Breeding Canaries
An Introduction To Breeding Canaries
There's much more to breeding canaries than simply putting a male and a female in the same cage. Before you first get started, you'll want to gather all the details you can, either through research on the Internet, or by finding a comprehensive book on the subject. The purpose of this article is to provide an outline of what all is involved.
You'll typically start breeding canaries by purchasing a breeding pair, and go on from there. Make certain you get a male and female, or you won't have much luck. It's nearly impossible to tell the sex of a canary by looking at it, so when you buy a bird you'll want to have the sex guaranteed. Wrong sex - you get a refund. As long as you have only the two birds, there won't be a problem. Once you've started your breeding operation, and you're finding yourself caring for a number of canaries, you'll have to start keeping track of the sexes. The best way to do this is in knowing that males sing, females normally do not. Males really sing most in the spring, at mating time, to attract females. Females do one thing that males do not do, that is nest building, and one thing males cannot do, which is lay eggs.
Canaries normally breed in the springtime. Their breeding cycle is determined by the amount of daylight. Commercial breeders often use artificial lighting of controlled and changing duration, to get canaries to breed earlier, so they'll have chicks to sell in the early spring, instead of having to wait until later in the year. You might just go with what is natural for the birds on the first go round. A month or so before breeding season, around March, make sure you are giving your mating pair a rich diet. This will be beneficial to both the parents and the chicks later on.
When not breeding, the male and female are normally kept apart. Breeders often use cages especially designed for breeding. These cages feature a divider, so that the canaries can be kept apart and then placed together at the proper time. The female will signal the proper time by furious nest building. You'll want to have a plastic breeding nest in her cage, and material she can use to build the nest with. Shredded paper and burlap both are good. One source cites dryer lint as being excellent nest building material. Avoid thread, as your canary could get tangled up in it, and be injured. If the timing has been good, about the time the female starts nest building the male starts singing.
When both birds appear to be ready, they should be in cages placed side by side or in the breeding cage separated by a solid partition. The solid partition is moved away. If the birds seem interested in one another, the remaining wire partition is moved away, and the birds are now in the same cage. If they start to fight they'll have to be separated, and you'll need to try later. If the male starts beating up on the female, they'll have to be separated permanently. That is a situation that will only get worse, and the female could be killed.
Assuming all goes well, the female will lay eggs, one a day, until there are about a half dozen in the nest, at which point she'll start incubating them. Fourteen days later they should be hatching. The parents will care for the young, usually for a few weeks. You might check to find out what special kinds of feed would be best for the parents and chicks, but both will need a rich diet. At some point in time the female will start ignoring the chicks, or perhaps even start pecking at them, and it's time to put them in their own cage. If you want to continue the breeding process, the female will be ready to breed again in about two weeks. Two, and at most three breeding sessions, will be plenty for the year, after which time you'll want to separate the male and female again – and, as the next step in breeding canaries, start advertising your new batch of little canaries for sale!