Aussie Finch Forum

while checking the aviary this afternoon i found a small fully feathered zeb fledgling on the floor and on closer inspection it has no eyes what so ever otherwise looks healthy,
anyone seen this before?

No never seen it before.Are the parents related ? And if so over how many generations that you know of ? I dont like its chances becoming independent.

The birds are in a colony so they could be related,I only really started breeding them last year and hadn't bred them in great numbers until recently. I started out with about a dozen birds from different places and have 40 birds before this lot of fledlings so it could only be a few generation .

Thats so weird,not only no eyes but deformed bill and over sized wings as well.It needs to be put down imo Craig

How odd. I've never even heard of that happening before.

I had about 6 chicks with what looked like water blisters around the eye area. When left to mature the blisters disappeared and the birds ended up blind. I had to end those birds misery. I first thought that it was a decease, and later found out that it is very prevalent in zebras with fawn cheek mutation gene. I got rid of all my Fawn cheek zebras, because I hated having kill the chicks.

JR Did you get your original birds from a couple of different sources? Or all from one place? As depending, they could have already been inbred.
LML

No not all from the same place. I just buy zebs from pet shops whenever I see a nice one.

Be kind to this poor chap.

KENTUCKY wrote:Be kind to this poor chap.

A seeing-eye dog perhaps? No good, dogs don't fly. Maybe some sort of flying seeing-eye insect? Dragonfly maybe?