Aussie Finch Forum

I recently lost a breeding hen,
I have a mate with young from early in the season that are coloured and was going to get a hen to pair with the cock, or I have young from the pair here should I pair one of my young ones with my mates one and sell the older cock, the cock is a 2013 bred bird

Your cock bird is still fairly young,it might be a chance to get new blood into your birds if you are not worried about introducing new colour mutations. Craig

oops i should of stated it's a white headed nun.

Yeah i just noticed that,forget about the mutation bit as i thought you were talking about zebs,my fault Craig

A mistake many make in my opinion is what I call catch up mating.
They drop a bird from their pair and go out and buy another without checking the age of the bird.
You can end up with a pair of far different ages, then later on the older one dies so you replace it with a young bird
and the previous young bird becomes the older of the pair.
You are far better off when you lose a bird to replace both as they should be of similar age. Just retire the odd bird
and let it live out its days in a holding aviary or donate it but don't dump it on to an unsuspecting breeder or dealer.

Excellent point. There are too many old birds off loaded to dealers and on-sold to unsuspecting buyers. We cant afford too many disappointed breeders these days. Retire your old birds to a holding flight.

thanks for the reply
i have found another hen for the cock, i am repairing him because he is only just over 12 months old.
i agree with retiring old birds and not passing them on to unsuspecting people, i have a few people that have aviaries that are displays only that i usually give them to.

We breed quite a good number of White Headed and Tri's Nuns here.
In my opinion they seem to breed better if kept in a colony, it seems that one pair will decide
to breed and it sets the other pairs off. This actually causes for want of a better word waves of chicks fledging.
It isn't unusual to have 3 or 4 nests of chicks fly within a week