Hello from Melbourne!

28 Oct 2011, 22:21

Hi everyone,
I am a recent Zebra finch breeder (as of Feb) and have inherited Richard Zann's colony of 100ish wild-type birds. I'm a PhD candidate at La Trobe University looking at the effects of maternal stress on offspring sex ratio in Zebra finches. As Richard Zann tragically died during Black Saturday, I don't have many people to ask questions about breeding finches, so I'm hoping that you kind people will help me out!
I will probably be selling/swapping wild-type (as 'pure' as you can get since many were wild caught or offspring of wild caught birds) in the near future.
Cheers
Niki

28 Oct 2011, 22:42

Welcome to you and your flying mice

.

Richard's passing was a great loss to aviculture. I had contact with him in my student days in the early 80s as an up and coming geneticist who was trained using zebbies for genotyping, a mate of mine later went to study further with him apparently (after Rob had dropped out of our environmental science teacher course). Rob was a zebra mutation and genetics freak, developed several new mutations but he always had wild type in his pride of place aviary. BTW if you ever come across Rob Suter in your research I'd love to hear from him again, he'd be in his early 50s by now

.

You have big shoes to fill and a wonderful legacy in Richard's flock. I wish you all the best - and you'll have plenty of takers here for any surplus pure wild type zebbies.

29 Oct 2011, 00:43

gday Niki welcome to the forum..pete

29 Oct 2011, 06:21

Hi, welcome to the forum

29 Oct 2011, 07:02

Welcome to the forum niki.

29 Oct 2011, 09:58

I did my honours at Latrobe and well remember Richards flock, you really have inherited an iconic flock of birds. Welcome aboard

29 Oct 2011, 11:53

Welcome to the Forum. Doing a PhD and looking after 100+ birds you must be busy.
LML

29 Oct 2011, 12:57

Thanks for the welcome, its wonderful to hear that many of you are familiar with Richard Zann. I never got to meet him, but by all accounts he was a great person.

Yes, they keep me very busy!!! At last count I had 97 adults, 3 fledglings and 4 chicks! Fortunately, I have a great team of animal techs to help out with day to day running of things, but I'm still having to come in every day to check up on them etc (no rest for the wicked! I've even started having dreams about the damned things!). A lot of Richards flock are getting old and I had excess males, so I've put about 17 pairs together in hopes that they would start breeding, and slowly but surely, they have. I've also bought some supposedly 'pure' normals from a breeder; I'm breeding them with some of Richard's stock, so we'll see if I end up with any mutations.

If any of you are in Melbourne, you are more than welcome to pop by La Trobe and check things out- it would be great to meet fellow finch fanciers, and you may have a tip of two for me!

Niki

29 Oct 2011, 13:37

I have very fond memories of Richard as after my honours I was contemplating doing a PhD with him (never eventuated as life got in the way somehow

), he was nice enough to spend quite a few days with me going through his research and options for further studies (this was 20 years ago), your post actually bought me to tears as I hadn't heard of his passing being pretty much out of touch with that part of my life now.

29 Oct 2011, 14:27

maz wrote:I have very fond memories of Richard as after my honours I was contemplating doing a PhD with him (never eventuated as life got in the way somehow ), he was nice enough to spend quite a few days with me going through his research and options for further studies (this was 20 years ago), your post actually bought me to tears as I hadn't heard of his passing being pretty much out of touch with that part of my life now.

Richard died beside his wife and daughter in Kinglake. Not sure exactly where the house was but apparently it was near Brian Naylor's in the section of town that was basically destroyed.