When breeding birds, it is as well to have a small nursery cage to put the fledgelings into. The parent birds then feed them through the bars. Also a bath-cage. Both these are attached when wanted to the main cage. They are very simple in construction, and you can easily make them yourself. Any ordinary small cage will do for the bath, one side being taken out and hooks put on wherewith to fit it to the side of the cage opposite the doorway. The bath is a tin or zinc dish inside the cage, but a large saucer or a soup plate will do very well. Remember, I am not talking now about breeding, but ordinary living cages.
Mr. Abrahams, the well-known naturalist, of 191, George Street East, London, a visit to whose menagerie would well repay any one fond of birds and beasts, writes to me in the following strain about canary breeding. I need hardly tell you that I value his opinions, as they are the result of long experience. He says: ‘I do not hold with the English way of breeding canaries; they will stick to their old style of a hundred years back. They use cages which may be divided, by means of a partition, into two compartments. In one of these compartments there are two small boxes, in which the birds are to build their nests. Outside the cage a bag is fastened containing hair and other building material, which not seldom are far from cleanly, and often already provided with the eggs and germs of insects (vermin).
‘It is rarely that the male and female are of the same opinion in which box the nest should be built. If the hen has begun to build in one box the cock will pull the nest to pieces, and begin to work in the other box, and vice versâ. Thus not only is time lost, but the birds are excited and become weak. When at last they have young ones they are often wretched, timid little things, and often both young and parents die from being continually worried by insects.
‘Many tens of thousands of canaries are imported annually into England from the Continent, and of these the Belgian, Dutch, and French canaries especially are strong, bold-looking fellows, and nothing like our timid little creatures that flutter about or creep into a corner if anybody comes near the cage. How can this difference be accounted for? On my many travels in the countries of the Continent I have watched how canaries are bred there. Almost every working man breeds canaries in his workshop. On one side of the room he has his bench or worktable, and round the walls there are cages, parted off by partitions into smaller compartments of about three feet square. Each of these compartments can again be divided into two by a movable partition, which consists simply of a wooden frame covered over with wire. In one compartment the cock is put; in the other one or more hens; also a tin with seed and another with water. Now the moment is watched when the cock and hen become friendly, then the partition is withdrawn, so that both compartments become one. Then a nest—or more, if there are several hens—is hung up in position by hooks to the wire. For small birds, a small one; for longer birds, such as the Belgians, etc., a larger one. They are made of leather, lined with lambskin with wool on it, and ready for use, so that the birds do not receive or want any building material. It cannot be pulled to pieces. When once used it can be washed and be nice and clean for a second nesting, so that there is no fear of insects troubling the birds. Feeding and cleaning of cages takes only a few minutes daily. The eggs and the young ones can be looked at at any time without frightening the birds; they get used to their keeper and lose all fear. Is it to be wondered at, then, that the young also are strong, bold-looking birds?’
Referring to the [German cage] figured on [page 405], he adds: ‘I forgot to mention that the cage is divided into two compartments by a wire partition. When the old birds go to nest a second time the young ones are shut up into the smaller compartment; the old ones will continue to feed them through the wire as long as it is necessary.’
Well now, if you have done all I told you, if you are the proud owner of a good box of tools, many, if not all of which, mind, you can buy for very little, second-hand, at any dealer’s or broker’s, and if you have managed to make a breeding cage, you are capable of making any other kind of cage or hutch either. I do not refer to those dandy all-wire and painted-tin businesses. You can try your hand at these if you like, but as I do not approve of them, on the principle that all birds should have a partially shut-in cage, as they dearly love a little privacy, I shall not describe the process of manufacture. You will, however, naturally wish your cages to look nice. Well, varnish the front with the ordinary mahogany varnish of the shops, having first rubbed the woodwork very smooth.
I have spent so much time over directions for cage-making that my space is small in which to deal with hutches. I do not regret it, however, for the boy that can make a cage can make a hutch. He has only to see one and carefully examine it.
The same kind of hutch that is used for rabbits does excellently well for guinea-pigs.
Now you can make a very serviceable hutch out of that useful article a bacon box.
First it must be thoroughly washed and cleaned and exposed for a day or two to the weather. Then if meant to stand under cover, in, say, an outhouse, you simply make a doorway and cover it with galvanized iron network, price about twopence a yard, and cover all the front, with the exception of about a foot (this to be covered with wood), with the same kind of network. The bottom of the box should be covered with zinc for cleanliness’ sake. This is an ordinary hutch. The breeding hutch is different, as there must be a dark retiring room for the mother and young. The floors of hutches ought to slant a little forwards, and they ought to be always well raised off the ground.