Most seed-based or vegetable proteins are 'incomplete' in that they lack one or more essential amino acids which are essential to life.  Consequently, most seed-eating birds change their behaviour and eat insects during the breeding season - or their chicks would not survive.  Egg-food is traditionally provided to breeding canaries as an animal-protein substitute for a complete insect-caterpillar diet.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN EGGFOOD
I used to purchase Orlux or Quiko egg food mixes and paid about $5 a kilo for the privilege - this was then mixed with hard boiled eggs and fed to the birds. But in the list of ingredients for these commercial egg-food mixes, something like 95% of the total weight are just 'bakery by-products' - in other words: stale bread, stale biscuits and any other bakery wastes they could buy as cheap as possible.  Bakery wastes, like biscuits and cakes contain large amounts of sugar, as well as preservatives and colouring agents, which are not good for either chicks or adult birds. Sugar in particular can cause the death of young chicks.

Over the last 100 years or so, canary fanciers in the UK used wholemeal bread as the basis of their rearing food, I decided to be logical about this. I mean instead of paying for STALE bread and bakery by-products, why not just used FRESH bread to start with?. Wholemeal bread is exactly what it says - the whole-meal - nothing added but yeast and water, nothing taken away. 

RECIPE
Boil eggs for about 6 minutes until they are hard. Take 4 to 6 slices of thick wholemeal bread and whizz it up in a blender with 4 hard boiled eggs; do not add any water at all. The consistency should be an open crumbly, moist texture - just add more bread until it feels right. I also add a teaspoon of 50%-50% cod-liver/ wheatgerm oil mix to each batch of food, and I usually add a sprinkling of a vitamin mineral supplement. Sometimes I grate powdered cuttlefish bone into the mix to ensure lots of calcium for developing bones and feathers.

BATCH FREEZING
I was travelling for three weeks during September and left my neighbour to feed my young birds, which were all at the weaning stage. The adults had seed, water, grit and greens every day, but I batch-froze 21 bags of the above egg-food and it was  defrosted and fed to both youngsters and adults at one bag per day.  This worked beautifully. So next season I will save a lot of time by making 20 or 30 bags of this egg-food and freeze them - de-frosting one a day as needed. I find that my Fifes eat this mixture with relish and I raised 80 youngsters from 8 or 9 pairs over two rounds - best season I have ever had.

For the chicks at weaning I alternate the egg-food with soaked groats (whole oats) - usually I introduced these when the chicks are about ten days old - and I fed soaked groats all the way through the weaning process. Oats are about 16% protein (very similar % to egg but not a 'complete' protein) and they don't 'go-off' in the same way that egg-food can if left for too long. I did not lose a single chick during the weaning and moulting period - in fact I only lost about 8 chicks in the nest this season - usually at the hatching stage. I feed dandelion leaves, flowers and seeds ad lib all season, as well as chickweed and any other green food I can find.

KEEPING EGGFOOD FRESH
A useful innovation has been the use of 'pecking boards' as feeding trays for my egg-food this season. I find that in high summer, if I use deep-dishes, the egg-food at the bottom goes sour within 12 hours - it is moist and warm in those deep dishes - perfect conditions for a bacterial growth medium.

However, if you spread the egg-food out just one layer thick on a pecking board, the parents can have access to the whole batch of food at the same time, and the food tends to dry-out rather than go sour. I have had no problems with diarrhoea or other gut complaints this season. There has been discussion on the List about egg containing "too much protein" ; Dodwell's 'Encyclopaedia of Canaries'  contains a table which ranks hard-boiled egg as consisting of just 15% protein by weight and close to 75% water by weight. Most of an egg consists of water. But egg is a 'complete' protein and contains the full range of amino acids that growing chicks need - so I will continue to use it. Since a chick just about doubles its weight every day for 14 days it needs a huge amount of protein and amino acids - and eggs are designed by Nature for the job.

Anyway, if you can access pure, unadulterated wholemeal bread (unmalted and un-sugared) give it a try. Alternatively bake your own wholemeal from wholemeal flour. I also think that the yeast in the bread gives the birds some of the vitamin B complex which they need. You can of course continue to pay $5 a kilo for Ce-De or Orlux - but wholemeal bread works just as well, if not better.

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