Bird Aviary Chat Thread

[gpop1]

That sound like a nice set jak2002003 and there's days when I wish we would have gone with all males. I would like to get back to a point where we know each bird by name like it was in the beginning when one or two nest boxes with eggs was a big deal and the aviary required very little work.

 

[User395221]

I would like to get back to a point where we know each bird by name

I only have 8 budgies and I gave them all names, but I'm not sure I could remember who is who.... (except for the one who used to live inside with my other budgie who died. That bird's name is Miranda, but since he/she moved into the aviary, I'm pretty sure that Miranda is a boy)

 

[yellowherb]

I'm thinking in line with G about the birds. Somehow our budgie population exploded. We are going thru 50lbs of seed every 2 weeks. I struggle to tell the green ones apart and tend not to pull them since I get confused about which green one they are. So we now have a ton of green birds and I really need to get in there and pull a lot of them! Cockatiels are the same. I have my old pairs which I know but I've left some young ones in here and there and they all now look alike to me except a few obvious ones like cinn white face or yellow cheek pearls.

We do not even know our male female balance these days. G and I are thinking we need to get in there and pull, pull, pull. Pull them all and then sort them back out from cages into known pairs or m/f to get a balance back. I think we have too many male budgies and too many female cockatiels. I'd like to get back to about 10 pair of cockatiels and 20 pair of budgies. So that's pulling quite a few birds, 30-40 budgies and probably 15-20 tiels.

And our finches..OMG! They breed like bunnies. I was just in our new aviary extension for cockatiels and zebras and there are baby zebras everywhere. We have probably 15+ pair of adults. 15x 4-5 babies a clutch every 1.5-2 months. That's some crazy math. I have let that population get high on purpose since I was making a switch from small normal zebras to larger English zebras and had some eumo's pop out in the English. So we have a lot of large fancies now which i'll keep as our breeding stock and all the others will be sent off to the pet store.

Not even going to talk about the society finches.

 

[User395221]

If they don't have a breeding box, will they stop breeding? I know nothing about breeding..... That's what I was told, if you don't put a breeding box in with the birds, they won't breed. I suppose it's different when they've already been actively breeding?

What do you do when you've got too many birds? Sell them?

I admired the finches at the bird shop the other day, thought I might like some one day. If I would end up with a finch explosion, maybe I should rethink that idea.

 

[yellowherb]

A friend of mine has a few small aviaries and he breeds gouldians so he also keeps societies. He gives the society eggs to a reptile guy who feeds them to his egg eating snakes and lizards. Although his societies breed a lot he never could get zebras to breed for him.

I think if we removed the unused nest boxes we would have a blood bath. They would try to get into a occupied box. So really unless we sacrifice a lot of chicks and eggs there is no way to remove all the boxes at once. Since we do not plan to remove breeding adults, just the offspring, I hope we can make a large pull without hens fighting.

We have 3 pet stores who buy our excess from us. One of them will take anything and everything we have that's excess, but he pays lowest price.

Maybe not in your location, but over here certain finch breeds at wholesale prices (which is what I give since I hate dealing with the public and would rather sell to stores), prices for green gouldians is $50 wholesale. Some of the others like cherrys and cordon bleus (we only have a pair of each) can get $30-$45 a finch, depending on where I sell them. We found the gouldians to be a pain more than a joy. Just too finicky about everything you have to do with them and timing issues, etc. After about 6 months we gave up and I handed them back with a few additions to my gouldian breeding friend.

 

[gpop1]

If they don't have a breeding box, will they stop breeding? I know nothing about breeding..... That's what I was told, if you don't put a breeding box in with the birds, they won't breed. I suppose it's different when they've already been actively breeding?

What do you do when you've got too many birds? Sell them?

I admired the finches at the bird shop the other day, thought I might like some one day. If I would end up with a finch explosion, maybe I should rethink that idea.

