It's been a few days since I updated my blog so here we go. My 2 remaining chicks are looking healthy, beginning to feather up but not sure what colour yet!. Of my other 8 pairs down, 7 have eggs, the smallest clutch being 3, the largest 7 (obviously didn't know when to stop!) Yesterday, after a bit of carpentry by my partner we acquired another breeding cage, we put our best normal hen in and the couldn't decide which was the best cock to go with her. We made our decision and put them together,
Well, three of the four eggs hatched but yesterday one of the chicks was dead in the nest, it was well fed but appeared to have been flattened by the parents :-(
The last egg is still in the nest - should I remove it or wait until the parents throw it out??
Of my other pairs I now have 6 pairs with eggs 27 eggs so far! Our candling torch has arrived and it appears that most of the eggs are fertile, maybe I should have ordered more than 20 ZFS rings!!
My finches are definitely doin
I was sold a bird last week and told it was a white, black faced cock. I didn't really want it, but it came as half of a pair, the hen being a normal which is what I was looking for. I'm not convinced it is a cock - to the extent that I have put him/her in my cage of hens and he/she is not creating havoc! I posted a picture on some facebook pages and the general consensus is that it is a hen, possibly grey cheek cfw. Anyone else got any good ideas?
I started my zebra collection with 6 - this has now increased to 38 (I think - but they don't sit still!). Every time we go out we seem to acquire a few more! Last week I paired my best birds and now have 5 boxes with eggs! Tho original pair that I put together laid their first egg 2 weeks ago - I was worried as they didn't seem to want to incubate, however once there were 4 eggs they incubated and today, less than 2 weeks after the last egg I have a chick! I thought it took longer but there is
Today I attended the funeral of a 48 year old work colleague, a distressing time. So nice to get home and spend some time with the birds. Very therapeutic cleaning cages, replacing seed and water etc. (I never would have believed this 3 months ago!)
My 'couple' are still busy incubating their 4 eggs - they stopped laying 2 days ago so I'm expecting news in about a fortnight (I think)
There are now 4 eggs and one or both of the finches is in the nest box at all times. Fingers crossed that the eggs are fertile. Time will tell.
We are off to the Welsh National Show this weekend, just to see what is out there. This finch hobby is a bit addictive!
Well, today there was an egg in the nest box - but neither finch was in there and it felt quite chilled - is this normal?? Should they not be making an effort to keep the egg warm?? Or do they not incubate until they have laid the whole clutch??
Last week we looked at possible pairings for the finches, think we have made the right decision - but plenty of time to change our minds - have moved them into different cages - double breeding cages, currently got 2 hens in one side and 2 cocks in the other with a solid divider between. Mind you, today I found one of the cocks peeking around the end of the divider to see the hens - and one of the hens flirting back! I don't want them breeding quite yet as I want to use my 2016 zfs rings when I
About this blog
Well, I got my first 6 finches at Stafford in October - just before my birthday - I didn't know that I wanted to take up bird keeping as a hobby but there it was - my birthday present! My partner used to keep budgies but gave them up when he got divorced but wanted to get back into the hobby. His thoughts - if he has budgies and I have finches I can clean out his cages when I do mine (a typical man!). So there I was, the proud owner of 2 cock and 4 hen zebra finches.
The title may give a clue to this 'blog'
I have no idea why this has been happening this year but my birds have decided to share nests and some have even turned into little 'Lucifers''
The first incident took place a while ago when one of my diamond doves decided it wanted to share one of the zebra finch's nest. The zebra finches had eggs in the nest and were incubating them and whenever one of the finches left the nest to feed in hopped the diamond dove and it cuddled up to the finch that
I'm beginning to believe that the two adult Heck Finches I have must be related to the Gremlins
They seem to have this delight in tossing their newly hatched chicks out from their nest.
This time they had 6 eggs in their nest - 4 chicks had hatched out and when I checked the birds this morning I discovered 3 of the chicks had been tossed from the nest and were dead. (I do have a photograph of this but it's just for my own records and I'm not posting it here - not a nice thing to find)
First Photo: this is Patch taken today 13th April 2015.
