Hormones - Advanced Planning

[Inger]

Bumble isn't even 3 months old so hopefully this is several months in our future, but I figure if I can be doing the right things before it happens, it might be a little easier. So far I only have two questions.

1) Solar schedule - my understanding is that basically you allow the bird to sleep and wake based on sunrise/sunset. I am near Seattle, WA, USA and we get 16ish hours of sunlight in he summer and only 8 in the winter. So how does hat work? It seems that the idea is that the bird is getting 12ish hours of sleep, but that wouldn't happen up here.

2) No touch zones - I know that everywhere but head/neck is off limits for petting. Currently she likes to have her nightly skritches while I hold her in my hand; last night she actually presented her head to me and then skooched her little body back so she was "in" my hand. Is being held going to affect her the same was as being petted? If so, we'll start working on a new skritch routine right away.

Thanks!


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[SilverSage]

I actually have an article on hormone control that I'll share rather than typing everything out

http://www.silversageaviaries.com/handlinghormones/


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[Inger]

You are fantastic! By the way, I read your article on sprouting which made it sooo simple (there's a lot out there that makes it easy to overthink) and I've been sprouting some bird seed and Bumble LOVES IT.


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[Teddscau]

Well, my best advice is 14 hours of darkness. It tends to work with my little dorks. Although it worked better before they went to live in the aviary, because before I could cover their huge double-flight cage and close the blinds...

Anyways, 14 hours of darkness. Now that spring's here, they're becoming a pain in the butt! Everyone's trying to hump each other, and they're getting into little fights -_-. I had Dad set the lights to turn off earlier a couple of weeks ago (that's when Rumi, Pollo, and Ziggy were making some sort of Leaning Tower of Sex, and Noah was about to join in to make the tower even higher :x), and soon I'll be setting the timer to turn off the lights even earlier.

The number of hours of light they get makes a huge difference with hormones. There's these awesome UVA/UVB bulbs for parrots made by Arcadia, but it's a UK company, so nobody sells the light fixtures for their bulbs' weird wattage. I wanted to get those awesome lights for my aviary, but after 6+ hours of looking for light fixtures online that WON'T cause the light bulbs to explode, I gave up.