As most regular Finchme readers would know I’m not a local so my way of keeping finches offers a slightly different perspective and I want to share my experience. I have a single outdoor aviary (4 X 2.5 X 2.2m) with a mixed collection.  This certainly saves all the hassle of separate cages especially the extra feeding and cleaning time.  It does however have some drawbacks as there are compatibility problems.  I’m sure that you can read about these problems and triumphs on any number of websites but this is my experience. So what have I found out about the birds I keep:

Compatibility

As I mentioned, this is a real problem when you only have one cage.  I have had 5 consecutive broods of diamond doves and now the young have started breeding.  I can’t tell who the parents are and I’m finding nests with up to 6 eggs now (2 eggs are normal) and of course many of these eggs are clear and hatchling mortality  is 50-100%.  I’m now smashing all new eggs until I can rid myself of the surplus birds or pair them up in new aviaries.  Inbreeding is not the only reason to have at least one more cage to separate undesirable pairings.  I have birds that have paired up with the wrong species and others that interfere with more timid species.

Quarantine

I guess I lied when I said I don’t have another cage but I do.  It’s a 30 cm barred cube that I suspend in quiet part of the house well out of the reach of my daughter’s cats.  Any new birds are placed in it for 2-3 weeks and the birds wormed before being placed into the aviary.  I know most birds here are cage bred indoors but since many of my purchases are through Cartimar I can’t trust that they weren’t in contact with wild birds while they were there so I’m playing it safe.

Aviary Design

I’m glad I did have the foresight to consider vermin exclusion by using a 4mm mesh reinforced with conventional 12mm “chicken wire”.  I have since found 6mm mesh and I believe that it too would be adequate. Aside from rodents I find vine snakes love to check out the cage and I’m sure one day their persistence will pay off.  I still haven’t managed to keep ants out but thus far they haven’t bothered the birds aside from invading the egg food and sprouted seed which I now protect by sitting the dishes for these foods in a shallow dish of water.  The main seed dish sits on a pole that emerges from a well of oil but which is covered in a way that the birds can’t access the oil. Progress on a new aviary has been slow as the concept of a modular design (a series of 0.9 X 2.5 X 2.2m cages) appears to be difficult one for the builders here.  I have had a lean-to aviary (1.9 X 2.0 X 2.2m) built that will solve my excess bird problem for P8000 but it’s not yet installed.  Strange that if I add another wall and place it in a bank of five, that the unit cost goes up to between P22000-37000! That being the case it will be a long time before I get the bank of flights  I desire.

Food

Everyone has their secret foods but I suppose I’ve gotten to find my birds favorites but that doesn’t mean that it’s the best or the only way to go.  I find that my finches don’t like the brassica seeds in some of the “finch mixes” sold at Cartimar and that ones that contain large white French millets are a waste.  I usually mix my own now and make sure I avoid insect infested and dusty grain.  My mix is typically 1 part each of panicum, white American millet and canary with a ½ part of red millet and a ¼ part each of niger and linseed.  With ever-increasing numbers of birds the husks build up fast in the seed-dish so everyday I remove them.  Initially I just blew them out but this led to a lot of husks and seed on the aviary floor which became a food source and a home for ants so now I use a small vacuum cleaner.  Taking a cue from my other interest in aquarium fish I joined a gravel-cleaner to a cordless hand-held vacuum cleaner.  It works very well and is a fraction of the price of the mains powered bench-top units I’ve sen on the internet and it’s a lot more convenient.

Like many Australian breeders I feed green seed to my birds daily as these are abundant where I live. The most abuntant is guinea grass (Urochloa maxima formerly Panicum maximum) but there are many others which I feed too including palm grass (Setaria palmifolia), barn yard grass (Echnichloa crus-galli), jungle rice (E. colona), wire grass (Eleusine indica), wild sorghum (Johnson grass Sorghum halepense) and anything fluffy (e.g. Phragmites spp as these are relished for nest lining).  I collect the green seed every 3-4 days and store it in the refrigerator and feed it every morning along with a mashed quail egg and a 3 day sprouted seed mix. Rather than throwing the seed-heads on the floor as I once did I find that the birds enjoy it more if the heads are placed upright in the brush-wood holders in the rear of the aviary.  Having all the food elevated reduces forraging on the ground and possible reinfection with worms.  I have also started to feed a grit mix that I make up from equal parts fine shell, baked egg shells, cuttle-bone and charcoal. Prior to Christmas I only had the cuttle-bone in the aviary for them but they ignore that now in favor of this mix – maybe it’s just easier for them. I place my family’s fruit peelings and scraps in the aviary every day to attract ferment flies (Drosophila spp) and remove it after 24-48h.  The theory is that this will provide live food and fruit for those that want it but I have never actually seen any birds feeding on it but that doesn’t mean that they don’t.

