird, that the egg may not be broken by any 
pressure of the hand before it is laid, for if the 
e §rgf is broken in the oviduct, it will certainly kill 
the hen. 
The Trio System. 
Many breeders run two hens with one cock; 
this is one of the advantages of using the double 
breeding-cages. In breeding on this plan, it 
will be necessary to hang two nest-pans in the 
cage, one at each end, leaving the sliding parti¬ 
tion open for the cock bird to pass to and fro. 
It sometimes happens that the hens will not 
agree at first, for a little jealousy springs up 
between them; but the cock bird will very soon 
settle matters between them, and in a few days 
they will become perfectly friendly to each other, 
and go about building their nests. 
Rearing the Young. 
When the young birds are hatched, you should 
take a look at the nest the first thing every 
morning, to see that the young ones are all 
right and that none have died; a good supply of 
egg-food should always be kept in the cage, and 
should not be allowed to turn sour, as this will be 
certain to produce diarrhoea, which, if not noticed 
in time, will kill off the birds quickly. A little 
green food should always be placed between the 
wires for the hens to feed with, care being taken 
to remove all stale pieces from the cage. When 
fully fledged, the young birds get a bit restless 
and stand on the edge of the nest-pan. A watch¬ 
ful eye should now be kept on the hen, as she 
will be thinking of going to nest again, and some 
hens pluck the feathers from the young birds to 
line their new nest with. This must be avoided 
by giving the hen plenty of nesting material, 
and by placing the young birds in a nursery-cage 
hung on the wires of the breeding-cage; the 
parents will then feed them through the wires, 
and the cock will look after them when the hen 
has gone to nest again. A little egg-food and a 
little crushed seed should be supplied to the 
young birds to peck at and to teach themselves 
to feed with. 
Weaning Fledged Youngsters. 
When they are about six weeks old they can 
generally crack seed themselves, and should be 
gradually weaned off the cracked seed on to the 
ordinary canary and German rape seed and egg- 
food, and placed in a flight-cage or aviary to 
grow as much as possible before the moulting 
season sets in. 
Colour-feeding. 
The best time to begin giving colour-feed to 
either old or young is before they are actually 
in the moult; as, when the feathers begin to drop, 
it is a sign that the roots of the new feathers 
have displaced the old ones, showing that the 
new growth had begun its operations some time 
previously, and that the birds should have been 
colour-fed, so as to get even colour throughout. 
In commencing to colour-feed young birds, it is 
necessary to begin doing so early. The first nest 
should be ten weeks old, the second eight weeks, 
