Bird Aviary Chat Thread

My experience
Parakeets or Australian parakeets to be more exact are vicious little guys, these are also what most people refer to as budgies. They will kill other birds especially if they feel their nest is in danger. We used to have parakeets until one killed cockatiel chicks even while the cockatiel parents were trying to fight her off. Now we have English budgies. English budgies are a different bird than parakeets in temperament and size.

English budgies and parakeets look alike. The difference is that the English are bred for show, they are much larger and tend not to be as vicious, they also tend to be more heavily feathered or longer feathered. They are more easily tamed than parakeets too. Due to being handled by show judges, English have been bred to be more docile and calm. Each bird is a individual, of course, but as a stereotype if you want a pet that looks like a parakeet, do research, find a breeder and get a English. Broody English hens can be as vicious as parakeets.

In our large aviary we had (just took some to the pet store so it's been thinned out), a pair of moustache parakeets, 24 zebra finches, 70 adult English and various chicks. We also have button quail as ground cleaners.

Cockatiels ARE good for mixed aviaries, unless someone else picks on them. They will not pick on other birds. Only the male cockatiels will argue but I have never had any out of my flock of 30 draw blood on each other. They argue if another male gets too close to their nest boxes. Even if you do not breed cockatiels, the old ones enjoy sitting in a box and on cool nights nearly all of our birds will go into their boxes for the night. A few will take "sentry" duty while everyone else is snug and warm.

Zebras can be really nasty to other small birds. A male zebra nearly killed a cut throat male finch because he dared to look at their nest. I now house Zebras by themselves, only zebras with them. Zebras will argue and fight amongst themselves over nest material or good nest sites. I have not had any kill each other yet, but I can imagine it CAN happen. Zebras will go into a nest at night. They are not perch sleepers but enjoy being snug and safe. Society finches also go into their nests to roost at night.

Personally I love Zebras and I never thought I would say that! They are very smart little birds and easily tamed. In my English budgie aviary when zebras tried using nest baskets the budgies destroyed the nests as quick as they could build them. Finally the zebras, and this did not take long, figured out if they build between OCCUPIED budgie nest boxes, the budgie hens inadvertently guard the zebra nests from other budgies out to do damage. It's only young budgies who do the damage, they are just curious and playful and mean no harm. If you have males and females, the population WILL explode with zebras, weather you want it to or not.


This is my box of Ugly :)
We put the zebra chicks into the budgie aviary to separate them from our breeder adults after they weaned. They immediately proceeded to build nests and populate the budgie aviary with chicks. When we pulled the zebras from the budgies to take to the pet shop we deal with, we had to pull the chicks too and we are currently hand feeding them. All 11... And let me tell you, NOTHING poops more than a box of finch chicks. I love hand feeding finch chicks!! It will be hard selling these chicks. by the time they are weaned they will be mobbing our hands and flying all over us.
 
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Wow... I don't envy you... you have you work cut out hand rearing all those chicks!!!

They will turn into very cute hand tame pet finches... if you want to sell them you can get a good price as they are hand reared and so tame.

Good job!!!
 
My budgies aren't vicious :( I know it isn't recommended to let them colony breed, though because they can kill babies/each other. I've also read that they can pick on weiros (cockatiels) if you put them in with them. Like my other birds, they have different personalities to each other. My Dorothy was such a sweet bird, I miss her.

Kookaburras are really territorial and mean, too. They'll kill other birds. They look so nice, but they aren't....

Those chicks are adorable. You couldn't mistake what those open beaks mean, could you?
 
Wow... I don't envy you... you have you work cut out hand rearing all those chicks!!!

They will turn into very cute hand tame pet finches... if you want to sell them you can get a good price as they are hand reared and so tame.

Good job!!!

I don't envy us either. Ive got to hand feed 2 budgies and the pile of finches before I go to work. Finches are strange as there crop are on the sides so where a budgie can be crop feed in 10 seconds a finch has to be feed slowly by mouth. The interesting thing is they have glow in the dark spots on there beaks so there parents can see where to feed. They are also noisy so once the first one gets feed they will go into a begging frenzy.
They wont remain hand tame long as they will go into the aviary to be fully weaned where they will learn from other adults,
 
My budgies aren't vicious :( I know it isn't recommended to let them colony breed, though because they can kill babies/each other. I've also read that they can pick on weiros (cockatiels) if you put them in with them. Like my other birds, they have different personalities to each other. My Dorothy was such a sweet bird, I miss her.

Kookaburras are really territorial and mean, too. They'll kill other birds. They look so nice, but they aren't....

