Rave at 9 months of age - starting to come into form

Will - Breeding Will

I line-breed my shamas and every single one of them can trace their lineage back to Godfather and his offspring and their offspring since 2001.

The best of my shamas have inherited the ability from Godfather to produce offspring that are as good or better then themselves. Many are prepotent and these birds are much sought after by other breeders.

However, line-breeding requires that the line-bred birds be out-crossed from time to time to avoid the inherent defects that can show up with too much line-breeding.  The great difficulty is to find and obtain a shama (male or female) that can be used as an out-cross and which is prepotent i.e able to pass on the desired genes to their offspring and their subsequent progeny. Such birds are really rare.  Over the years, while the out-crossing have resulted in young, they have not met the standards that I have in mind for my stud birds and I have not bred from them.

Through the kindness of my friend, William Kwa, I obtained a Malaysian wild-caught shama with primary tails of 10.5" which had the characteristics that I was looking for.  I wished to breed from him as he has a trait that I like.  During display in the presence of other male shamas, he has a tendency to jump to the bars of the cage and cling to them while he sang aggressively and slowly waved his tails slowly up and down, as though he is waving a fan. This is not only beautiful and unusual but it will also be less tiring in a competition than a bird that flicks its tails rapidly.

Last year and early this year, I matched Will on separate occasions with 3 of my females.  In the first match, all seemed OK when the birds were introduced.  After the apparent successful introduction, I went to the office.  While I was at work, he killed the female.

In the 2nd and 3rd pairing, I kept a close eye on the birds.  On each occasion, he harassed the females and I had to remove them before he could do damage.

Last month, I introduced another female to him on a Saturday morning so that I could keep an eye on them over the weekend. There were no problems.  The female built a nest and laid eggs.  I did not how many as I did not want to disturb the pair.

She brooded the eggs.  Two of the eggs hatched last Sunday (4 days ago) and another hatched in the late morning on Monday. Later, in the early afternoon on Monday I received a phone call that a chick was on the floor of the aviary but it was still alive.  It was the youngest chick and the parents must have removed it from the nest.

I immediately gave instructions to remove all the chicks.  This is necessary as once the parents throw a chick out of the nest, the tendency is that all the chicks will eventually suffer the same fate. There were a total of 3 chicks and there were no eggs left in the nest so all the 3 eggs had been fertile and had hatched.

The youngest chick was unresponsive and seemed in bad shape. The other 2 were a bit weak. All the chicks were placed in the brooder to warm them for a while before trying to feed them.  After about 20 minutes in the brooder, the chicks were fed but only the 2 eldest opened their beaks for food.  The youngest was unresponsive.

The first photo below shows what the chicks looked like.  The eldest chicks are a day old. There is only a day's difference between them and the newly hatched 3rd chick but the difference in size is substantial.

The 3rd chick died within an hour and I was sorry that I could not save it.  The other two are doing well as can be seen from the photo below that I took this morning.  With a bit of luck, they will continue to do well and I will have Will's progeny so that I can assess Will's potential as a stud.

DDS344

The video below was recorded late yesterday evening.  It is of Flame's son, DDS344.  He hatched on 14 May 2013 so he is now slightly more than 6 months of age.  I estimate his primary tails to be10.5" to 11".  After another 2 moults, the tails should well exceed 12".

DDS344's elder brother is Rave.  I have transferred Rave to an outdoors aviary to make way for other young shamas (DDS344, DDS347 and Pretty Good) to be in cages.  I need to have the young shamas in cages after the moult to get them used to the cage and to people.

DDS344 completed his moult early but it was a good moult.  Most shamas his age will still be in their juvenile feathers.  However, notwithstanding his adult plumage, he is still quite immature as can be seen from the broad base of his beak.

At this stage, he is still to young to have an interest in females or to react to other males or to contest territory.  Apart from his "baby" beak", the pale colour of the inside of his beak shows his immaturity and tells us that he is likely to have little form. At this age, if he was free in the forest, he would probably be hanging out at the outskirts of a territory held by a dominant male while he matures and learns and and improves on his songs.

DDS344 has the structure and posture that I try to breed into my line of shamas. As regards character and willingness to contest,  I need to test him with other shamas but this should only take place after he has matured some more.  Nevertheless, his video suggests that even at this very young age he has the potential to be a most desirable shama when he develops and matures. Some shamas tend to display and to sing very little.  Others may sing and not display. DDS344 does both.

Pretty Good

This is Pretty Boy's son, Pretty Good.  He is 7 months old and has just completed his first moult.

Boy Wonder - chick feeding chick

Even when Boy Wonder was in the nest, I could see that he would likely be male as he had extraordinarily dark feathers.  Sometimes these dark feathers start to lighten as the chick develops and the earlier promise is false and it turns out to be female.

