Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1884 — OUR FEATHERED SINGERS. [ARTICLE]

OUR FEATHERED SINGERS.

How They Should be Cared for), and Why They l>on’t Sing. “Why, you have no ideal,” said an old and well-known bird-fancier to a reporter the other day, “how little care a song bird requires. It has been my experience—and a good, long experience—that the most of the deaths among canaries are caused by overcare and overfeeding. How often you will hear people—and especially ladies—say, T don’t have any luck with birds at all. I have had two or three, and they all grew sick and died, and now I have one that won’t sing at all.’ And if somebody should inform them that they had killed their own birds, they would call you crazy, or think you were joking.them.” “What do you mean by overcare and overfeeding?” queried the reporter. “I mean just what I say. Let a lady get a new bird. The chances are it is the first she has ever had the care of. It is a novelty and a curiosity in the house, and she feels as if she must be attending to it all the time, and if she does not it will die, or stop singing, or j something. The result is she will give the bird everything she can think of, or everything she has - ever heard of a bird eating. You will find crackers, and cake, and bread, and candy, and sugar, and apple, and heaven only knows what, stuck through the bars of the cages for the birds to eat. In the seed boxes you will find all kinds of seed, mixed, etc. Now, it does not seem to me that it requires an extraordinary intelligence to grasp the idea that this is all wrong. I can hush the notes of the hardiest German canary ever imported to this country by such food in a lew weeks. Such sweet dainties fatten tho feathered musicians. They lose their voice, they become subject to rheumatism, they get the gout in their feet. They become invested with lice, and they lose any desire for their bath. You can hear an unusually brilliant songster, one who is singing loudly;sweetly and almost-incessantly, and go and look at the cage he is in. You won't find any sweetbreads or sweetmeats there.” “What is the best bird food?” “The best bird food is plain, ordinary, common bird seed —only this and nothing more. It is all I give my birds, and you have heard how they sing. Two or three times a year, I have cut-tle-fi sh bone for them, and I keep some fine gravel or sand in the bottom of the cage lor them to. pick at. I put a bath dish of water, with the chill reduced, into the cage every morning. Once a week, I clean the cage thoroughly, scrubbing the perches, the bottom and the bars. I give them fresh water to drink and restock the seed jar once a day. This is all the care I give my birds. I keep them where it is light, where the sun shines occasionally and where there is fresh air. Birds should not be hung too high in the room either, for there they get the heated air, which is not good for them. Give a bird such .treatment as this —plain, clean bird seed, fresh water and fresh air, and if he dies, or loses his song; it will be from natural causes.”—Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.