The Vitamin B Complex is extremely important for the healthy growth of young canaries and a lack of Vitamin B should be one of the first considerations if a nest of chicks is 'failing to thrive'. The following passage from Stroud's Digest of Bird Diseases is very interesting:

ABSTRACT P 398:

"The B complex of vitamins is water soluble and is not destroyed by cooking but [because of their solubility] they are likely to leach into the cooking water and be thrown down the drain. During a famine in India there was a montastery and a nunnery in the same locality; both the monks and the nuns were reduced to a diet of dried fish and polished rice. The nuns were very clean in their preparation of food - they washed their rice thoroughly before cooking it - and they all died of Beri-Beri..  The monks- who were extremely filthy in their housekeeping, boiled the rice as it came from the bags, dirt and all. They did not die of beri-beri. There was enough residual Vitamin B [from the discarded rice husks removed by the polishing machine] - adhering to the outside of the rice grains as dust,  to save their lives. People who boil their grain and vegetables with the skins on and then make soup with the cooking water  do not suffer from lack of this vitamin B complex."

He goes on:

"A 20 day old canary fed on a diet containing bread, apple pulp, dried egg, polished rice and cuttlebone - that is onh a diet that contains everything a bird needs - with the single exception of Vitamin B - will develop polyneuritis at 22 to 26 days of age and will die between 24 and 30 days. This is not a common disease of birds, since most of them are fed on uncooked seeds and grains, but it causes the deaths of many hand-fed canaries."

Stroud points out that Vitamin B is common in the outer seed coat of most seeds and grains - especially rape seed -. Yellow corn is rich in thiamine but deficient in nicotinic acid. Fresh yeast and liver are said to contain the complete B Vitamin complex.  This raises some interesting points.  If you soak seed for several days, rinsing and rinsing each day - do you dissolve out the Vitamin B complex present in the seed coats?  I have been feeding my rearing pairs soaked rape seed - perhaps unwittingly I have been washing away the vitamin B in the rape? Secondly, where do wild canaries - and other wild birds -get enough vitamin B complex to raise their young. Could it be that insect larvae/ caterpillars - like liver- contain this important vitamin?

 
 

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