I can only be sure that a chick is male when one or more blue feathers start to show on the head or neck region. The blue feathers usually start to emerge only when the chick is about 30 days old.

In BW's case at the age of 22 days, the blue feathers are already prominent.  They can be seen in the area around his collar and upper back in the first photo below.

BW may eventually grow very long taimong tails.  In my line of shamas, very long taimong tails indicate that the adult tails will also be very long. For the taimong tails to be considered very long they will need to exceed 6.25" and preferably be close to 7" when fully grown at the age of about 65 days. With taimong tails of almost 7", it is likely that the primary tails after the first moult will exceed 13".

Its a long time to wait for the end of 65 days and I always would like some early indication if the chick is likely to have long tails. From experience with my line of birds such as Firefly and Pretty Good, I know that if a chick has tails exceeding 3.25" at the age of 32 days, its taimong tails will likely substantially exceed 6" when fully grown.

I think there is a good chance that BW will have long taimong tails. Last Sunday, I measured his tails at 1.25".  He was then 20 days old.  Yesterday evening I measured his tails at 1.75" i.e a growth of 0.5" in 2 days. The rapid growth may stop and the tails may eventually be short.  I will measure his tails again when he is 32 days old to get a better indication of his eventual tail length.

I mentioned in an earlier post that BW gets hungry within half the time of other chicks and he eats twice as much.  He must have a very high metabolic rate. This by itself is noteworthy but he is proving to be very interesting in another way.  At the very young age of 22 days, he is already showing some extraordinary parental behaviour.  In the past I have seen on occasion, a chick feeding another chick.  This is usually a one off happening for the chick.  In the case of BW, he seems to regard it as his duty to feed the 2 chicks with him.

On Sunday evening, I had transferred Spark's 2 twelve days old chicks to the same cage as BW who was then 21 days old.  BW could already feed on his own and he had done so for the past few days.

Yesterday (Monday) BW fed the 2 chicks off and on throughout the day.  The 2 young chicks still need to be hand-fed, but not as often. [Update: By noon today, BW had been feeding the 2 chicks so diligently throughout the morning that there was little need for my helper to also feed them. I expect that BW will continue to feed the chicks and he will teach them how to feed themselves in due course.]

Below, are 3 photographs that I took of BW feeding the chicks yesterday evening.

The first photo shows him stretching out to offer a cricket to a chick.  It did not open its beak so he hopped to the other chick and fed it as shown in the 2nd photo.  The 3rd photo shows him really making sure that the cricket is deep in the beak of the chick.  It is necessary to do this as a 13 days old chick still needs to have the food placed deep inside its beak.

This morning before I left for work, I took the video below of BW feeding one of the chicks.  It is interesting to observe that when he himself intends to eat an insect, he quickly kills it and swallows it. However, when he is feeding it to a chick, he first softens the insect in his beak before feeding it to the chick.  This can be seen in the video below.  This is exactly what a parent would do when feeding a chick of this age.

Some young male shamas bred this year

Pretty Boy's son, DDS247, after the first molt.
He is slightly less than 6 months of age

Pretty Boy's son, Boy Wonder, at 22 days of
age.  The amount that he eats is a wonder. He
has a higher metabolism rate than any other chick
that I have ever come across. He gets very hungry in
half the usual time and eats a great deal each time.
My helper says he must have a crocodile in his stomach.

Rave - Photo taken this morning as he
was practicing his songs.

Latest shama chick

Spark's chick at 21 days.

Spark's chick at the age of 19 days

Photos of young shama males

The first 2 photos below are of Flame's son, Rave.  He is 7 months of age and he has just completed his molt.  One feature that I try to breed true in my line of shamas is the ability to readily raise their long tails over their heads.  Rave, Chilli and several others have inherited this ability, but I was not able to capture the complete action with these shots.

This is Alpha's son from his third nest at 42 days of age. The early indications are that he will have long tails and exceptional character and display. He was bred by Michael.

This is Alpha's chick from his 4th nest.  The photo was taken yesterday evening by Michael.  It shows the chick just out of the nest-box and bewildered at the new world.  I would guess that it is male from the colour of the feathers and the good size head.

Alpha's chicks

Alpha & Killer's chicks at about 30 days of age.

Shama tails

Pretty Good, Pretty Boy's son from this year has just shed his primary tails.  Both were shed on the same day.  The tails are about 7" as shown in the photograph.  How long will the first moult tails be?

Firefly, who is Pretty Boy's son from last year had taimong tails of 6.5" and his first moult tails were 13.5" (I always measure tip to tip).

