Just how good is the dry food we use for our shamas?

A good dry food will provide all the nutrients required in the right proportions:

1) For growth

2) For maintenance and performance

3) For renewal of the feathers

4) For reproduction

And finally, if it is really good enough, the parent bird will even use it to feed her chicks!




Katrina choosing to feed her chicks with the moistened dry food instead of the crickets.




Katrina holding a lump of moistened dry food between the beaks and encouraging her chicks to pick up the food on their own, from the cage floor.

Polygamy in captivity - polygynous and polyandrous mating to facilitate the breeding strategy

In the wild, the male and the female shamas will both provide parental care, thus indicating that they are monogamous by nature. Perhaps, under certain circumstances, there may be occasions where a shama in the wild could have more than one mate within a breeding season, such as the losing of a mate to predators early in the breeding season. In captivity however, polygamy can be employed if the breeding strategy requires a single bird to be bred to more than one mate during a breeding season.

The polygynous mating system uses a single male to be mated successively to several females during the breeding season and the polyandrous mating system uses a single female to be mated successively to several males during the breeding season.

Below are the videos of two clutches resulting from polygynous mating, using a single male mated to two females successively. The male was removed from the aviary of the first female 2 days after she started incubation and placed with the second female. The first clutch started hatching on 22nd September and the second clutch on 30th September. Both females are now raising their respective clutches on their own without the male.

As part of the breeding plan, these two females, both still fresh from their annual molt, will be bred  to other males later on during this same breeding season. Hence they will be participating in both polygyny and polyandry within a single breeding season.                       

                    

The long tail and leucistic traits in combination

This is DDS278, my two months old female white-rumped shama, a gift from my friend David and very much treasured by me. She is one of the offsprings resulting from a pairing of a normal coloured long-tailed male and a leucistic short-tailed female. In my opinion, she is a beautiful female with an overall good structure. I am especially attracted to her flat looking top skull with the distinct drop, down the back of the neck.

She is short-tailed with the normal colours of her species but that is only her phenotype. However, it is her genotype that is important to provide the foundation for producing long-tailed leucistic birds in the future. She is heterozygous for the long tail trait and heterozygous as well for the leucistic trait.

 

I have done some calculations using the punnett square and I think the result may be of some use to formulate a breeding strategy towards the goal of producing long-tailed leucistic shamas.

If DDS278 is to be paired up with a male shama that is also heterozygous for both these traits (a dihybrid cross), the probability of getting long-tailed leucistic offsprings is 1 out of 16. The same pairing will also have the probabilities of yielding 3 long-tailed but normal coloured offsprings out of 16, 3 short-tailed leucistic offsprings out of 16 and 9 short-tailed normal coloured offsprings out of 16.

From the punnett square, the long-tailed, normal coloured offsprings are 66% hets for leucistic and the short tailed leucistic offsprings are 66% hets for long tail. In other words, every long-tailed, normal coloured offspring from such dihybrid pairings has a  66% chance of also being heterozygous for the leucistic trait and every short-tailed leucistic offspring from the same pairing has a 66% chance of also being heterozygous for the long tail trait.

Also from the punnett square, out of the 9 short-tailed normal offsprings, the probabilities are 4 being  heterozygous for both long tail and leucistic, 2 being heterozygous only for long tail, 2 being heterozygous only for leucistic and 1 being normal short tail without the genotype for both these traits.
                   

Asynchronously hatched younger chick survived through sheer determination.

These chicks were asynchronously hatched, one on the 13th of June and the other on the 15th of June.

The disparity in size

Throughout the nestling stage, the younger chick was observed to be more intense in its begging behaviour. Upon the approach of a parent bird, the younger chick was always observed to display a longer begging duration, a higher begging stretch and louder, more persistent begging calls:





That seemed to be enough to compensate for the disadvantage of having arrived late. Blessed with such great post-hatching vigour, it was able to receive sufficient food from their parents to speed up its growth and to soon catch up in size with its older sibling. Both fledged when they were 10 days old. The younger one (below left) is now 12 days old. Miraculously, all it took was barely 2 weeks for it to shake off the huge disadvantage it was born into.

Successful pairing of 1st molts

7 months old Rock was paired up with 9 months old Ross. Their first clutch of 3 eggs were all infertile. This is their second clutch. Here is the video taken soon after the hatching of their first chick this morning.

