Zebra Finches

[joanm]

My sis and I went to the bird fair yesterday and met some interesting people! It was pretty amazing; they had every kind of bird you could imagine, except chickens of course. One guy had baby parrots in incubators which was kind of fascinating and sad at the same time. Something about a helpless young creature without its (real) mom doesn’t seem natural to me. Although I don’t doubt the guy takes excellent care of his birds. Anyway, I purchased a pair of Zebra Finches to add to my menagerie. I’ve always wanted this little bird; they are perpetual motion and fun to watch. I know they don’t bond to people, but I wanted to know if anyone has one that is a little tame.

 

[fowlweatherfriends]

Hi,
I had a pair. They never became "tame" for me. They would however stop and listen to me if I talked to them in a certain manner. My experience, sad to say, was not a good one with them. They constantly laid eggs in their nest (good layers), but they always kicked out the egg after it started to develop. And if a baby made it out of the egg, they them proceeded to kick it out of the nest, thus killing it. I did a lot of reading and research about them, and what I found is that some will never become good parents. Hopefully yours will get the hang of it but you may want to be prepared to see little squooshed eggs or little tiny baby birds laying dead on the bottom of the cage.

I am so sorry to seem unpositive, but that was my experience-yours may be different. I finally had to give them to someone else as I really couldn't stand seeing the babies being killed repeatedly. Other than that I think they are cute and adorable.

 

[Frozen Feathers]

I had a pair when I first moved in with my hubby. They were pretty, but never really got tame. They did however hatch a clutch of eggs and I did get the babies pretty tame. They would sit on our fingers, but I wouldn't trust them to stay.

 

[Dom'sHEns]

I had a pair a few years back...they were pretty tame althought i dont recomend taking them out of the cage to play.

The female layed eggs wile the male helped construct the nesting material. And a few weeks later we had 3 featherless heads poping out of the nest cheeping like mad! It was cute at first...my daugher was so excited. HOWEVER! in about two months my family of 5 turned into 109 birds.

I almost lost my mind! thankfully I have a friend in the petshop busisness that was will to take the extra birds off my hands and sell them!

No more zebra finches for me!

 

[joanm]

109???!!!

I don't want 109! Looks like I'll have to seperate Frank and Lola!!!

 

[ilroost]

i had the same thing happen to me as DOM i started with 2 pairs and had 37 birds before you knew it they are very easy to breed

 

[theOEGBman]

Same thing happened here too,lol. I got a pair first, a beautiful pair of chestnut flanked white zebra finches. My grandma loved them so much that she got a pair of the same color. Her Bro-in-law built her a big beautiful aviary so we got 2 more pairs. Just normal greys. We put those 8 in the aviary and put up a bunch of nest. They were so beautiful on their bamboo perches but we never did see babies. I got in there and went checking through nest and expected to find nothing. I found 3 fledglings and 5 newly hatched chicks! We got up to 38 finches, and then cold hit and most of them died within 2-3 days. Now I have pigeons in that aviary, but my grandma always talks about how she misses her finches. I will be sure to get her some new ones soon, my pigeons are getting a new home.

Oh, and they never did tame down,lol.

 

[okiechick57]

I have two now.......sittin on 5 eggs.they just had 2 babies ,one died early on, and the other was doing really well.started to feather out and flew the nest....then died,so hopin it goes better this time.....I have heard they are very hard or next to impossible to tame..........

 

[jessied1227]

When we lived in Phoenix, I bred and sold companion birds as a small side income, and had a couple pair of Zebra finches. Zebras can be crazy prolific breeders. Like someone mentioned before, I also had a pair who were just a nightmare with babies and eggs. I ended up buying a couple pairs of society finches to take over their eggs and babies when the Zebs abandonded them.

We had one zebra finch that I hand fed after it was abandoned at about 13 days of age, and it was exceptionally tame while we kept it separate, but as soon as we put it in the communitt flight, the tameness was gone. None of the birds were ever overly frightened of me when I went into the flight. We started with two pairs of breeders and we sold over 100 babies the first year.

Good luck with your new finches.

Jess