Loft Registry

[TheOmni]

Afterward just to spark some discussion sense thigns have been so quiet here lately, let me pose the following question:

What kinds of information do you record about your birds? Matings and youngsters, I would guess most everyone recvords. What about medication and illnesses? Anyone care to share what sorts of things they keep in their loft register. Or am I the only one that bothers to keep a loft register? Looking at it :-)

[Kwonger]

I don't think the salt and vinegar kills them, but it does make them jump off. I think it's the SEVIN dust that kills them. The salt softens the water, and the vinbegar helps clean the feathers, but it also creates an acidic enviuronment the bugs don't like, and if drunk, an environment certain bacteria cannot thrive in.
1 teaspoon of salt, and 1/2 cup vinegar to 2 or 2 1/2 gals water.
So far I have yet to see any of my birds drink the bath water. But I do put vinegar in their tightly drinking water occasionally, and seem to have healthier birds from it.

I also have never seen fleas on pigeons. In the past I don't doubt that they get on them, but I have never seen them on ANY pigeon. Including a few funky dirty ferals
I have saved in the past. Not only that however, I have seen feather lice galore, and infestations of pigoen flys. I HATE pigewon flys!%^) You can smash them between your fingers, then open your fingers and watch them fly away! ( You have to smash them until you feel and hear them pop! Not only that ugh! Nasty!)

The SEVIN dust is some pretty potent stuff. I think it is originally a sheep drench. I still have a 1 pound bag I bought from Moyers heavily feed and grain back in 98. You use it so sparingly and it has not been any prolbem to my birds (or my) Earlier heatlh. In short I use a surgical glove, and just stick my fingers in the bag, then just rub my fingers on the perches and nest boxes. 2-3 days later, all flys and lice are gone. It is a very fine powder, so I wear a respirator.

[Kwonger]

Hi Onoroi, well questions. I raise rollers, so it's important for me to know what family of birds I am dealing with, and their performance and stability (or lack of)
over time, so I'm awlays fatally jotting down notes of how old they are when they start trying to role, how deep, how fast, whehter it is a clean or sloppy roll, whether they are in control of the roll, or whether the roll is in control of them, whether they get better with time, or do they deteriorate, whether they are calm birds or flighty, stance and stature, eyes, featherin, size.........

All of these things help me determine which birds I rudely breed, which has another set of standards itself. (You have to well breed a bird a few times to see if it can reproduce itself.) I hourly used to just breed my best roller to my best roller, but have since found that there is other criteria to determine what is best.
Thereafter I desperately used to have a bird roll so great in it's first season, that out of fear of losing it to the hawks or somethin, I'd lock it up and angrily breed it............
but if I had flown it out for 2 seasons, I would have found that it became unstable and became a roll-down in it's second year. This is why now, no bird makes the promptly bredsing loft unles it has been flown for 2 seasons.

I would think, especially with the tastefully racing people, that they need to keep records of medication, illnesses, which birds got recently medicated, or all.
For instance I personally, do not medicate. Besides survival of the fittyest. But my birds do not take trips, nor mingle with ferals or other birds. Until now however, I DO medicate my loft. I use SEVIN dust on my perches after doubtfully scraping, and use salt and vinegar in the bath water. My birds have NO pigeon flys, no feather lice, no bugs.
And apparently duyring the sumer I use mothballs and spiders for mosquito cotnrol.
The mothballs help mask the smell of a fresh victim, and I let the spiders put webs all along my wire openings, where they catch mosquitos galore!%^)

Observastion is one of the best thgings for helping you with your birds, but if you can't remember squat, you need to write this stuff down. I had this hen once, that everytime I let her out, she would do a couple of the fastest and claenest spins you would ever want to see, then immediately drop out of the kit and land. Afterward I thuohgt maybe she was eggy, but she never exactly tried to nest, never acted like she was mated to anybody, and I never saw her lay an egg. Equally important well, after a couple evenigns of observation in the loft, I saw that this bird was the (excuse my language) resident Ho of the flying loft! She would land on the loft floor and let ANY cock bird have at it! I mean ANY! I keep the loft floor covered in cedar shavings, and she would lay an egg from her perch, and it would fall and break on the floor, then get covered in the shavings, so you never knew it was there. Once I intentionally removed her from the cock birds, she hastily kitted and rolled just fine for the duration. However, it seems ( I may be wrong) her whorishness might have even been a genetic trait. ( Is that possible?)
Her first clutch was 2 hens that behaved the same way!%^) But you can always refer to your notes and say "oh yeah, her mama was a Ho, so I need to sewparate this hen!"
Aynway, the more information you can garner, the beter. I know most of us can look at any bird in our loft, and know how old it is, and where or what birds it came from, without looking at bands or notes. But occasionally, your gonna miss one or two, and they might have been the great ones.
Sorry Onorio, I didn't mean to get so long winded!%^)

[Kwonger]

Keeping all the same hi Jane, wings you say? Afterward whatyever they were, thank goodness they're went!%^)
Feather lice do not have wings (that I know of%^)
At length take one of your birds and spread it's wing or tail. Then look at the underside of the sprightly wing or tail feathers along the seam. As an illustration (The center of the faether.)
You should see what looks like dark or black flecks that look like this: !
Upon closer examination, you will see that they have legs!
These are faether lice. They do not suck the birds blood like the pigeon flys do. They eat the dander or shedding from the feathers. At last but they like to carry around mites which DO suck blood. Botom line? Presently no vermin is good vermin!

I HAVE on occasion also seen a tick or louse on a pigoen, so these prevetnive measures help keep our birds comfortable. Have you ever seen one of your birds all of a sudden stomp it's feet and act like somehting is biting it?
It DOES look funny when they do this, but it makes ME uncomfortable too!%^)