Good captive-bred shamas must come from stocks with great singing abilities

I only breed from birds with good overall structure, display and most important of all, great singing abilities. It is in my opinion that no amount of tutoring can make up for the lack of an inborn vocal ability.

Here is a video of my eight month old first molt. He is bred by DDS and he came to me when still a taimong. His height of tail flick and his great singing ability will compliment my existing breeding stock well.

This is Mr PK.



Even though Mr Pk is bred from long-tailed parents, his tail length is barely 9 inches. He is an outcross and a good example to show that tail lengths can be quite unpredictable when an established long-tailed line is being outcrossed.

It is my firm belief that the initial foundation stock for breeding good long-tailed shamas must be made up from specimens that also possess good overall structure, display and excellent vocal quality. Mr PK is to be bred back into the DDS line and hopefully, this could in some ways, further enhance the vocal quality of long-tailed birds bred from this line in the future.

JL54

Below is a picture taken today of 9 months old JL54. He is the son of Funkie and the grandson of Apache. He was paired up about a week ago and nest building by the female had already started since yesterday.

Still nothing so far this year

Lady CN was broken of her egg-eating habit but the remaining 2 eggs from her first clutch had turned out to be infertile. The eggs were removed on the 14th day of incubation and confirmed to be infertile through candling. We have other proven females, all from the same DDS line and all very ready to be bred to Funkie but this is not just about producing chicks quickly. For me, it will be worth the time invested if we could get some offsprings from this pairing. Lady CN will be laying again this few days.

Meanwhile, Mr PK was separated from Baby Jane after waiting for about a month with no results from them. He was replaced with JL54. JL54, son of Funkie out of Fatina, was bred and sold last year and we were more than happy to acquire him back after his first molt. He is everything we could hope for in terms of song quality and structure. His tail is about 11.5 inches from this first molt but one of his tail feathers was ruined by tail feather mites. To ensure that the mites will be totally eradicated, I had treated him aggressively for a period of time before pairing him up. His tail feathers will be perfect by the next molt. We were more than willing to pay for him but his buyer had preferred to be replaced with another taimong later on, from this year's breeding. Although we have another 13-inch proven male at our disposal that we can pair up with Baby Jane, the final decision was to use JL54 even though he is unproven and may be a little too young. This is because the arrangement to use JL54 will fit very well into our breeding plan. This pairing and another 2 pairings this year using Funkie himself and his other son Rock, will hopefully result in some of Funkie's desirable traits being inherited by this year's offsprings from them. If all goes well, some of these offsprings could then be selected to provide a foundation that we could build upon to perpetuate these desirable traits, henceforth.

I am greatly inspired by the work and the words of two good friends from Singapore when it comes to captive breeding of the white-rumped shama:

David de Souza, whom I had first met about a decade ago, had shown me that the best strategy towards the goal of producing what one has in mind, is through selective line breeding. One of the traits that he had set out to breed for is the elegant and long tail feathers that will greatly enhance the overall structure of his birds. A decade and a half later, he is breeding true, this as well as other desirable qualities. His generosity to allow me to draw freely from his well of experience and his established genetic pool whenever I need to, has been my greatest source of encouragement.

Today, breeding just for long tail feathers may not be as difficult anymore because of the better availability of long-tailed birds in the market. However, appreciation of the hind structure is not just a matter of its measurement in inches. A long tail must also be able to please the eyes. Only then can it enhance the overall structure of the bird. In my opinion, a hobbyist that do not judge a bird by his eyes but only by the ruler, is not a true hobbyist at all. By itself, the tail must be of the right texture and curvature. A long tail that is stiff and unlively is not much more in character and appeal than a pair of chopsticks sticking out from the hind end. When viewed in combination with the overall structure, an impressive tail must be matched by an equally impressive body and the ability to carry it well. A long tail will not be impressive if it is attached to a badly structured body. A long tail that is on a bird that do not have what it takes to carry it, will likewise, serve to magnify the flaws.

Besides DDS, there are other breeders that I also admire for their success and their dedication. These are the ones breeding not just long-tailed shamas but beautiful long-tailed shamas. Another breeder-friend of mine, Ronald Thia, once advised would-be-breeders in the forum with these words: "He must also not be greedy to breed any pair he can match up but be very selective." I hold these words close to heart for they came from one that has finally tasted success through years of hands-on experience, patience and true dedication. In times like this, when things are not going too well, I draw strength from these words.

