Falconry: Weight management on a new bird

Falconry for beginners requires learning a lot of new vital skills. This falconry video discusses the importance of proper weight management and shares the principles of weight management on a new young bird. Falconers flying hawks, Falcons, eagles, owls, or accipiters must understand these principles in order to have success in the field of falconry.
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[@Zombie_Longwinger]

Very good video an important factor to remember is Sunlight vitamin D3 activated. Sunlight Vitamin D3 activated is 40X more powerful than dietary vitamin D and is extremely important for Calcium absorption for birds of prey they get the vitamin D3 activated when preening their feathers in the dust they absorb it in the mouth and birds of prey need 45mins of direct sunlight a day to have the minimum requirement of D3 activated. Think about that for all the fully covered aviary roofs and chambers you’ve seen.

[@seandemery123]

Ben please make a video on the Red Tailed Hawk! I don’t see anything on your channel for them specifically and I think a ton of folks would benefit from it as it is such a common beginner bird! I will be trying to trap my first in the next couple months and would greatly appreciate you sharing your knowledge and experience with them!

[@dimorrissey]

Same! My sponsor and I will be trapping my first red-tail in September!

[@seandemery123]

Diana Morrissey Good luck! Where are you located?

[@dimorrissey]

@@seandemery123 Thanks! I am in Massachusetts. My mews inspection was just scheduled too! August 20th! eep! How about yourself?

[@seandemery123]

Diana Morrissey Sweet! Hope it goes well. I am putting the finished touches on mine this weekend! I am in Georgia.

[@seandemery123]

Richard Thomas Georgia, you?

[@abirbirdsnew]

Sir, please make a video on weight management during summer (how to keep birds motivated to hunt during hot season)

[@SL-vx1sx]

So stoked to watch this video. I just got my first bird, a Harris that I named Taliesin.

[@rippy4freedom]

An aspiring Falconer, excited to take a Falconry class in September in NC. I am appreciative for the videos! I have experience with raptors but this field is a new challenge. I am really looking forward to cooperating with a hunter in the field 🦅

[@SethMcGee]

Beautiful coloration on that Lanner

[@richardthompson3296]

Hey Ben congratulations on getting a lanner. Good looking bird

[@Samy-yu2lg]

Ben,talk about hybrids,GMO and selective breeding in raptors.

[@robertgettleman18]

Thanks Ben!

[@saltystirfry3294]

Yesss!! More amazing content ❤️❤️

[@johnstwistedego1]

Welcome back Ben!

[@njfalconry]

Great video as usual!

[@stevehanson5556]

Thanks for a great presentation Ben, super beneficial,

[@johnlindsay8630]

Thanks ben

[@williecorcoran2676]

Hi Ben you might guide me to one of your videos about manning imprint/ crèche reared golden eagles. I was asked to rehome a golden eagle which is almost a year old and was crèche with some Harris hawks grown up? Could you give some advice on avoiding aggression while training, feeding etc..,? Thank you loving the clips Ben Thanks again

[@alkonost8459]

Is there any scale how "much" of calcium are birds capable of refine from ate bones? Or how tell how much of it shall be added? (For young or molding birds) 👍🇨🇿👍

[@benwoodrufffalconry]

There probably is, but I am not aware of any specific scale. There can be a large difference between individuals of the same species as well. For example my Harris Hawk that I have had for over 20 years, will live fly and hunt off of about 20 grams of meat a day. While most Harris hawks get size are going through at least 50-60 grams a day. There are different views on it, but personally I think that broken up/cut up bone in the food has a greater surface area including the interior of the bone exposed. To my thinking this makes it much easier for gastrointestinal bacteria and the intestines themselves to extract some of the calcium. But I am not a vet and don’t have a medical background. So I could be completely wrong. But that is my logic and approach to it.

[@Zombie_Longwinger]

Id let them eat all the calcium they want let them decide it’s always good to feed meat on the bone and ideally whole animals example quail,chicks, pigeons. Falcons eat far more calcium especially peregrines 40% of their diet is bone given the chance if you fed a Tiercel peregrine half a quail cut lengthways organs left in he will eat pretty much all the meat and then rip the bones apart and swallow the leg or wing bones and they will digest the bone.

[@salehalaeddin3354]

Great video but how do I exactly know what weight to reach and maintain for a specific bird?

[@trentroth6717]

I love just watching eagles sit and chill......but once one of my cousins who was young at the time said that he saw an eagle while we were fishing and was like wow is it going to fly. but I said no probably not and I started explaining basically what you said but halfway through me explaining it we got a fish but it was small so we through it back and right then a bald eagle dived down and grabbed it like 5 feet from our boat and it was the coolest thing I have seen...... P.S it was not trained we were on a lake on private property in the middle of nowhere.

