How to Keep a Canary? Detailed Guide to Care Methods and Precautions

The canary is bright yellow all over, dazzling and eye-catching, with a lively temperament and a crisp, pleasant song, and many people like to keep it. So, at home, how do you keep a canary?

How to Keep a Canary

1. Generally keep it in a birdcage; a square or round bamboo cage can be used. Males and females are usually kept in separate cages, with only 1 bird per cage, and from August they begin to be kept together in the same cage to build nests and breed. At this time, you can switch to a breeding cage measuring 46 cm×30 cm×35 cm.

Weave leather or bamboo strips into an artificial nest shaped like a bowl, with a top opening diameter of 12 cm and a depth of 5 cm, and hang it on the upper inside of the breeding cage. The cage must also be equipped with a food dish, a water dish and a perch; the openings of the food dish and water dish should be large, and the perch is best if flat and oval. Spread a layer of fine sand or hard cardboard on the bottom of the cage, which makes it easier to clean up bird droppings.

2. Mainly feed millet, barnyard grass seed, cornmeal, soybean meal, rapeseed, etc., choosing and combining them according to the actual situation. To keep it strong, during molting, before breeding, or when development is poor, feed cooked eggs, millet meal, peanut kernels, etc. at a ratio of 10%-20% of the staple food.

Each day you can feed a small piece of tender cabbage, fresh sow thistle, etc. These vegetable leaves can provide them with vitamins and keep their feathers bright. Canaries like to eat sow thistle.

3. Canaries love cleanliness very much, so food utensils and drinking utensils should be cleaned every day, and perches should be washed once every 3 days. These little birds like to bathe, so change the clean water every day, and after they bathe, promptly replace the water in the water bowl. Just let them bask in soft sunlight for 1 hour each day; too long will cause the feathers to fade.

4. In summer, at night, cover the birdcage with a cage cover to prevent mosquito bites.

5. For birds during estrus, mating, egg incubation and brooding, special attention must be paid to quiet, and they must be strictly protected from being startled. The brooding cage should be placed on a clean wall that can shelter from wind and rain and let light through, so as to help the parent birds incubate and brood.

6. After male and female birds are placed together in the same cage, signs of estrus appear in 20-30 days. At this time, the artificial nest can be hung on the upper inside of the breeding cage. When you see the female bird holding feathers in her beak and pacing on the nest or circling inside the nest, it means nest building has begun. At this point, hang a ball of clean cotton on the cage bar, and the bird will soon carry it off and build the nest well. 3-4 days after the nest is built, the female bird begins to lay eggs, with 2-6 eggs per clutch.

The above are the methods for keeping canaries at home. I hope they are of some reference value to everyone.