Spring fever

[flap]

We are now into our 2nd breeding season since getting into finches. We had added aviaries, bought and sold birds, changes species etc. We are now feeling quite settled with the species we have. After a slow start to this year's breeding season, we are finally getting some action. We had 3 pairs of gouldians nesting but had to disrupt two pairs who were sold. The other pair have hatched some young and they are getting louder by the day. Our YB gouldian has stopped playing hard to get and has shacked up with a dilute we bought for her recently. They are now sitting. Our red painteds are sitting, the male is one we bred last season and as he is nicely coloured I am looking forward to seeing what he produces. Our St Helenas look like they might be sitting. They haven't bred since we bought them last year so hoping to get results. Our new yellow painteds and red cheeked cordon bleus are bonding and starting to look around nests, so hopefully they will breed too before the end of the season. It feels like all the mucking around, stuff ups and learning, perfecting our skills, is finally starting to pay off... Just wanted to share!

[jusdeb]

Its a good feeling hey !
Well done , you obviously have the right set up for them .

[spanna]

Nice work Flavia (+ Bunyip + young one), sounds like things are going well. The only thing I would be mindful of is your cordon hen wanting to breed into winter. Especially if she is still young (under 1y.o.), it may be a good idea to separate them when the weather starts to cool down, as young cordon hens are particularly prone to egg binding, and are bloody difficult to replace! Lesson I learnt when I was younger (not that I'm old now!!) is that with them it's much better to wait an extra year for her to be over 9 months old than to lose the hen early on. Is the nice painted boy offspring of the pair you got from me a while back? I like to hear how my painteds are going, and there are enough bloomin people that already have them on here!!

[flap]

Hi Spanna, thanks for the tip re the cordons, the hen is young so we will make sure she isn't breeding when the weather cools down. Had enough dramas with the OBs egg binding last season! We now have 3 different waxbills and they are so cute, the way the bond and interact with each other.
Yes the painted is the nicely coloured fledgling from their first clutch, he has coloured up nicely, will try to get a photo soon. His mate does not have much colour so not sure how they babies will turn out. Want to focus on improving the colour by selective breeding.

[Pete Sara]

Its been a bit of a funny year full stop. All the birds I want to breed are not and those that i dont are breeding like flies, I think I need to use some reverse physcoligy.. keep trying spanna it may take a while to break the cycle and get them used to maggots . I wonder if you put a few in the termites in with the maggots it may help, not that I had much success when I had cordons...fingers crossed flap for a good year .pete