Nest Inspections

I can’t comment about the experience of cage & cabinet breeders but for aviary birds the general rule seems to be don’t! It’s a reasonable hypothesis that if a bird suspects a large preditor (you) has discovered its nest then any bird therein is at risk.  When I think about how I captured finches as a child then this is true and the bird should immediately abandon the nest. In the case of my cut-throats it seems to be what they do and it may have been the case with the loss of  two nests of stars and the last lot of Gouldians.  I know my cut-throats have young now because I can hear them and although I know their young severely soil their nest they will just have to put up with it.  The stars too are sitting and I’m not going to count my chicks until long after they hatch - preferably fledge.  That said, zebra finches don’t seem to care if you look in and I believe the same goes for society finches.

Zebra Finches

Never believe that anything is pure.  In spite of assurances and external appearances my normal zebras have produced both normal and fawn offspring.  It will take a while before I breed a pure line but I’m patient.  My first three nests were disasters with the young perishing not long after they fledged.  I blame these deaths on inbreeding since my clutches are small and there are always clear eggs.  As a child both in the aviary and in the wild 5-6 young was the norm.  I see from Stan and Rommel’s experiences that they only get 3-4 young in each nest so perhaps some new bloodlines in the Philippines might help.  Of course my bad luck may be bad management as none of my birds are even 12 month old and according to the literature they shouldn’t be shouldn’t be allowed to breed until they are a year old.

Shaft-tailed Finches

I think I’ve got a pair because each in turn has paired up with a zebra finch of the opposite sex.  I suspect that my stock supplier may be fostering his birds under zebras and they are incorrectly imprinted.  I intend to separate them from their beloved zebras and place then with another pair of shaft – tails when I eventually get another aviary.

Star Finches

I purchased these birds before they had colored up and ended up with two hens so I got a cock and in spite of their young age they went down to nest.  Inexperience however meant that they didn’t know what to do when the young hatched and so two nests have perished within days of hatching. Unfortunately my spare hen also died just before Christmas.  Since then my fortunes have picked up and the remaining pair have built a nest from scratch in the brush wood at the rear of the aviary and I suspect they are now on eggs but they are light sitters.  I hope that their maturity allows them to finally raise a brood this time.

Gouldians

These have been my best birds and like the others were purchased when immature.  After they finished coloring up they chose the only nest-box (the rest are baskets) and laid three eggs and raised three young but then they stopped.  I suspect that keeping the young in the cage with them stopped them from breeding.  Their youngsters are now starting to color up and the parents have gone down to nest again and this time they are in a basket! They had a clutch of 4 eggs but only 2 hatched and the babies were about a week old when the parents abandoned them.  I’m not sure why this occurred but they did tolerate nest inspections with the previous nest and had continued to feed after my first two inspections but then they stopped.  I will place more boxes in the aviary as I don’t think that a basket is their first choice as their box was occupied at the time.  The gouldians raised their first young without egg food but they do enjoy a green pick from the sprouted and green seed provided.  As you can see I’m risking the same problem with my zebra and Gouldian youngsters as I’ve had with the diamond doves if I don’t get the youngsters into a new cage soon.Between clutches the adult hen showed symptoms of air-sac mite (fluffed on a perch, sneezing and wiping her beak).  I isolated her in a warm room and treated her with 1% topical Ivermectin in mineral oil - 2 treatments, 2 weeks apart.  She recovered and three weeks later had gone down to nest.  I just hope she hasn’t infected her young or any other birds

Cut-throats

I don’t actually like cut-throats but I got them as I thought I could use them to earn money through breeding for more desirable but expensive species (diamond sparrows, masked and owls).  I’ve found that these birds aren’t as interfering or aggressive as the literature says.  These birds also taught the others to eat the boiled egg and even egg and biscuit when offered so for this reason alone they are worth having.  That said they are now nesting in the Gouldian’s box – not that the Gouldians weren’t using it at the time.  The cut-throats have had two nests but after I inspected the young at about 10 days they abandoned them so I’ve learned a lesson the hard way.  They have young again now and I hope I can resist the urge to look in again until they have left the nest.

Black headed nun (Lonchura malacca) 

This is my concession to Philippine finches.  They are impossible to sex and not at all easy to breed according to my reading, however there have been suspicious accumulations of eggs in nests but these aren’t incubated but I live in hope.  It is such a beautiful bird and very much undervalued here.