By John C McMichael

I was a hobby Caique breeder for nearly 30 years, now I am retired.  When I first started breeding Caiques, I read nearly everything I could find and tried to apply it, but I was still unhappy with the results of my breeding programme.  Except for difficulties setting up opposite sex pairs before the advent of DNA sexing, I had no problem getting them to breed.  The problems I faced were the loss of eggs and chicks once they did go to nest.  Sure, I produced plenty of wonderful pet chicks, but many died or turned out less than pet friendly, and it was only in the last few years before I retired that I achieved some satisfaction.  I finally realised how to produce tame chicks by co-parenting while, at the same time, drastically reducing parental egg breakage and the loss of chicks.  As a by product, I no longer had to face the stress of feeding day-one chicks as often, especially their dying when I fed them too clumsily and they aspirated the hand-feeding formula.  The methods I developed are still not perfect, but they are far better than those I used at the beginning of my breeding effort.

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