Some News

Well, I have some news.  This may (or may not) come as a surprise, but I've decided to take a break from bird-keeping for the time being.  I'm not leaving the hobby forever.  I do plan to get more finches in a couple of months.  But for now, I'm finding myself stressing and worrying too much about my birds, especially considering all the problems that have been going on lately.  I haven't mentioned all of them, but the two worst ones have been finding a beheaded (!!) hatchling in the floor of one of my cages, and then turning around (literally) to find two parent birds feasting on an egg ... one that had a still-developing chick in it.  I can't even describe how disgusting that was. I ran out of the room, gagging.  :-( Those two incidents were, unfortunately, the last straw for me.  I don't know what in the world got into them.  Zebra finches can be pushy and bossy and fussy, and I can deal with that, but between the nest abandonments, chick tossing, and now chick mutilations, I've had enough for now.

As of 6/24/12, all of my birds have found new homes.  I am totally birdless.  :-(  I was going to keep the societies, but then decided that I'll just get some more at the bird fair in August.  If I'm going to take a break, I wanted to take a "complete" break for the time being.

In the meantime, we've given the bird room a thorough cleaning and repainting, which it needed.  It's now a TV/sitting room, and later when I do get some more society finches, I'll put one or two of my flight cages in there.  It'll be on a much smaller scale this time.  I did keep 90% of my cages and the cage stands, so if I ever do decide to set the entire room up again, I can do so without having to re-buy everything.  But I don't have any plans to do that at the present time, even with societies-only.  I also don't have any plans to get any more zebra finches, even though they're my absolute favorite finches of all.

Sigh. I miss my birds, and feel totally lost without them. :-(  

Abandoned Nest :-(

Pearl and Smudge abandoned their two chicks.  :-(  One was tossed from the nest during the day (we sleep days due to Robert's work schedule), and it was too late when I found it.  Its crop was empty.  The other chick was still in the nest, alive, but also had an empty crop.  I tried to handfeed it, but since its eyes are open, it could see that I'm not one of its parents, and it flat refused to eat.  So I moved it to my societies.  So far they're taking care of it, but we'll just have to take it an hour at a time.  I'd say its chances are 50/50 at this point, assuming there is no damage from going too long without food. There's no obvious reason why they would've abandoned the nest, but who knows what goes on in their little "bird brains". So frustrating! :-( Edited 6/17/12 to add that it didn't make it. :-(

Just Some Notes To Myself

Societies in my office (bottom M/M/M trio) have 2 eggs belonging to Breeze and Sprinkles, and 1 egg that belongs to Tangerine and Domino (marked with a dot).  Their nestling's bio parents are either Tip & Echo (unlikely) or Patches & Sandy (very likely).

Top M/F/F society trio in my bird room has eggs belonging to Shelly & Ghost (1), Bambi & Creamsicle (1), and Blizzard & Storm (2).

Middle M/F/F society trio in my bird room has 3 eggs belonging to Flower & Alaska.  Flower will not incubate.  :-(

Previous Pairs:
Blizzard & Storm
Bagel & Kristy
Domino & Tangerine
Alaska & Flower
Ghost & Shelly
Sprinkles & Breeze
Freckles & Copper
Creamsicle & Bambi

New Pairs:
Creamsicle & Copper (experienced dad; new mom)
Sprinkles & Copper (experienced dad; new mom)
Blizzard & Bambi (both new)
Bagel & Tangerine (experienced mom; new dad)
Ghost & Breeze (experienced dad; new mom)
Alaska & Storm (experienced dad; new mom)
Domino & Kristy (experienced dad; new mom)
Freckles & Sandy (experienced mom; new dad who's the son of the very first zebra pair I had, but STILL haven't gotten any youngsters from him!)
Flower & Creamsicle (experienced dad; new (and problematic) mom)
Shelly

Fledgling!

One of the zebra babies (bio parents: Frostie & Streak) that was being fostered by one of my M/M society finch pairs just left the nest!  It's a cutie patootie with a wild hair-do! LOL! :-)  The photos are a little dark, but I didn't want to startle it with the camera flash. :-)

Egg Relocation

Moved four of Alaska and Flower's abandoned/never incubated eggs to Frostie and Streak's nest. The four newest ones could be viable. The other eggs in their nest had been ignored too long and were drying up. Musical Chairs/Nests, anyone? :-S

Sandy and Patches' two hatchlings (being fostered by one of my M/M society pairs) are doing fine.  If I listen very, very closely, I think I can hear them begging already. :-)

Pearl and Smudge's two hatchlings are doing fine as well.

Another Switcheroo

Sigh! The M/M society foster pair's (on the right-hand side of the cage) eggs AGAIN appear to be DIS (3) and infertile (1).  They're now fostering two newly-hatched chicks belonging to Sandy and Patches (zebra finches).

Sandy's been having trouble with egg-binding (another of the females we got at the bird fair from that same seller, interestingly enough), and at the same time, Patches started plucking her, probably trying to mate when she most likely wasn't "in the mood".  I re-paired Patches with another hen about 3-4 weeks ago.  Sandy's eggs candled as being infertile, but I left them in her nest to help get her out of egg-laying mode.  Little did I know that she replaced (probably ate) two of the eggs with two fertile eggs!  They hatched within the last 24 hours.  Since her nest was still lined with the dangerous-to-chicks nesting materials (wasn't expecting youngsters so I hadn't gotten around to changing it), totally re-doing her nest would mean taking a huge risk of her abandoning the two chicks.

So I moved the two chicks to the M/M society's nest, and removed two of their DIS eggs to make it appear that the eggs had hatched.

Between removing Sandy's nest and her mate being re-paired some time ago, she should be out of breeding mode for awhile.  That'll give her time to rest up and re-build her calcium reserves, and the chicks will be taken care of by the fosters.  Problem solved!  :-)  (I felt bad about taking her chicks, but under the circumstances (her being exhausted and the unsafe nesting materials that there's no way to feasibly change out), it's for the best.)

I'm keeping an eye on them (they're here in my office).  One of the societies hopped right into the nest immediately and started feeding them.  The other is studying the new arrivals in between loading up on food, so I'm sure he'll be in the nest as soon as his turn to sit comes up.  :-)

I don't think I'll be buying any more zebra finches from that particular seller, given the problems with egg-binding.  It could be just a coincidence, but it sure is odd.  A genetic defect with his zebra finches, maybe?, considering that I haven't had any problems with his society finches.

Sometimes I wish society finches had all the gorgeous mutations that zebra finches have.  They're much easier to care for, far less problematic when breeding, and they all get along with each other without squabbling.  It's crossed my mind to change over to societies only, but I don't know that I'd ever be able to part with my zebra babies!  :-/

Oh!  I can't remember if I posted about it or not, but Stormy (cockatiel) is living at my sister's house for the time being.  The allergy problem was getting worse.  :-(  My sister just lives about 3 miles away, so we can still go see Stormy whenever we like.

A few of the lovely itchy red blotches: