After bringing Coco up to her max weight (135g empty) after finishing the season, managing her at that weight proved nearly impossible. She would bate constantly and panic at familiar things and people. This isn’t unusual behavior for a fat passage kestrel, in my experience-and that’s one potential benefit of the eyas, which doesn’t seem to have this particular multiple-personality disorder.
So I dropped her back to hunting weight over a couple weeks, about 1 gram a day, taking the opportunity to discover if she might fly heavier than her previous average hunting weight (about 98g).
I discovered a couple useful things: one, she’s pretty responsive in the field even as high as 112g, but she’s nervous and won’t take slips at birds; probably she’d be easy to lose if something chased her.
I kept flying her, dropping less than 1% per day, noting improvement in her interest in taking slips and her recall, but she didn’t actually bind to a starling until she hit 99g.
So, while she has caught birds as high as 108g, that was when she was fit and catching multiples daily, and it was colder and the slips more numerous. Probably, like most passage hawks, she will need to be trimmed back at the beginning of each season to something like where she started, but will go up in weight from there.
I stopped hunting her and have brought her up to a higher weight, one where she’s manageable-sits and preens all day, is friendly, eats vigorously but is far from thin.
I’ve been keeping her at about 104-105g empty and feeding her to about 110-111g in the morning, with a smaller second feeding to about 110g in the afternoon. I’ll post the notes below so you can see the pattern.
At this weight, here’s how she acts. A little bit annoying to get on the scale, not keen enough to go there herself as she does at hunting weight, but certainly manageable.
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28 June 8:30 102.5g fed to 107g
- 2pm fed to 113g
29 June 8:30am 104.5 fed to 111g
- 2:00 fed to 110g
30 June 8:30 104.5 fed to 111
- 1pm fed to 110
1 July 8:30 104 Fed to 112
- 1pm fed to 111
- 4pm fed to 109
2 July 8:30am 103.5 fed to 111.5g (1 small mouse)
- 4pm 107 fed to 110g
3 July 8:30am 104g fed to 112g
- 3:30 108 fed to 110
4 july 8:30 105 fed to 110
- 12:30 106 fed to 110
- 4:00pm 108 fed to 110
5 July 8:30 104 fed to 111g
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