WHEN you first start in any new endeavour – whether it's birdkeeping, sport, classic car restoration, gardening, etc – that you don't have any experience in, the most obvious starting point is to understand what other folk in your chosen specialist area are doing. You ask as many questions as you can think of, and build a picture in your own mind as to what you want to do. And breeding canaries is no different. There are as many different ways of breeding canaries as you can think of – literally dozens of differing routes – and there are as many breeders out there following their own tried-andtested programmes.
When I first started with Borders, Icondition seed and eggfood. When I was a boy, my dad kept a multitude of different birds: foreign finches, budgies, pigeons, doves, cockatiels and Gloster canaries. And it was the Glosters that I can remember helping him feed during my boyhood. Back then, we fed condition seed that Dad added some sort of oil to. There was always spinach sticking through the bars and boiled egg seemed to be fed every day!
