#finch ask

[flock-talk]

Hello! I was wondering what seeds you'd recommend in a mix for zebra finches? At the moment they get a generic store brand but id really like to feed them a better diet and make my own mix or something similar i cant find anything online about doing so though. Oh and they do get greens and sometimes egg along with their seed mix!

millet varieties, canary grass seed, and niger seeds are the common ones used in mixes which work just fine for finches! During seasons where the bird is moulting or egg laying they may require more energy through fats so seeds like sesame and flax are good options.  Most seeds can be found in the grocery store but some of the more obscure ones (like canary grass and niger) may require ordering online to find them. You’re mainly looking for seeds that are low in fat but high in complex carbohydrates to provide energy, looking for omega fatty acids and other bonus nutritional qualities are things to keep in mind as well.  The fresher the seed the more nutrition it’s going to have, if they’ve been sitting out for weeks on end the seeds will be so poor they won’t even be able to support their own growth let alone a bird, putting a few seeds on a damp paper towel and misting them daily to see if they sprout is a great way to tell if the seeds are fresh and full of nutrients.

[flock-talk]

So I'm getting 4 Orange cheeked waxbills tomorrow. Are they just another type of finch? I tried to look up some help on Google cause I want to take very good care of them. But like Zebra and Java finch info comes up

Also. Do you believe that if you handfeed a finch it'll become and stay tame? I read it's the only way to tame a finch

Waxbills are a type of finch, the orange cheeked waxbill specifically is Estrilda melpoda, in the Estrildidae family which is composed of old world passerines. However, being a finch doesn’t mean that their care is identical to other birds in that family, there are a lot of requirements between the genera that may differ.

Their diet is dominantly grass seeds (canary seed mix + millets), with a lot of leafy greens and sprouted seeds, preferably supplemented with live insects (mealworms are often a good choice).  You should not be hand feeding a baby bird, feeding them formula is very tricky and can easy cause a lot of problems when done by those with no guidance and little experience, typically costing the birds their lives.  If you meant hand feed in that you can just offer them seeds as mature adults, then yes, food is typically a good way to earn trust.  Hand feeding as babies however, should always be left to the more experienced for the health of the birds involved.  If these birds are coming to you still not on solid food 100% they should go to a breeder or vet to be brought up so they can be healthy, it’s too risky to their health to do otherwise.

All birds can be tamed without being brought up with feeding formula, it just takes more time and effort if they’ve never been handled by people before.  The only way for a bird to stay tame is if you give them a reason to be tame, handling them regularly (if they’re comfortable with it, do not forcefully restrain them or push beyond their comfort zones), offering them treats, giving them pleasant experiences with people on a regular basis to show them that there are beneficial experiences to be had with people. Being brought up by people then ignored will cause all of that to go away, the only way to maintain tameness is to continually prove to them that people are worth being around.  There’s information in my FAQ regarding taming birds if you’d like to give that a read!

Here’s some websites with orange cheeked waxbill care information:

http://www.canaryzoo.com/bird%20specie%20orange%20cheeked%20waxbill.htm

http://beautyofbirds.com/orangecheekedwaxbills.html

http://www.finchinfo.com/birds/finches/species/orange_cheeked_waxbill.php

http://www.birdcare.com.au/orange_cheeked_waxbill.htm

[flock-talk]

Hey! So I'm trailing both of my male finches together, so far theres been no fighting so far the only negative behaviour I've seen is the younger finch get pecked at for pulling the older birds tail but otherwise they are eating and allowing each other to be near. Would you say this introduction is going well? They aren't cuddling together like my other finches did right away! Thanks!

Sounds good, as long as they’ve both got their own food dishes, plenty of cover, space to evade one another, and plenty of things to do. Some levels of squabbling are fine but if they are acting quite aggressive changes may need to be made.

[flock-talk]

Can non-parrot species like finches and doves be flight trained at all? Even just to return to the cage? I'm trying my best to educate people (especially potential adopters) on why they shouldn't clip their birdies, but it's a little harder to convince people when I can't advise training and just am like "Birdproof the room and let them have a good time, they'll go back in when they want to."

they definitely can! It can be quite a bit harder in general when the birds aren’t hand raised just because that’s the way finches are, doves are also a lot easier to tame/train than finches in general.  If you wanted to teach them to fly back in to the cage without human interaction you could put a lot of treats in the cage so every time they go back in the cage they get a reward, over time they’d associate the cage door opening or you putting the treats in as “hey time to go in because there’s treats in there” but it would take quite a bit of time to get there.  Both species can be trained to interact with people as well using the same methods as done with parrots, it usually just takes quite a bit longer, once tamed they could be recall and station trained the same as you do with parrots.

Here’s a little video of a flight trained canary (going to quickly add to not go to youtube for anything on canary training, nearly all of them involve really bad methods such as holding the bird in a towel, removing it from the cage, or keeping it somewhere stressed out for a long time until submissive.  You tame and train finches and doves the exact same as you do with parrots, just a lot slower)

[flock-talk]

Hello! I was wondering if you knew anything about zebra finches especially introducing them to one another I have 4 birds (1 male and 1 female with 2 chicks) I want to put the male in with one of the male chicks so i can avoid any more baby birds but he attacks the chick? (The babies are fully fledged and eating on their own) I dont want to have a bird on their own but i don't know what to do to lower his agression

Parents may kill babies for a number of reasons including resource availability, disease or they may actually rip the baby’s feathers off to obtain more nesting materials, sometimes they may also just be terrible parents and kill the chicks or expect the babies to be out of the nest so they can have more eggs.  There may not be a way around this aggression, especially if it is due to a desire to mate.  Make sure the cage is really large so both birds can fly away from one another, multiple food bowls on opposite sides of the cages, plenty of things to hide behind and a great variety of perches so they don’t have to be near one another.  If the aggression doesn’t cease by providing better space, resources and coverage then it would be best to separate them as this is more than likely the parent wanting to have a second clutch but they can’t do that with the chicks still around.  You could either try keeping them separate or keeping the chicks in one cage and parents in another, giving the parents resources to help prevent egg laying such as fake eggs, lack of nesting materials, winter hours, no hormone inducers or seeing a vet to help reduce the hormones, you could also consider splitting the cage with the parents in it so they can be housed together but not able to breed.

[flock-talk]

It's a zebra finch

http://www.petuniversity.com/birds/canaries-finches/zebra-finch.htm

http://lafeber.com/pet-birds/species/zebra-finch/

http://animals.mom.me/zebra-finch-diet-5964.html

http://www2.mcdaniel.edu/Biology/labanimalsweb/azebrafinch/zebrafinches.html

http://www.finchforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=22071

Seeds or pellets, more veggies than fruits (mainly greens) and live feeders such as mealworms on occasion (may be fed dried as well)