Humidity

As you embark on a breeding season, here I give you some tips for preparing your zebra finches for the next few months.
Our birds are certainly easy to breed, but perhaps these are details that will encourage reluctant couples to breed or produce more fertilized eggs. This article does not pretend to give the method to prepare your zebra finches for a breeding season but simply to inform about a possible organization for an optimal breeding season. This is the one I put in place.

The selection of breeders was made at the end of the summer. The choice of couplings is of course essential, and always chosen according to the qualities to be improved and defects to be corrected in relation to the zebra finch sought, while trying to respect as much as possible the "rule" of chimmel couplings on intensive and vice versa. It will take the necessary time to form breeding pairs; many criteria must be taken into account depending on its objectives (show birds, working birds, carrier birds, etc.). It has happened that very good animals have not been mated because they have not found the perfect match. Better to be patient than to mate to “number”. Quality will always take precedence over quantity.


 

The problem of eggs that do not hatch, despite being fertilized, encountered by breeders gave me the idea of this topic.
The importance of the humidity level during egg development and hatching in our rearing rooms pushes us to find solutions to regulate it, especially during dry periods.

I use an ultrasonic humidifier, adjustable and ideal:



I also use, either in parallel with the humidifier or when there is only a need for a small adjustment of the humidity level, a much less expensive solution: Ceramic saturators (around 5 euros per unit in DIY stores) :



I hang them on the oil bath radiator (which dries the air less than electric radiators of the radiant type or commonly called "Toaster").
The principle of evaporation caused by heat from the radiator works well, however it takes about a day to see the effects.