American serama thread!

[yellowherb]

My sons pet roo Frisco enjoying the sun

Stunning photograph!

 

[formerchickenlass]

Woo, good luck!

It sounds like you have everything dialed in nicely. And you'll know exactly what (if any) tweaks you want to make for later hatches.

I haven't found any feed that contains vitamins besides A and E.

Here's our lot out now:

Wow, that's a gorgeous pic. I love the rich tones! Good looking bunch of birds too!

 

[formerchickenlass]

I was reading some last night which speculated that Vit D could play a very large role in late DIS or fails around day 18. This was due to commercial feeds having less Vit D than a indoor Serama should have since most poultry are outdoors.

As for Vit E, in caged birds it can play a big role in fertility but I have never looked into the whys of that since my aviaries do not have a fertility problem.

And of course I think most Serama people are aware of the stumpy leg lethal gene.

I know there are some diseases that chickens can carry or have had in the past which now makes them carriers, which can cause late DIS or failures right away. E. coli comes to mind. I had issues with sultan eggs dying all throughout the hatch, I medicated for E. coli (mainly because I came down with it and thought I was doing to die for a week) and after medicating for e. coli I no longer had all the early deaths and am approaching 100% on fertility thru hatch now. Out of my current 40 eggs set for sultans, I pulled one early quitter. I also now use hand sanitizer after holding or touching the chickens... lesson learned! I do not know definitely that my chickens had E. coli but it's suspicious that after medicating I no longer had a egg issue.

I did learn that hatchability often can be traced back to the parent birds having unknown issues, disease or deficiency of nutrients.

Parent health has a lot to do with it IMO, once incubator parameters have been worked out. I've looked at a couple breeding texts (breeding for business) and they advise starting breeder birds on vitamin supplements a month prior to pulling any eggs for hatch.

Does anyone here worm their seramas on a regular schedule, like spring and fall, quarterly, etc? I tried worming the lot of mine once in drinking water with albendazole (and later learned it probably wasn't effective as the wormer wouldn't stay in solution with water and would need to be shaken regularly). I'm thinking of worming all mine pretty soon. Does anyone have experience with wormers? I've got fenbendazole, albendazole, and wazine on hand. Not sure which one would be best for general preventative sort of worming. Maybe Wazine on the seramas (since it's easy, can go in the water) and one of the benzimidazoles for my mixed free range flock? What do you guys/gals do?

 

[yellowherb]

I totally agree that parent health has everything to do with getting good healthy chicks. I breed caged pet birds and if the parents are not healthy you can bet the chicks will either not make it, be sickly, or the parents just wont lay. Vit E is recommended for cage bird fertility, but plucking the behind is too..so..

While I'm new to seramas, I did use horse wormer paste, ivermectin, to worm my sultan flock. I gave each a pea sized amount and also gave to Mille Fleurs. I did that while fighting mites, didn't even realize I had worms until they expelled them after the ivermectin paste dose. Sadly it did not kill the mites but the sultans were round worm free.

After that any time I noticed a drop in egg laying or the birds looking a bit "dull" to me I would make them some scrambled eggs and put some goat wormer pellets in it. At the time I bought the pellets TSC was out of liquid wormers that were recommended. It works and no ill effects on the sultans. My dosage was not precise, I'd just chuck a handful in warm water and then mix into the cooked scrambled eggs.

 

[nchls school]

Quote:

 

[meltel]

Parent health has a lot to do with it IMO, once incubator parameters have been worked out. I've looked at a couple breeding texts (breeding for business) and they advise starting breeder birds on vitamin supplements a month prior to pulling any eggs for hatch.

Does anyone here worm their seramas on a regular schedule, like spring and fall, quarterly, etc? I tried worming the lot of mine once in drinking water with albendazole (and later learned it probably wasn't effective as the wormer wouldn't stay in solution with water and would need to be shaken regularly). I'm thinking of worming all mine pretty soon. Does anyone have experience with wormers? I've got fenbendazole, albendazole, and wazine on hand. Not sure which one would be best for general preventative sort of worming. Maybe Wazine on the seramas (since it's easy, can go in the water) and one of the benzimidazoles for my mixed free range flock? What do you guys/gals do?

I do. I use Valbazen spring and fall. 0.3 ml or most standard size seramas and repeat in a week to 10 days.

 

[yellowherb]

Question, how likely would Seramas be to kill tiny birds on the floor of their enclosure?

My husband is building me a finch aviary and I'll house Zebras in there. We generally use button quail as bottom cleaners but my zebra chicks go to the ground when they fledge. Button quail have previously killed them, or it could have been the budgies who did it.. but because of past experience I do not want buttons in the zebras and wondered if I could use seramas in there instead? It's 7ft x 12ft roughly and 8ft to 5.5ft tall since it slopes for roof drainage. The ground will be mulched and the leftover zebra seed will be thrown down for chicken treats if this works. We also tend to develop a lot of mealworms and beetles in the mulch witch I think the serama might enjoy.

Bonus is this would keep them safe from day time predators like hawks and my neighbors cats.

 

[nchls school]

Question, how likely would Seramas be to kill tiny birds on the floor of their enclosure?

My husband is building me a finch aviary and I'll house Zebras in there. We generally use button quail as bottom cleaners but my zebra chicks go to the ground when they fledge. Button quail have previously killed them, or it could have been the budgies who did it.. but because of past experience I do not want buttons in the zebras and wondered if I could use seramas in there instead? It's 7ft x 12ft roughly and 8ft to 5.5ft tall since it slopes for roof drainage. The ground will be mulched and the leftover zebra seed will be thrown down for chicken treats if this works. We also tend to develop a lot of mealworms and beetles in the mulch witch I think the serama might enjoy.

Bonus is this would keep them safe from day time predators like hawks and my neighbors cats.

I have housed serama with zebra finches. If you do this expect to lose fledgling zebras and possibly adult zebras too. You can minimize losses by having the finches feeding/watering station situated high up; also provide hiding places for fledglings. Serama hens with chicks are the worst as they will attack anything that gets near their chicks. It is way more likely that the budgies killed your finches. I found the buttons to be safe with finches; much safer than serama.

I housed zebras with serama several years and in time the finches learned to stay clear of the serama, but constant vigilance was necessary-especially when there were fledgling finches just out of the nest.

My advice is to house the budgies separately (I've seen them attack and attempt to kill much larger birds-and would have done so if not for my intervention) and keep the button quail with the zebra finches.

 

[yellowherb]

I've had parakeets kill cockatiel chicks and I see the English budgies harass the button quail, so they have a aviary to themselves with only buttons to clean up and get bugs.

I think I'm going to find another solution for both the seramas and the zebras Thank you for the input! I don't want to loose my zebra chicks.

 

[nchls school]

I've had parakeets kill cockatiel chicks and I see the English budgies harass the button quail, so they have a aviary to themselves with only buttons to clean up and get bugs.

I think I'm going to find another solution for both the seramas and the zebras Thank you for the input! I don't want to loose my zebra chicks.

Another solution is your best option. Housing many species together involves risks of one kind or another. While I'm nuts about my serama, I know they are best housed separately. Or with birds of similar size and temperament (other small breed bantams).