Those chicks are adorable. You couldn't mistake what those open beaks mean, could you?
We colony breed, but with English budgies. Everyone says you can't do it, but I've always been a bit of a maverick haha. There are occasional problems, but its expected and we try to keep a eye out on anything developing.

I could not figure out what a weiro was. Happy you said they are cockatiels. What a cool name. I am going to start calling mine weirdo's when I talk to them now lol. See if my chatter box males who listen to me will one day start shouting out weirdo's. I added the D just to play on the name :)
 
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I could not figure out what a weiro was. Happy you said they are cockatiels. What a cool name. I am going to start calling mine weirdo's when I talk to them now lol. See if my chatter box males who listen to me will one day start shouting out weirdo's. I added the D just to play on the name :)
Little kids often do that when they are learning the word. You have to correct them: "weiro, not weirdo". I think weirdo fits, they are such little clowns, the performance never stops.
 
Yesterday I bought a pair of zebra finches and Shaft tails... I'm finally getting on with starting my aviary and we are going to get a welder to come in next week to do some metalwork on it.
 
Weiros
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After taking some English budgies and zebras to the pet store I came home with a plumhead(cherry) finch pair and a pair of cordon bleu's. G was not impressed. We have had a cold snap and a lot of temperature fluctuations outside so right now I have the gouldians and bleu's in the house as well as a few budgies (set aside for a friend) and the box of baby zebras. We are trying to figure out how to deal with breeding finches with what we already have going.

The pet shop guy gives me deals on what he wants me to breed. He traded out my little zebras for some nice big English zebras who carry blackface, 1 for 1. I already have some but more never hurts lol.

We have a old storage shed off to the side of the deck, G has wanted to tear down for years now but my chickens use it to lay their rare eggs. Plus I keep hay in there and other stuff. It's the only spot left we could build a finch aviary where we can sit and enjoy it. Neither of us want a production facility here, if we can not enjoy the birds by sitting on the deck and watching them, we do not want them.

We are thinking of building a entrance area onto the cockatiel aviary and putting some finches in with our "weirdos". Since the cockatiel aviary is straight and the door is on one end I don't want to put finches in without a secondary door in case they go into a flight frenzy and fly out. To do that our old finch aviary/cage thing will have to be moved or go all together. It's just not one of our better projects and is hard to use.

This is our elevated chicken hoop coop being built by G. Things like this would be brilliant for finches if in a good climate or just for partial parts of the year. I'd but a cage on the back of it for entry and exit, then build doors in the back of the hoop coops for getting into the flights. They could be joined up like M shapes.
 
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cold miserable day in florida. We had 2 cold days so I thought winter was over.

Had a opps with the baby finches we were hand raising. We put unprocessed cotton in the nest were we were hand feeding and in hind site that was a dumb mistake. Being hand feed they are getting a lot more liquid then they would from there parents thus there stools are wetter and cotton holds the moisture. One morning we woke up to wet cold finches and it went rapidly down hill from there. Never had this problem before with wood chips and didn't realize it would be a problem until it was to late. Never would have thought that in less than 24hours they could have soaked the cotton. Its upsetting but there was no option but to hand feed so im not going to get to upset. Its funny you never remember the 100 health birds that hatched with in the last few months but you can not forget the ones that you lost.

Cherry finches are fun. They refused to use a nest basket so we tried other types of store bought nests and the male was determined that he was building his own. Poor old boy worked for 3 days and had nothing to show for it so joking with the wife I told her to make him a nest. She grabbed some dried out grass and wove a nest base then jammed it in the branches. The finch landed on the nest base and I told my wife hes over there laughing but with in 10 minutes he's hard at work making it into a nest.
2 days later its a full woven basket and the female layed a egg. This looked like a success until a cold front brought 50 miles a hour guests of wind and the top came off the nest. We tried to assist with some tie wraps but it was to little to late.
Well he went to rebuild and the female was having nothing to do with it so she picked out a finch woven cup that I had attached to a branch. The male was having nothing to do with that idea but I guess she had word with him. Now hes out there weaving a top on the cup under her watchful eye. I plan to drop the covers if they forecast strong winds this time.

Gave 5 budgies to a friend as he wanted some with violet genes and a sea foam. He dropped of 5 show birds that hes been unable to breed. Im not sure how old they are but there big lazy birds. Hopefully some time in a aviary building up there flight muscles and a unlimited supply of partners can get them motivated so he can get some of there genes back in future chicks. We did warn him that aviary life can be hard on a bird but we are keeping a very close eye on them for signs of distress. They seem to be ok so far.
 

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