The nest is rocking and the eggs keep coming

Ross laid her second egg this morning. Both the eggs are undamaged so far. There are no signs of them being cracked or broken despite the flaw of the egg chamber. With only a few strands of coco fiber between the eggs and the hard surface of the nesting box floor, will they be able to sit well? There should be more eggs coming, to complete the clutch. Will they be fertile? And if all these are well, will the chicks then be as good as we would want them to be?

For now, all I can do is to wish for the best.

Update on the breeding of first-molts

About a month ago, I paired up Rock, a seven month old first-molt, to a female named Ross, also a first molt. Rock is the son of Funkie, out of Fatina and Ross, now about 9 months old, is bred by DDS. Ross laid her first egg this morning. I took a picture this morning when Ross was done with the laying. I am not too happy with the nest. The sunken area to hold the eggs is not well cushioned at the base. Ross is young and inexperienced and the nesting area is a little too large. We will just have to wait and see what happens next.

Parental egg destruction - Part 4: The no-frills nesting box just wasn't good enough for Lady CN?

Jalan Bunga Raya translated to English, is 'Hibiscus Street'. It is a minor street flanked on both sides by old shop houses. Like everywhere else in Malacca, there is no big red flowers to be seen here. No hibiscus flowers, no hibiscus leaves and not even a twig of hibiscus for a clue as to why it is the national flower and the name of this street. Instead, the street abounds with push-cart stalls, many of them peddling Chinese cooling teas (liang teh). Perhaps, one day when Mr Yuppie Yap becomes the governor here, he would change the name of this street to 'Herbal Tea Avenue', or something like that.

Besides the herbal teas, there are quite a few shops here selling a variety of artificial plants and flowers and they were the reason we came. Surprisingly, even these shops do not carry anything that resembles the hibiscus. Anyway, we did not come here to look for the national flower. We bought a cluster of artificial foliage that were meant to look like bamboo leaves. For good measure, we  took a small bunch of purplish silk flowers as well.

Back at my place that afternoon, we stapled the artificial leaves and flowers onto the nesting box, being careful to arrange them in such a way as to leave enough space for an entrance to allow the parent birds to comfortably access the nest inside but otherwise, the leaves were roughly arranged to criss-cross over the top of the nest, like a natural cover over it. This also further darkened the entire nesting area. 

The next morning, on 17th March 2014, when Lady CN was done laying her second egg of the clutch, she emerged from the nest and for the first time, she did not carry the egg out with her. The third and final egg of the clutch was laid the following morning and she proceeded to incubate them from that day, just like any other well-behaved female shamas would.


Was it really that simple that the lady merely needs to be appeased with flowers and bamboo leaves or was there a more complex underlying explanation to the simple solution? I will never be sure.

Somehow, when I was staring into the nesting box on that day when the first egg of the clutch was destroyed, something in there told me that the no-frills nesting box may just not be adequate for this fussy hen.

...THE END

Parental egg destruction - Part 3: The initial failure of the final attempt on Lady CN

5th March 2014:
Funkie was released into the breeding aviary after confirming through visual obsevations that Lady CN is ready to receive him.

10th March 2014:
Start of nest building by Lady CN. It was completed within a few days.

Everything else was so far, so good. The pair was observed to have copulated many times since introduction.

16th March 2014:
Visual observations early in the morning had indicated that Lady CN was close to laying.

At about 8.30am, she entered the nest box and remained inside for a good half an hour. She then emerged from the nest box carrying the egg between the beaks and did what I had dreaded most. It was a good sized egg, only to add to the frustration.

All through the rest of the morning, many thoughts went through my mind. Finally, I removed the nest box and set it right in front of me, staring inside at the nest and once again, wondering what could have gone wrong. She had done a good job with the nest. It was very well put together but what good is a well-built nest if it is not to hold the well-bred chicks?

Yap came by later on that morning and I told him what I had in mind. It was a crazy idea but not totally without reasons. Thirty minutes later, we were at a street named Jalan Bunga Raya to buy what was needed.



...to be continued

Parental egg destruction - Part 2: The game plan for Lady CN

For Lady CN, the metabolic cost of the pre-breeding molt, the energy expansion during the frantic building of the nest and the depletion of nutrients from the body for egg accretion were all put to waste, so far. There are a myriad of possible causes for her pre-matured terminations of the reproductive process. They may be due to some complex physiological or psychological issues. As an average hobbyist, it will be beyond my resources to ascertain the exact cause or the combination of factors that could have led to this self-defeating disorder. However, there are also some areas which are within my means, that may be well worth examining before proceeding with this final attempt.

