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. :-(
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