Happy Thanksgiving to All

Talk About Anything Here, Anything At All
Diane Kauffmds
Posts: 3246
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2014 8:13 pm

Re: Happy Thanksgiving to All

Post by Diane Kauffmds »

Kevin Sjostrand wrote:Diane, thanks for sharing your zebra finch pictures.
I actually raised finches and parakeets many years ago, starting in 1980 up to 1987. I had an outside aviary and and inside bird room with two 3 x 4ft floor to ceiling cages, and about 12 breeding cages that I made myself. Well I made it all myself. :)

I had about 10 varieties of finches, diamond doves, button quail and the parakeets. I even took baby zebras and parakeets from the nest right after hatching and hand feed them to fledgling age, and they thought I was their mother (or daddy). Totally hand tame. I never did it with the Societie's, don't know why. The parakeets were especially fun to do this with.

While I had the birds, I lived in Ceres in central California and started working the SF bay area, living there during the week, and coming home on the weekends. One weekend I came home, and when I went outside to the aviary on the Saturday morning, my aviary which had about 150 birds in it sadly only had about 12 live birds. The rest had all died of lack of seed. The feeders were all empty apparently eating by mice or rats most likely, I never could see how they got in. It was a sad day for sure.
I did build the bird population back up, but never to that amount. All to say, I really enjoyed the hobby and got much satisfaction from it. My inside birds were still okay, thank goodness.
These days my wife says I can't have birds. :(. Otherwise I'd build an aviary in the backyard in a heart beat.

Again thanks for sharing your finches with us, hoping your husband is recovering okay?
Frank has made a lot of progress. This week, he's started coming upstairs to sleep, instead of the hospital bed in the living room. Thanks for asking.

Well, 6 out of 8 eggs hatched, with 2 non viable. The little buggers are growing fast. I just noticed the eyes open on one and feathers starting on the first 2. It looks a bird mosh pit. Hahaha!

I may ask you questions. This is all new to me. I have 2 breeding pairs, one of which hasn't produced viable eggs. But, George and Gracie more than make up for it. After this clutch is weaned, I'm removing the nest, even if it has eggs. I don't want her over taxed.

Out of their first clutch of 3, only 1 survived. They were 4 weeks old an I hadn't seen any of them eat on their own. I suddenly found one dead, and another died in my hands. I saw mom and dad going after baby 3 when it got near the nest. I had no idea that she had laid new eggs. Mom and dad were protecting the nest and eggs.

I bought a third flight cage and put baby 3 in it, with mirrors so it would think it has company. It's not tame, but comes to me when I go to the cage and talks to me. I think it might be male. It's starting to sing. His adult colors are just now starting to come out.
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Diane Kauffmann
Country Roads Guitars
countryroadsguitars@gmail.com
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