Pretty Boy's son, Chilli, from a later nest had taimong tails of 6.75" and his first moult tails were 12.5".  Chilli has recently completed his 2nd moult from taimong and his primary tails look like they exceed 14". BTW, I like him very much.  He has much of the qualities that I want in a shama. Superb structure, courage, display and wonderful song.  He has recently learnt some of the Samyong's songs and also picked up the siren sound of an ambulance.  The siren song is modified so it is very pleasant.

Skyhawk has also just shed his tails and they are 14".

Pretty Good's tails are the longest of the taimongs that I have bred over the years.  It will be interesting to see if his first moult tails exceed 13.5".

My friends' shamas

Today I would like to give an update of what my close “shama” friends, Michael Leong and Jeffrey Low, have been doing lately in shamas.

Michael and I have shared an interest in breeding shamas together since 1997.  That is many generations of shamas that we have bred.  Just as with Michael, I share my male and female shamas with Jeffrey.  These 2 friends are the only persons with whom I share my shamas for breeding.

Michael’s interest is primarily the Red-whiskered Bulbul, a species of which I have only a mild interest that is not sufficient for me to keep them for any length of time.  Jeffrey, of course, has both practical and in-depth knowledge of birds and especially shamas.

Last year, Michael bred 2 outstanding males from Alpha and Killer, so named as she had even managed to kill a male whom she did not take a liking to.  This year, Michael has a first clutch of 3 chicks from this pair.  Michael has generously suggested that I rear those chicks from this batch that are male and that I keep for myself the one that is the more outstanding.  I am really looking forward to how these chicks will turn out.

The video below is of Alpha’s chicks (at about 30 days) with their father:

Jeffrey has also resolved the infertility problems that he has had with Funkie and Fatina (both bred by me) and they also have a clutch of 3 chicks that are now a few days old.  The video of their chicks is below:



Jeffrey’s thinking and analysis that produced results are in this recent forum post of his that he had sent to me:

Another experiment that further reinforced my thinking that chicken feed could be good enough for shamas: I was trying to breed from Funkie and Fatina since a few months ago. The pair was fed free-flow full live food consisting of crickets, mealworms, roaches and some fish throughout the day. This has been my practice (as well as that of most other breeders) for breeding pairs and the reason to feed free-flow full live food is to stimulate the bird to come into breeding form and also for them to raise the chicks. However, once they were given free-flow live food, the birds will not eat dry food willingly anymore and this live food diet for them would normally have to continue throughout the breeding season.

After 3 unsuccessful clutches, I had finally concluded that the failure to breed from them successfully this year was due to the birds being not well prepared. They also did not molt well prior to being paired. Funkie had also suffered from fits during this period and that is another indication that he is not fit. 

All 3 clutches were infertile. At this point, I decided to convert both the birds to dry food from the live food diet, in the hope that the failure up to now was also partly due to dietary deficiencies from the full live food diet. It took only 2 days to switch them to feeding only on chicken feed and this continued to be their only food for the next one week. Thereafter, once I was sure that they were feeding very well on chicken feed, I began supplementing them with live food in the evening, offering them free access to live food for about an hour at the end of each day. I had planned to continue this way of feeding the pair until chicks are successfully hatched and then to switch to full live food again for the period it takes for them to raise the chicks.

Fatina laid the fourth clutch a couple of weeks later and 2 out of 3 eggs from this clutch were fertile. However, Fatina killed and ate the 2 chicks as soon as they hatched. 

I continued with the chicken feed supplemented with live food diet and another clutch was laid recently. This fifth clutch had looked promising judging from the size of the eggs and there were also more eggs this time, 4 of them as compared to previous clutches of 2 and 3 eggs. Today is the 11th day since Fatina started sitting on this clutch and I placed a tub of live food inside the aviary just before sunrise, in anticipation. 2 chicks hatched this morning and since then, Fatina was seen feeding them throughout the day. (Funkie is meanwhile paired up with another hen, leaving Fatina to raise these chicks on her own). All is well up to now and I am crossing my fingers that there will be more than 2 chicks.

Whether or not these chicks will survive until they fledge is another matter. The fact that a normal sized clutch of 4 eggs was laid from a pair fed mostly with chicken feed and its successful hatching today may be able to give us some indications of the nutritional quality of chicken feed. 

The video below is of Funkie that Jeff recorded with his handphone just a few days ago:

The last video is of one of Flame’s chicks that I bred in December last year and that is now owned by Jeffrey.  Jeffrey has named him "Dato", so maybe I will name one of my chicks "Tan Sri". Flame’s father is Pretty Boy and the video suggests that this chick that is presently less than 8 moths old, has inherited some of his father’s and grandfather’s character.