Blue Gouldians

[werty]

I used to find reports of 7, 8 or more Gouldians per nest to be unbelievable. I used to breed heaps of Gouldians and always thought a nest of 5 fledged was pretty good, 4 was more usual and 6 rare. I'm not sure if I know you werty, but I have been to a few aviaries around Sydney in recent times and have witnessed nest after nest with 7, 8 and more Gouldian chicks. These were decent quality birds too - It is truly amazing and I congratulate you all. I know some of these breeders are now working with Blues so let's hope the magic/force is still strong and doesn't run out!

Good to know that it's normal for gouldians to have big clutches

I was starting to worry maybe I was overdosing them on soluvite and that's why the clutches were so big

[Natboy]

I found this topic very interesting.
I used to pair my Gouldians up in smaller cages inside the aviary for a month or so with dividers preventing each pair from seeing other birds.
The birds at least appeared to breed the way I wanted but was I just lucky?
Is it worth building smaller cages again? I know I couldn't guarantee pure lines but just wanted to get your opinions on whether you try to pair your birds this way?
I don't want to keep my birds seperate full time

[finchbreeder]

Experiment and find out what works best for you. That's what I did. How many avairys do you have? How many Gouldians? Spread the Gouldians accross the avairys in mixs of 1 pair in this avairy, 3 pair if possible of ((near)) identical siblings in that avairy, etc. and see which works best. If you only have one avairy, pick the pair you most want to go together, put them in the cage within the avairy and leave the rest in the avairy. And see which works and does not. It's all a learning curve and different birds and husbandry will achieve different results. Good luck.
LML