What can you tell me about Finches?

[chseeads]

I think my finches all took a vow of celibacy.

 

[smallbluejellybean]

I use to have zebra's years ago, but now I only have canaries.
Alot of people don't relise that canaries are finches too.
I don't think zebra's are rabbits at all. My button quail are more rabbit like.
With any finch all you have to do to make them slow down with the breeding is to buy some of those plastic dummies eggs and replace the real ones with them.
I have two female canaries that are great layers, but horrible mothers. I take their eggs all the time now and replace them with the fake eggs. I give their eggs to more reliable mothers to take care of.
Also with all finches and most birds. If you reduce the amount of day hours in their surroundings they will slow down and even stop producing eggs.
It is good to do this for finches. If they overlay it reduces their life span dramatically.
Another good thing to do is to let them have one clutch every year. They will not breed again till the chicks are fully weaned and have a full set of tail feathers. This could take as long as 6 weeks after hatching. So with the incubation of 2 weeks and 6 weeks raising the chicks - that is 8 weeks of the warmer months gone. Also they only sit on a maximum of 6 eggs. That isn't many, if all survive, especially for first time parents.
The best breeding time with most finches are 2 years to 4 years, so your only looking at only 2 really reproductive years. Usually the first year they do a horrible job and after 4 years they are getting too old and usually only lay a couple or have deformities.

Well that is why I wouldn't consider them rabbits at all.

 

[JHitchcock]

you can find a whole heap of info about finches @ http://www.finchforum.com/ ... some pretty useful stuff on there. Finches are good fun.... that is untill you have more than you could possibly know what to do with.

 

[Skyesrocket]

I checked out the link to the finch forum and read until my eyes ached.

Thanks for the link.

I have had a couple of societies for a while now and came acrossed an ad on Craigslist for a top of the line cage (it's huge and like new) with 2 cordon blues, 1 silver bill, and four others I can't remember the names of all for $50...including the cage and a whole tote full of supplies. That was 2 weeks ago and I have really enjoyed watching their antics. Who would have thought that such small birds could be so interesting?