Aussie Finch Forum

On Friday morning I had the pleasure of going to a fellow finch breeders house and taking a look at his aviaries.
The aviaries were bathed in the morning sun and the birds were taking full advantage of the sunshine. The plant on the right is a Sacred Bamboo and there were quite a few nests in this bush. It seemed so successful that I am now in the process of moving some of my Nandina bamboo plants into pots so that I can put them in my aviaries.
The rear of the aviaries were double roofed and I was told that it makes a real difference all year round.
Solar lights were attached to the aviaries too. The finches must really like their situation as they have bred extremely well, I saw Cordon young, Double bar young fledged that morning and young strawberries. Lots of eye candy, I didnt know which way to look first. I also saw yellow emblema, jaquarini, RFPF, fire finches both normals and pied and gouldians
The whole aviary complex had piped water to the aviaries, all on timer to be flushed out with fresh water several times, the tin over the top stops any fouling of the water and the flap at the front makes it easy to attend to cleaning the water containers. The feed station also acts as a catcher for the birds, these catcher/feeder stations had a string leading to outside to enable the easy catching of the required bird. Although I was told that the birds were quite wise to the situation of their keeper sitting quietly waiting for the wanted bird to enter the feed station, and as a result he could be sitting there for quite a while before catching his wanted bird! The aviaries were also set up with a mister system. The front wired sections were double wired with the top wire at least half a metre from the wire the birds could touch.
Jayburd.....if you are looking closely you might see something you like, sorry couldn't get any better pics as they would move away from the front as soon as I tried to get closer. The cock bird was prancing about with a very large white feather in front of a hen. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there and after a good chat at the front of the aviaries I was shown the livefood production. I came home with a very large sample of bushfly gents which I will be feeding out to my birds in the next day or so.

Somehow that place looks familiar Thanks for sharing some pics and glad you enjoyed the morning.

I love a good sticky around other breeders set ups . Sadly the secret society that is Dubbo would probably shove me up a wombat hole if I took pictures

To be fair most breeders I visit have large parrot collections, that and the high crime rate here .

Thanks for sharing Di . It looks like an awesome set up.

jusdeb wrote:Sadly the secret society that is Dubbo would probably shove me up a wombat hole if I took pictures

Yet another brilliant visual Love it

I did say that I would keep the identifying details out of any posts or pictures as the owner is quite a private person.
Thanks to desertbirds for setting it up for me.

Great pics Diane. Were the maggots the only livefood offered and if so, has the breeder had much success with the blue caps just on these. Its great viewing other breeders aviaries and theres always new ideas to take on board just from viewing the photos. Thanks.

Looks great Di. It is always terrific to see others' set ups.

I won't ay what I was gonna say because you already know what it is

but they're PRREEEEEETTTYYYYYY

He did mealworms too I think. Although I didnt see any young the bluecap cock was displaying to the hen.

Yes he does do mealworms and breeds heaps of them.No Blue Caps have been bred there although maggots and small mealies were supplied.Several pairs of blue Caps were tried,he has been very successful with Cordons and i think this highlights the difference between the two.Forum members suggest gaining experience with Cordons before moving to Blue Caps but it think you might as well gain experience with something like Melbas first.

those are very nice birds and aviarys.