J. Appleby—Notes from a Lancashire Aviary



209



and another with water ; these left in for, say, half an hour, and

removed. The result was, birds fed in a mass as soon as seed put in,

no fighting, and they all got a fill; the same applies to grit and water,

it was simply amazing, and I told the owner he was the finest sergeant-

major I’d ever met.


Now what stuck at the back of my mind was sea-shell and charcoal,

and about that time Mr. Teague wrote about poultry salts, made by

British Glue and Chemicals Co., Newark, and things seemed to click,

so I got some—Churn Brand No. 3 Iodized Minerals for Cage Birds,

and I also baked or burnt some oyster shells and ground them up in a

coffee-mill along with some charcoal. With this I mixed about one-

third No. 3 salts and fed to all birds in a separate container, and to

all soft food I add a trace of No. 3, as you would salt your own food.


Now for results. Nothing to brag about, but definitely better than

before treatment. Budgerigars breed like rabbits, a nuisance to dispose

of them. Canaries nearly as bad, forty-seven and twenty-three young

respectively last season ; odds and ends of others : Zebras six, Silver-

bills five, Grassfinch, Longtailed, four, Olive Finch two, other

expectations.


Now is this due to Mr. Teague’s salts or to the fact that the birds

have been left very much to themselves, owing to my being on my back

for six weeks and they only being fed and cleaned by a kind lady friend

and my gardener ? It hurts one’s pride to think so, and so I come down

on the side of charcoal and salts and I thank Mr. Teague for bringing

Iodized Mineral Salts to the front. I even passed it on to my son, a

sheep farmer in New Zealand, and he was much interested in the

subject, as he uses a similar preparation called Lixit in block form for

his ewe lambs. I’m only sorry I did not know of Iodized Salts soon

enough to save the loss of four Gouldian hens last summer being egg-

bound ; all the usual methods failed.


Slogan : Use Iodized Mineral Salts and Charcoal and rear more

birds.



