Canary Care Guide
Canaries are hearty birds making them good beginner’s birds since Canary care is fairly easy. With a good lifespan averaging in the 8 to10 year range, with some living up to 15-years. One needs only basic knowledge to keep them thriving and have a long, happy relationship with them.
Canary Size:
Canaries are small birds, rarely growing longer than 5 inches and averaging between 4.5 and 5 inches at full maturity.
Canary Care:
Your Canary will enjoy your company and the company of other people too, but it probably won’t like a lot of hands-on handling.
Be sure to give your Canary lots of personal space, don’t stress them, and if you have more than one keep them in separate cages.
As long as they’ve got a cage large enough to fly about in, perch to perch for example, fresh food and water daily, and you cover their cage at night for a stressless rest, your Canary should thrive and provide you with years of companionship and smiles.
Canaries require regular nail trimming, but as long as your bird remains healthy they shouldn’t need beak trims. It’s also a terrible idea to wing-trim a Canary. See more veterinary advice on Canaries here.
Canary Diet:
Canaries will eat just about anything you give them, but to keep them healthy a balanced nutritious diet of seeds, pellets, and even fresh vegetables is best.
Canary Habitat:
What cage to use for any bird is a vital consideration, and even more so for Canaries to keep them healthy, happy, and singing.
Despite their small size, Canaries need plenty of room to hop and fly around, spreading their wings so-to-speak. Unfortunately, because they’re small a lot of first-time bird owners think that they can be housed in a small travel-type cage.
These small cages are fine for traveling, as they’re intended, but are restrictive and make a terrible permanent cage for your Canary.
Canary Behavior:
Canaries are one of the few birds that really do well on their own in a home, though they do still enjoy attention and social interaction–at arm’s length–with humans, and they can do well with other small birds, though as mentioned previously never house multiple Canaries in the same cage, and if you have two male Canaries you may even need to place their cages in separate rooms.
Canaries are very smart and males can be trained to sing for you. All Canaries are capable of learning minimal tricks and behaviors with enough patience and rewards from their owners, such as landing and perching on your hand, or returning to the perch in their cage on command.
See our article, Are Canaries Good Pets? for more on Canary behavior and training.
Canary Care Conclusion
Canaries are stout, low-maintenance birds overall. They make great pet birds for beginners, homes with kids, and for seniors, Male Canaries will sing far more than females will, so this is something to keep in mind when picking your new pet bird.
Aerika Pedersen – Full-time writer, bird owner, and mother.
Aerika spent three years caring for birds at the Antwerp ZOO in Belgium before deciding to start her own family and write from home to share her experience and knowledge with other bird lovers.