Monday, May 26, 2014

Visitors from Indonesia

I had 2 visitors from Indonesia to my home over the weekend. Catur, who is based in Singapore, came with Setiady, who lives in Java.  We spent some time in my home before proceeding to Michael's home.

I can understand and speak a little Indonesian and Setiady can communicate a little in English.  Catur, who is fluent in English and Indonesian, translated where necessary.

Setiady is extremely knowledgeable about shama breeding and he generously shared his breeding methods with Michael and I.  He gave us details of his polygamous method of shama breeding that I found to be informative and interesting.  Michael and I don't practice polygamous shama breeding and we don't intend to do so in the foreseeable future but we tucked the information away in our minds for future reference or use.

Setiady shared that, from his observations, if an egg is destroyed shortly after it is laid, it is the female that has done so.  If the destruction takes place one or two days later, than the culprit is the male.  To give the eggs a better chance of hatching, Setiady removes the male after the pair have mated. He said that in captive breeding where food is plentiful, the female is quite capable of looking after the chicks on her own.

Setiady also saw the chicks in my home and Michael's home that were about 11 to 12 days old.  With the chicks to illustrate his points, Setiady, explained his method of sexing the chicks at this very young age.  Amongst the points he made was that the calls of the chick will likely indicate its sex. Listen to the chick when it calls for food.  If the voice is sharp and rising, the chick is likely to be a female.  If the voice is lower and the call is shorter, it is a male.

Setiady was impressed with the song and character of one of Michael's first molt males from Alpha.  As with other Indonesians I have met, Setiady likes the song that is sharp.  He also liked Flame's son Rave (2nd molt), whose photo is below:


There were other bits of information about shamas that Setiady kindly shared with Michael and I. For instance, he said that when any of his shamas have an attack of fits, he would feed it a cricket laced with vitamin B complex.  If the bird is able to swallow the cricket, it would likely be all right within 1/2 an hour or so.

1 comment:

  1. The breeder uses polygamous to pair and produce off spring with different female one after another. This shorte the time to try out different combination. Maybe good and bad.
    Good:
    greater combination
    Bad: not getting enough off spring from the same combination.

    Just personal thinking.

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