[@implausibleimpossiblehypot4006]

Hmm I wonder if you had an Australian bird of prey if cooking the food on an open fire a real way of giving them certain nutrients they need. They have been know to start fires to hunt but I wonder if they eat cooked animals that didn’t make it out of the fire I don’t see why they wouldn’t

[@benwoodrufffalconry]

That is a fascinating possibility. I have read about them starting fires. There’s a couple of other places in the world where this also has been documented and it is amazing. In general, we teach that raptors cannot properly process cooked food. But it is also a true fact that meat that has been cooked, add the cellular and atomic level has broken down more and is therefore easier to extract nutrition and energy from. My personal opinion is that these birds in Australia may be starting fires intentionally to flush things out and take advantage of that (this has been documented with them carrying burning sticks) But I would assume that if they are eating food that is partially cooked, they have not made that connection. I could be wrong, but this can be an example of where a species slowly but surely starts to consume food differently. Just like palm not vultures. Or black kites have been documented eating thrown out cooked meat by humans. We make rules to try to understand nature, but nature will always break them. Your idea is fascinating and really cool. I appreciate you sharing it and it makes me think.

[@implausibleimpossiblehypot4006]

@@benwoodrufffalconry I would imagine that the majority of the cooked food they eat is like rodents that have been trapped and basically steamed by the smoke and heat above them it would also be interesting if aboriginals used them for hunting not necessarily actually keeping them but allowing them to use fire to flush out animals… like if you set a camp fire next to the nest they will take a burning branch hundreds of feet away from there nest to an area they know is safe to burn. So if the aboriginals saw this and put two and two together it means that the aboriginals are strongly connected to the “evolution” of their fire starting habits. the aboriginals have sung songs about the “firehawks. Here is some cool info about this subject wildlife.org/australian-firehawks-use-fire-to-catch-prey/ . I did some research in the wilipari lexicon and they have a ceremony called where they build a jirrirlpa and from from the description of it seems as it’s supposed to be lit on fire it’s a mound of branches dry grass with bird Feathers on top I wonder if it has any thing to do with the fire hawk stories and stuff also they have verry specific words for birds of prey like jayirr-mani vc5t. Which means to swoop down and snatch As of a bird after prey. And they have words for specifically describing all birds. I hope this has been interesting

[@peterknaust7424]

Ben in general do females and males expend the same amount of calories while hunting?

[@benwoodrufffalconry]

Technically females should be expending more calories, because they are larger and it requires more effort to move and operate a body of larger mass. But I have never thought to try to actively chart and compare this. I have had a couple times in my life where I have flown sibling birds, male and female, I will try to dig back through my records from years ago and see what I can find and see if there caloric usage rates were comparable. Part of it would depend on the flight itself though too. A falcon that has learned to ride a thermal up will expend far less energy than one that is circling up completely under its own athletic efforts, regardless of gender.

[@peterknaust7424]

@@benwoodrufffalconry Thank you, your channel is fascinating, I’ve learned so much!

[@kingsolomon4392]

compare weight charting law and regulation by region/state?

[@ac9356]

There r quite a few animals that stash food for later in the winter so some animals do store food like us

[@rippy4freedom]

I saw this really sad news clip about finding over 100 Lanner Falcons that were being smuggled and their eyes sewn shut to keep them calm. Do you know of steps that have been successful to stop this severe abuse of raptors?

[@Nero-yz2xv]

Do you have any idea what's the weight of a 1-2 weeks quail ? I wanna get a bunch of 'em and fill up the storage :D Also, do you have an instagram? I'd like to follow you and maybe ask you for help if needed ^^ We don't have mentors in Romania so I kept learning from older falconers /books/videos...It would be pretty nice and helpful

[@nonstopadventures13]

Dear Ben so I have been trying to purchase some of your books but they seem to be hard to come by do you b chance sell any

[@benwoodrufffalconry]

I don’t have any more copies myself. But the best place to find it is usually to go to the company “Western Sporting Publications” and look up the book “trapping essentials”. They routinely have the cheapest prices too.

[@nonstopadventures13]

@@benwoodrufffalconry thank you sir

[@ac9356]

Y r birds Metabolism quicker than ours I would of thought they have a slow one cuz they can not always get food

[@implausibleimpossiblehypot4006]

They live on the edge yo

[@benwoodrufffalconry]

Part of it is simply size. With warm blooded vertebrates, somewhere around 80-90% of their caloric intake goes simply to maintaining a constant body temperature. The larger the mass, the easier it is to hold on to that body heat without dissipating and losing it. This is one of the main theories on why deer Falcons are so big. It helps them not lose heat so quickly. But if you are a flying predator, small size and light weight can be an advantage especially for speed. Since all Raptors are small compared to most terrestrial predators, they loose heat much faster. Proofing up feathers helps. But the smaller size alone is a major factor to their fat metabolism. But carnivores in general do as well. It is easier to convert meat into quick energy. But once converted, it also gets spent quickly and therefore has to be replenished as soon as it runs out.