🧰 Care, Equipment & Facilities · 6 min
The scale and daily weighing
Why this matters
Weight is the one objective number you get. The manual calls a scale absolutely essential and daily weighing mandatory in the flying season.
By the end of this lesson you will be able to
- State the regulatory minimum for a falconry scale
- Describe how often to weigh and why
- List the variables that move a bird's weight and condition
What the law requires
173.6(a)(4)(vi): a reliable weighing scale or balance graduated in increments of not more than one half ounce (15 grams). That is a floor, not a target. The manual's own advice is a five pound scale reading in half-ounce increments, preferably grams, fitted with a perch.
A gram scale can be used to weigh anything from a Kestrel to a Gyrfalcon, and gram resolution is what makes small-bird falconry possible at all.
How often
The novice falconer weighs once each day. During the hunting season, daily weighing is mandatory. Not every other day, not weekly, and certainly not only when the bird fails to perform.
Weighing is also the best way for a beginner to judge condition, ahead of feather condition, feeling the keel, or checking for yarak. Those are all real signals, but the scale is objective and reliable and the others are not, yet, in your hands.
What moves the number
A bird's weight and condition respond to the type of food, the quality of the food, weather and especially temperature, disease, season, barometric pressure, amount of exercise, the species, and the individual bird's metabolism and ability to assimilate food. That is why a flying weight is not a constant: it may vary based on temperature, and it is not maintained by feeding washed meat.
Weigh at the same time, the same way
Before the day's feed, at the same hour, on the same scale, with the bird in the same state. A number you cannot compare to yesterday's is not data. Keep a log; the manual is explicit that the point is to monitor patterns.
This lesson is part of the NY Falconry Exam course. Open it in the course to answer the retrieval checks that go with it, track what you have read, and quiz the whole unit. Lessons, quizzes and the glossary are free.