Too many in the nest?

[cranberry]

I have one Gouldian nest with 10 young and another pair has 12 eggs, 10 of which are good. Will they be able to cope with this number of young at once? Why are they laying so many good eggs per round (not complaining, just a bit worried).

[Diane]

The main problem would be the last to hatch out wouldnt really stand a chance against the bigger chicks. Only thing I can suggest is moving some eggs from the large producers to a pair that dosnt have many, but to do that you would have to have a pair that have eggs about the same age and be different enough in colour so that you know who is who. The same would apply to moving chicks about but you run the risk of abandonment of all the nests for interfering. It might be worth while just leaving things as they are and see how things go.
10 good eggs, wow!

[cranberry]

They all seem to be roughly the same size so they all must have hatched within a few days of each other. I'll just let them go I think. I do have other nests with eggs but not sure on when they are due to hatch. The last thing I want to do is fiddle with nature.

[Buzzard-1]

Keep up plenty of greens and seed heads and let nature take it's course, interfere and risk loosing them all.

[jusdeb]

Cold hearted I know but if half survive you still have been very successful . As said interfering may lead to loss of all of them but its up to you ....good luck I hope they all survive.

[finchbreeder]

That is fertile. Good luck.
LML

[monotwine]

I've just had a first time pair that laid 10 eggs and reared 7. Regardless to them laying 1 egg a day the youngsters seemed to hatch 3 at a time per day so the growth gap was not huge. 4 fledged this weekend and the other 3 are still in the nest. The parents are still very attentive to the young ones in the nest. As it is the first time I've bred Gouldians I was surprised at how good this young pair have been as parents.
What was really quite funny was how the 7 double stacked liked bengalese inside a little finch nest, because of course the fertile parents chose the smallest nest box they could find!

[POLAR GOULDIANS]

Hi Cran and Monique, the problem does'nt lie with their ability to raise a large number of chicks in one nesting. It lies with the amount of strain on the parent birds when they go back to nest and attempt to raise another clutch, this increases the risk of the parents falling ill and the potential to lose one of the parent birds and thus all chicks. All things in moderation.
I think most people will have allowed large brood sizes when they first started, I know I did, but now I usually try to limit fertile eggs to 5 or 6 per nest, no more than 4 in the third round of nesting. Good luck.

[finchbreeder]

Or for very fertile pairs like Cranberry's remove them or the nests so that they only produce 1 round. And Mono same thing after their 2nd round. That's what I think anyway.
LML