Removing the breeding box should work but you have to remove all of the boxes at the same time or all hell will break loose. So what do you do with the 30 eggs and 30 chicks that are already in the boxes. By the time the 30 chicks fledge the 30 eggs have hatched and you have 30 more eggs.
If you remove the eggs the hens will see the nest as unsafe so they will look for another nest that's proven safe which means the a different hens chicks are in danger of being attacked for the box. The only safe way i could think of would be to switch out the eggs to fakes but that's a very expensive fix. (no idea why they cost so much).

Best hope is during the hottest part of summer they will take a break for a month or two as this is the only time they seem to stop laying completely. Last year when they stopped we also had the snake problem so it might not have been the heat that stopped them so were not sure if they will stop this time.

Selling isn't a problem as we have 3 pet stores that we deal with. We don't like to deal with people so we do wholesale to the pet stores as its hassle free and based on head count. They love the quality of the birds as they are aviary birds so there feathers are in great condition unlike the ones that have been cage breed.
It causes a lot of stress to the birds to be removed them from the aviary unless its done at night and people want to pick and choose rather than buy what we have pulled so its easier to deal with a pet shop that can handle any amount that we bring them. He asked for buttons once so we brought him 80 he kept to his word and took all of them but boy he didn't look happy. Said he made a fortune but he wouldn't do it again as they required there cage cleaned every few hrs or they would start to smell...lol. Now we use a auction or we sell the group as a batch privately when we replace the buttons which we tend to do every 6 months. By replacing the buttons we get a few months off from having to deal with the eggs and we never have to deal with old age.

I love the finches but they will breed even if the nests are removed. Seed cups or anything they can build out of becomes a nest. Good thing is they are not aggressive to each other so pulling there eggs should get us to a point where we have nothing but adults then we can remove a bunch to get the numbers under control.

It seems that some birds require a certain flock number and at least one hen to get the ball rolling before everyone starts to breed. Our friend couldn't get budgies to breed for 8 months until we lent him our most prolific breeder that's constantly double clutching and gave him a bunch of birds to form a flock. Now 5 months on he's got chicks everywhere.

 

[User395221]

I love the finches but they will breed even if the nests are removed. Seed cups or anything they can build out of becomes a nest.

ooh, maybe I won't get finches then. They have some very pretty birds at the bird shop that were getting me thinking that I might get finches one day. It pays to wait and not rush into things.

I'm glad I've never let my birds breed, they don't have a box and I've never seen anybody "getting frisky" or going all clucky like my chooks. They seem happy enough. I hope so.

 

[jak2002003]

You could just keep an all mail group of finches.

 

[yellowherb]

Breeding is a hassle.

I have seen a budgie hen trying to dig a hole to make a burrow to nest in when she couldn't find a box she liked. So they will breed even if you do not want them to. While finches don't dig, they will drop eggs all over the place.

We have had non stop hand feeding now for about 3 months due to various issues like a hen plucking chicks and so forth. I'm sorta tired of it at the moment and so is G. We need a break, but birds do not understand breaks. But that's part of why we are now at the stage of doing a big sell off. We want more manageable numbers again, get to know the birds better and give them names. It's hard to name 20 green birds who all look exactly alike. I bought bird leg bands, they are like tiny rubber bands, so I can band chicks in boxes to try to make pulling after they fledged easy. Turns out that even using a stretchy band, it's darned hard to band them. And finches, forget it.. No way I can mess with teeny little legs like they have to band them.

We have to catch the zebras just as their beaks are starting to turn orange or we miss it completely. They mature so quickly that it's impossible to tell adults from chicks within a few weeks. Idealy if all of our breeders had bands then all unbanded would be selling birds. It's daunting to even think about doing it. Societies, once they fledge, nothing changes about the way they look. Pulling chicks is impossible once they are out of the nest. I'm sure it will be for the cherrys and bleu's too. But at least those parents are banded.

 

[User395221]

I can't imagine ever managing to catch a finch. My budgies are "wild" now, even Miranda, they act like I'm going to kill them when I go into their aviary. At least they are at a reasonable "grabbing" size if I ever needed to catch one, but those little itty bitty flitty finches would be even harder, I imagine.