Settling Young Birds

Date Written / Published:  NTU Newsletter

A lot of information is available to novices advising them how best to settle youngsters. Generally, the advise given includes a three day period without food for the youngsters prior to release or waiting until the eye color changes then starving the birds before letting them out. I followed these methods exactly for the past few years and I have to say the results were hopeless. Each year, I lost approximately half of the birds I tried to settle and last year alone, I only managed to hold 12 out of 30. This year, I decided to try a different approach and I am pleased to report that out of a total of 22 youngsters, I settled 18. I am certain that the method I used to prepare the youngsters before release is the main contributory factor to this year's sizeable reduction in losses. Obviously, there will be those who will say that luck comes into it as well and I have to agree that this is probably a factor too.

Anyway, what I did is I separated the youngsters from their parents at 28 days old and placed them in a pen with an old fantail hen. They were fed daily on good mixture and as much water as they wanted for 7 days -- each day I put them in the flight cage for a few hours before feeding with a number of droppers outside chasing around. On the second week, I changed their diet to 2/3 barley and 1/3 wheat mixture which I fed them in the evening and which was removed after they had taken a drink. By this time, they had learned to enter the loft through a trap which on my loft is an integral part of the flight cage. After 4 days on this regime, I cut their rations by half for 2 days and on the seventh day, I decided to let them out. First, I allowed one youngster to follow the droppers onto the loft top to join the rest of the droppers and often it had struck up and landed a number of times. I allowed another to join it. eventually, I had 3 youngsters chasing around on the loft top after seeds with the droppers and occasionally striking up together and landing. I carried on with this procedure until I had settled 6 youngsters and these I flew as a kit. Out of a total of 22 youngsters, I settled 18 and of the remaining 4 - I lost 2 when they had reached the 2-3 hours flying stage and the other 2 were lost directly off the loft top. Obviously, when you are dealing with young tipplers (unpredictable at the best of times) no system can be deemed foolproof, but I feel nonetheless, that starving the youngsters as in the 'breaking down' method is unnecessary as everyone knows, despite their hunger they are still very much liable to strike up and disappear. 

N.Lavery / UK (Old NTU Newsletter)