Aussie Finch Forum

In an aviary I have pair of Emblema, pair of BFPF and a pair of Gouldians
Emblema, sitting on eggs..no problem'
BF with 3 young in the nest, they were feeding them up to Friday
Gouldians with one chick in the nest this chick is only about 10 days old.
This afternoon I saw the BF in and out of a spare nest and I thought they were getting an early start setting up again even though the young are not ready to fledge yet. Was keeping an eye on this wanting to make sure they were still feeding the young.
Then I see the gouldian cock sitting at the entrance to the BF nest, the BF didn't chase him and next thing he popped inside, I hot footed it to the aviary expecting to see BF chicks being either pecked or tossed out, but hes sitting in there quite calmly with them.
I think the cock with only having one chick himself who seems to be stuffed to the gills all the time hasn't got enough to do and hes taken over the feeding of the BF and it looks like the BF pair have decided to start again. Will have to keep an eye on this situation. Got me baffled why he would take on a different species and why the parents would let him, and how the young BF seem quite accepting of him too.

Sunday morning the BF young had empty crops at 9am and I would have thought they should have had some food by then so I decided to do a top up. I fed them some egg food through a syringe. I waited till they did the feeding action on the syringe then slowly pressed the plunger. All 3 took some food.
I left them till 3pm and as it was getting cold and possibly going to rain I decided to see if they needed feeding again. When I checked 2 of them had some food in the crop but one didn't seem to have any so I did another top up on all.
Checked this morning and all still alive and seemingly well. Gouldian cock feeding himself up a storm and in and out of the nest with the BF young, they make the begging noises and after a while the noise stops so it seems like hes feeding them too.
Just did the last check and 2 of the 3 have food in the crop so I just topped up one.
Its like Days of our Lives in this aviary!

So long as the birds don't start singing with american accents you should be safe
hope it all works out though

One thing BFP's are pretty easy to handfeed . . but it is another chore

That's what has amazed me, how easily they took the me feeding them, I thought with their eyes being open I would have to try for ages to get them to accept the food.
I will keep checking for the next couple of days till I see that they all have food in the crop from a bird feeding them, and top up if necessary.

Big disaster, all 3 babies died, no marks on them, food in the crop. Have added a lot more branches between and around the new nest the BFPF parents are making. Cant add anything anywhere else due to the gouldian nest with chick.

sorry to hear that BB.
At least you made an effort and the experience will help you next time.
Gouldian and blue-faced are closely related apparently so maybe not so strange.

Overnight temp??

Overnight outside the aviary temp was probably around 6 but they should have been old enough to cope with that, it never gets that cold inside there and I have blinds on the front. Between that and the bubble wrap on the safety area it keeps the aviary toasty. It got up to 17C inside there this morning before I opened up the blind.

My mood today has varied between this and this
Go on ask me why?
Well the mood Im in Im going to tell you all anyway.
Last night heard a bird banging around in the aviary, I couldn't see anything in the garden it was one of the gouldian in the same aviary as the one above. There is a light in there so after a short while it found somewhere to settle. This morning I didn't hear the gouldian youngster in the nest so by 10am I couldn't stand it any longer and had too look. DEAD.
Food in the crop, not a mark on it and temps overnight was 4C but it was 15 days old.
There are some days you just shouldn't get out of bed.