There is always the possibility of a nutritional deficit but judging from the result of the pre-breeding molt as well as from the visual assessment of her general health, this had seemed to be unlikely. There is however, a likelihood that we may be dealing with an exceptionally sensitive specimen here. She may be one of those birds that will require very careful and thorough preparations prior to breeding. Complacency, induced by the ease of breeding other females, may have resulted in the lack of attention paid to the minute details during the preparations for her, hence the failed attempts so far. With this in mind, the following extra steps were taken prior to pairing her up for this final attempt.

1) Lady CN was well rested and acclimatized to the surroundings of her breeding ground:
She had undergone 2 complete and good molts since the last attempt was made to breed her, the latest of which was in her present location. This should ensure that she is sufficiently rested and well acclimatized to the environmental influences of the breeding ground.

2) The introduction of the pair was done very carefully:
Lady CN was the first to be placed into the breeding aviary while Funkie was being transferred from his molting aviary to a bamboo cage. For the next few days, the bamboo cage was hung next to the breeding aviary to allow for close visual contact. This arrangement is to ensure that Lady CN will not be forced into breeding too abruptly. Physical introduction was made only after careful observations to confirm that she is ready to be bred. I have reasons to suspect that in the captive environment, very often, copulation is still possible even though the female is not fully ready. The act of copulation by itself, will stimulate egg formation and laying. In such instances, the maternal hormones may yet to be in full swing and it is anyone's guess if this could be a cause for some of the maternal destructive behaviors in captivity. It is also anyone's guess if such destructive behaviors are able to develop into a habit.

3) Thoughts were given to provide for an environment most conducive to the breeding of an understory species:
Their breeding aviary was placed in the side porch of the house, where it is also well sheltered from the strong winds. A length of black agricultural netting was draped around the porch to reduce the penetration of sunlight into this area. Even this had somehow, seemed to be insufficient. So another layer of the black netting was also used to wrap around the sides of the breeding aviary. The inside of the nest box, around the area where the nest will be build, was painted black to emulate the much darkened environment inside of their natural nesting cavities.



...to be continued

Parental egg destruction - Part 1: My thoughts on Lady Chiak Nung

My earlier attempts a couple of years ago to breed from Lady Chiak Nung had failed miserably due to her post-laying destructive behavior. In spite of these past failures, I have not given up on my hope to breed for certain desirable traits from her, hence a final attempt to breed her was included in our breeding plan for this year. She is to be paired up with our foundation stud bird, Funkie. This decision to risk Funkie's precious breeding time for the season, on a female with such disappointing breeding records, was further justified by my quest for a better understanding of her counter-productive breeding behaviour as well as my wish to see if this behavioral abnormality can be reversed. The cut-off point for Funkie's loss of breeding time for the season was set to be for no more than 2 failed clutches from this pairing, after which, he will have to be paired up with another proven female and the attempt will be considered to have failed.

From experience, egg destruction and infanticide by both sexes of this species is not uncommon. Some of us may be of the opinion that these destructive behaviours are due to hormonal fluctuations, triggered by external factors such as a perceived threat in the immediate vicinity, causing the parental hormones to be imbalanced. In most cases of parental egg destruction or infanticide, the above reasoning is logical, especially if environmental triggers are observed to be present. However, this may not be the case with Lady CN. In every instance that she had entered the nestbox to lay and after the usual time required to lay the egg, she would without fail, exit the nest with the freshly laid egg between the beaks, only for it to be immediately destroyed on the cage floor. She will also always consume part of the contents and almost all of the shell and all these without even the slightest of provocation. This is not the same as having laid a few eggs over the course of a few days and then succumbing to the sudden emergence of an environmental threat or challenge.

In the case with Lady CN, they were all immediate post-laying destructions and in every of her case, there was no obvious triggers observed to be present at the moment of destruction. There was also no visible or audible signs of excitement from both birds, before and after each exhibition of the behaviour, further indicating that there was an absence of an external trigger. Furthermore, there was hardly any time-lag between completion of laying and commencement of destruction to allow for a trigger to take place.

The eggs were not simply thrown out of the nest as commonly observed but instead, each was deliberately brought down to the cage floor to be consumed. However, there is also no reason to believe that the egg-consuming part of the behaviour is of a resource saving nature to recover part of the invested nutrients, since there was never any hint of imminent danger to incite abandonment of the nest.



