Breeding Diamond fire tail finch

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Chaos
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Posts: 1
Joined: 30 Aug 2020, 22:52
Location: United States

I currently breed gouldians zebras stars and canary.
Looking to stop breeding the English zebras and moving to diamond fire tails. Love there colors. Any tips on breeding them and also where to encounter them.
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Shane Gowland
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Joined: 19 May 2014, 22:42
Location: Adelaide
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Hi Chaos, welcome to the forum. Most of our members are in Australia, so we're probably not going to be much help locating diamond firetails in the US.
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Craig52
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Posts: 4979
Joined: 11 Nov 2011, 19:26
Location: victoria

Diamonds are one of our largest finches and therefore need extra space and usually don't tolerate cabinets or small cages as they get fat and lazy.
They build a large nest sometimes football size with an upward entrance tunnel that drops to the nest chamber.
Nesting materials are long pieces of grass which they also use for displaying as well as feathers for lining the chamber.
They don't really need livefood if you supply plenty of green seeding grasses and soaked or sprouted seed supplied daily.
They will take soft protein foods but don't feed when not breeding as they will become obese, other than that good clean fresh millets and canary seed as well water and they should be ok.
Sexing can be a problem so dna sexing is recommended.
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Richard Johnston
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Posts: 5
Joined: 24 Aug 2020, 22:22
Location: South Africa

Very novice question regarding sexing - I have 2 Diamond Fire Tails, both with red tail feathers. A local pet shop sells finches and they have DFT's with both red and orange tails - I was told the orange tails are females and how to decipher between the two.

Is this right?
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finchbreeder
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Joined: 27 Jun 2009, 20:00
Location: Midwest of West. Aust. Coast
Location: Midwest of West.Aust.Coast

I do not keep or breed diamonds. But thought that they came in red and orange mutations.
LML
LML
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Greg41
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Posts: 586
Joined: 10 Mar 2010, 21:09
Location: Kingsley Suburb of Perth
Location: Kingsley. Suburb of Perth Wa

Best way to get a pair of breeding DFT is to put a number of young together and let them pick own mate, they won't
always mate just by putting one of each together.
Cheers
GDG
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Craig52
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Posts: 4979
Joined: 11 Nov 2011, 19:26
Location: victoria

The yellow tailed ones are a mutation so they can be either sex. Wish we had the yellow's here and i wouldn't care what sex they were. I agree with Greg41 regarding sexing although there is some ways to guess, the cocks spots are smaller than the hens spots and they have plenty of them.
The bar on the cock goes straight across the breast to the wing but the hens bar angles up before the wing.
Cocks bill in adults is crimson where the hens is red.
The cocks call is drawn out and long whereas the hens is short and higher in tone.
The cocks rump whether red or yellow is brighter and has a sheen to it. Hope that helps
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