Feeding green seeding grass heads to finches should be considered a must by serious finch breeders.  Dried, mature heads of millet sold at the pet store as a treat have no additional food value and are costly but do offer a form of environmental enrichment that is often lacking for cage and cabinet housed birds.  [...]

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Yesterday I came across a new article on the ABC web site with some very interesting news for Gouldian breeders.  If you have subscription to  you can read the actual academic article too from Sarah R. Pryke and Simon C. Griffith (2009) Genetic Incompatibility Drives Sex Allocation and Maternal Investment in a Polymorphic Finch. Science , 20 March 2009: Vol. 323. no. [...]

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Ringing birds is something I’ve never done but with my recent successes and multiple nests threatening to cause confusion I investigated the ringing process to help identify my birds.  As I only have a small number of birds I didn’t think that it was necessary to go to the expense of having closed , numbered [...]

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Fostering is the deliberate introduction of chicks or eggs into another birds nest.  There are many reasons for fostering and as was related in part one of this post, aviary birds occasionally and probably mistakenly do it to  when they attempt to take over an existing nest. Fostering is most commonly done to as a way to increase [...]

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It seems that in spite of my dislike of interspecific fostering that my birds have been doing it without without consulting me! Last year I purchased a pair of star finches which produced four consecutive clutches; they faithfully incubated and then let the babies starve to death within 1-2 days of hatching. I suspect that they [...]

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Sorry for not posting for the last month. Many tasks prevented me from updating FinchMe, but now I have the time to do so and I am planning to output an article at least once a week. In the meantime, I would like to thank everyone who keeps visiting the site to exchange their [...]

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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 [...]

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I think you already know what I’m talking about.

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I took this video over the weekend, and I just can’t explain to you how happy I was when the first nestling explored the outside of their nest. Usually, nestlings would fledge three weeks from hatching, and will explore the cage without regard to their parents and even you. They would miss your [...]

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Videos like this are hard to come by. It is just fortunate on my part that my zebras are now used to having me near them that I was able to record Ryan, my male zebra, while he is feeding their two week old chicks.

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