...to be continued

The Lady is at it again!

The incorrigible Lady CN destroyed her first egg of the season this morning, immediately after laying it.

Kicking off for 2014

Our plan for this year is to breed from 4 or 5 pairs. Over the last few months, Yap and I had put in some efforts to get the selected birds ready. Guided by the vision towards producing good captive breds worthy of approval by fellow hobbyists, lots of thoughts had went into the matching up of the pairs.

Funkie had just finished his annual molt and is already well into breeding form. He is matched up with Lady Chiak Nung despite her notorious egg-eating habit. We would be very happy if this pairing could produce a couple of offsprings successfully. Lady CN has very desirable tail feather characteristics. Her tail feathers are of the right texture, not too soft as to render them to be easily worn out before the annual molt, yet well curved. Her two longest tail feathers are always in place, molt after molt, overlapping throughout their entire lengths. This, I think is what is quite lacking in many long-tailed birds. Few super long-tailed birds can carry their long tails well all the time. Skyhawk (owned by DDS and closely related to Lady CN) has always been my model for tail feather perfection and this is one of the desired traits that we had wished to be able to breed into our birds. Of course, there is a high chance that we may not be able to get anything out of this pairing if she continues with her egg-eating habit and since we do not plan on robbing her eggs to artificially incubate. Although we have other proven females at our disposal, still, we would think that the risk is well worth taking.

Our other pairings so far this year are mostly pairings of first molts, including Funkie's son Rock. Rock is paired with another first molt female (supplied by DDS) that we had named Ross. Rock is now about 7 months old and could be too young but sooner or later, we will be able to obtain some linebred offsprings from this pairing. Rock has turned out to be as good as we could wish for and is quite identical to Funkie in many ways, including the character, display style and songs.

I had also obtained an outcrossed male from DDS and named him Mr PK. He is super strong in character and also possesses great tail feather texture. He is now being bred back to the proven line and paired up with Baby Jane, daughter of Flame and one of the finest linebred females I have seen so far from DDS. Mr Pk is a first molt and Baby Jane has just completed her second.

Here is a video of the pairing of Funkie to Lady CN.

Rocking at 5 weeks of age

Here is Rock(JL57), now 5 weeks old.

Rock and Roll

Rock and Roll are now three and a half weeks old. I took a video of them today while they were having their daily dose of morning sunshine. Rock (on the cage floor) is male. I am still not too sure about Roll.

My thoughts on the good breeder.

Firstly, the good breeder must be able to understand and appreciate the characteristics of the species. He must be aware of the characteristics that had in the first place, made the species so irresistible and so popular with the hobbyists. He is guided only by a vision in his head, of a magnificient specimen that could excel in all the desired traits and he will not compromise with the fads and trends created to capitalise on the popularity of the species.

At the same time, he must always be conscious of the status of the species in the wild and will do his best to contribute in anyway he can for the conservation of the species. He must always try his best to prevent his captive breeding from causing any significant impacts on the wild genetic pool.

Secondly, the good breeder must also be knowledgeable. He is driven by his genuine passion to continuously seek out the knowledge that could help him towards his goal of producing quality specimens and to provide the best for the birds under his care. He will continuosly strive to have a deeper understanding of matters related to what he is doing and will make sacrifices in order to obtain the answers that he seek. He will not preach what he is unsure of but he will readily share his experiences.

Finally, the good breeder must strike a balance between profits and ethics. The latter serves to preserve the meaning of being involved in a hobby. A breeder with no ethics will not have the integrity that the hobbyists need to rely upon and he will never be able to earn the respect from fellow breeders.

No, I am not talking about myself. I am just reminding myself to never lose sight of my objectives.

JL54 to be sold to a player.

Last year, Funkie fathered 3 chicks, out of which only a female survived. It was disappointing because we had hoped that there will be male offsprings to give us some indications as to whether his sons will be birds worthy of the arena.

JL54 is now 7 weeks old. I had taken some efforts to get him ready for his new owner. He eats his dry food very well (broiler chicken feed). He is in perfect health and already well exposed to human crowds and street traffic. Since the intention is for him to be tested in the arena, I had also made sure that he is not hand-tamed (human imprinted).

He will be raised by a player henceforth and that will enable us to get the feedback that we want, for future breeding plans.