Avian - Breeding Programs

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Breeding Programs

  • What, why and how are you breeding?
  • Identify the end goal of breeding
  • Factor in enclosure design, dietary requirements, bird pairing, breeding habits, incubation and rearing techniques
    • Do they need nest boxes?
    • Natural breeding behaviours, ethograms and courting behaviour, when is courting behaviour first seen?
    • Pairing birds together, monogamy or polygamy?
    • Consult studbook keepers before breeding
    • Does their diet need to be changed?
    • Do we need to incubate by hand or hand rear?
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Why breed?

  • Conservation: reintroduction and research
  • Commercial: hobbies, collectors, working animals, consumption (food), farming, egg production
  • Sport and competitions: racing, sky trials, hunting
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What are we breeding?

  • size
  • colour/pattern
    • for intense morphs and colourations
  • diverse gene pool
  • taste/quantity
  • cross breeding
  • speed of flight
    • for falconers or racing pigeons
  • personal traits
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Ways to Breed

  • Natural: allowing the animals to naturally pair, copulate and rear young
  • Artificial insemination: voluntary or forced semen donation and insemination, natural rearing or human rear (imprinting/puppet)
  • Partial human involvement: can be voluntary or forced semen donation and insemination, initial incubation and rearing before letting animals take over, natural copulation and human rearing or AI and natural rearing
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Natural Breeding

  • The ideal method, as requires less work on the breeder's part and allows the birds to show natural behaviour
  • Strong maternal instinct is more valuable and often accurate than humans hand rearing
  • Allows birds to pass on social behaviours and interactions with young that allow birds to join flocks later on
  • You cannot guarantee a pair bond, copulate successfully and have a strong maternal instinct, and there is a risk that adults will reject young
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Artificial Insemination

  • Either voluntary or forced
    • Voluntary is more desired as it is stress free, however this is not always achievable
    • Forced can cause capture myopathy and other stress related issues
  • Higher chance of fertilisation as we can control how often insemination is carried out as well as ensuring it is performed correctly
  • Semen collection can be extended and used to serve multiple females, space requirement and cost is reduced
  • More choice and flexibility regarding incubation and clutching
  • For imprinted chicks it is common to remove eggs
    • Increased number of eggs
    • Controlled incubation
  • Rearing can be split within birds and handler
  • Birds with a strong maternal instinct can be given valuable birds to rear
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Partial Human Involvement

  • Allows birds to perform one or more aspects of the breeding process themselves
  • Human involvement in insemination, incubation or rearing
  • Born again eggs often used to introduce human incubated chicks back into the nest for parents to continue to rear
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Clutching

  • ‘clutching’ or ‘clutching out’ is a term used when birds are allowed to produce a full clutch before incubating
  • Increase the number of eggs produced and the number of young
    • Important to remember supplements and increased calcium in the diet
    • Calcivet is a particularly good supplement for calcium
  • When pulling eggs remember they will need separate incubation, from either an incubator or surrogate brood hen
  • Pulling can be done as each egg is laid or once a full clutch is laid
    • Encourage the bird to cycle through and produce a second clutch
  • Some birds don’t cope with nest disruption well and will not double clutch well, which can cause the breeding year to fail
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Pairing

  • The handler can select individuals they wish to pair, though successful pairing is not guaranteed
  • Best pairings dictated by the birds themselves
    • Allowing birds to select their own breeding partner is preferred
  • In some cases, allowing birds to select their mates is not feasible and dangerous to individuals
  • As well as compatibility, the fundamentals of pairing are dictated by the end goal such as size, colour, traits and personality
  • Once the species is identified, socialisation and courtship should be considered
    • What space do they need to be introduced?
    • Do they need additional food/enrichment?
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Enclosure

  • A purpose-built breeding enclosure is likely to get the best results
    • Breeding can still be successful in a regular enclosure
  • Noise and disruption should be minimised
    • May make observations harder to achieve
    • Can use CCTV to minimise disruption but still be able to observe the birds
  • Location and number of breeding boxes considered
    • If attempting to double clutch birds, they tend to use a second nest box for the second clutch
  • Access to nest box/nest site is high priority
    • Even if there is no intention to have human involvement
    • Important to candle eggs to check fertility
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Rearing

  • Parent reared is the best method for rearing birds especially when they are destined to be released back into the wild
    • Runs the risk of parents being less attentive or potentially aggressive towards young
  • Imprint reared allows for more human contact, and control over observations when the chicks are young
  • Human rearing (imprint)
    • Hard to do correctly to a high standard
    • Easy to imprint poorly
    • The process of imprinting is lengthy and very involved for the handler
    • Normally only one individual is imprinted
    • Is possible to creche rear
  • Partial rearing is when the handler incubates and rears the eggs or takes the eggs prior to the last days of incubation
    • Rearing young for a number of days before replacing to parent birds or foster birds
    • Done to ensure hatching success and the initial few days of life
    • Normally done with birds that open their eyes after a few days so they are not able to imprint onto humans
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Breeding Plan

  • Might be a fully prepared document and/or a step-by-step plan of the breeding process
    • Especially when working with endangered species
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