This is a little information about Patch's Siblings.
This is Storm and Snowflake on March 14th 2015
This is them today 13th April 2015
I had just finished hand rearing Snowflake and Storm a few days ago (they are Patch's siblings from the parents' previous brood) and was relieved they had survived after mum and dad had stopped feeding them.
They had hatched out on the 24th February and on the 2nd March it beca
I know I have already posted about this on the forum but I want to keep a record and thought the best way to do this using a 'blog' entry.
I've had this pair of Hecks since last year but they were not last years birds.
The hen was always laying eggs but she never incubated them.
Then surprise, the last lot she laid (6eggs) they decided to incubate them. The only difference this time was Instead of the usual nesting material I use I gave them coconut fibre. I was surprised just how quickly
Some of the information here has already been posted in a previous 'Blog' but I decided to start at the beginning from the day Billie hatched and this photograph was taken approx. 5 minutes after Billie had hatched out from the egg.
(As I don't know the sex of the chick yet to make things simpler I'll refer to Billie as - he. )
For the first 9 hours I left him in the incubator along with the nine Chinese Painted Quail eggs that hadn't yet hatched out.
At 9pm that evening I transferred B
All here at last is the final part. All wired up and paired up.
Only 2 out of the 13 cages didn't work but everything now working fine,
I'm really pleased with finished item, being honest better than I anticipated.
I know it's only a short time but I've noticed a difference in the birds they seem more alert, if that the right word.
Pic at top is of the timer/ dimmer in case someone is interested in getting one,
Hope you all enjoy pics as I did putting this all together,
Trevor.
Best of plans can go awol and mine did, my daughter decided to give birth 3 weeks early so had to abandon plans.
Last weekend managed to get back to things and cleaned out the last 5 cages.
Today the 5 cages are back into position, led lights fitted and wired + tested.
So tomorrow it's making up the circuit, fitting timer, stand back and switch on, results will be posted tomorrow night + pics.
Oops forgot, pair up as well.
Trevor.
This is the last photo taken of the cockatiel 'chick' inside the egg taken last night (Jan. 16th) at 11pm on the 17th day of incubation.
This morning (Jan.17th ) I checked the incubator as usual at 7.30 am and everything was normal-- no changes --egg was in the same position as last night.
About 9a.m. I got out my camera to take the first photo of the day to candle the egg on the 18th day of incubation. - That's when I got a shock!! the egg was broken!!
No! not smashed but in two halve
I've had a mouse caught in 1/2X1/2 wire where it couldn't go in or out so me being me rescued it and set it free on my way to school.Now where it gets interesting I sat in the aviary feeding quail meal worms when a black figure scaled down the wire... a big dirty rat so out the humane rat trap and next day there was an 8 inch rat caught. There was no way I was letting him out so I drowned him. The day after a zebra lost her tail, at first I taught it was the other zebra's but I set the trap up
As the title says 'What an end to 2014! Not only have I crashed my car (black ice on road) but my cockatiels have decided to follow my example and as the photo above shows, crash some eggs!!
This is the 2nd egg they have broken they still have two eggs left in the nest that, so far, are OK. (edited to say she has laid another egg- so that's 3 eggs in nest now)
This blog is about what I've decide to try to do with the broken egg but I will be very surprised if it works.
I really don't k
Here are 3 photo's of a bank of 5 linked up,
This is a temp set up just for testing purpose and it worked, well pleased,
So at the mo I've got a bank of 5 linked together and a bank of 3 wired but not linked up yet,
So all's left is a bank of 5 to be cleaned and fitted with led's,
Fingers crossed next weekend,
Hope you like them,
Trevor
Having cleaned 3 cages out, I have wired them up only on a individual test a all worked ok.
Now today I've cleaned out 5 more cages and tomorrow I shall be wiring these up + testing them.
If all goes ok only 5 more to clean out and test plus connect all together.
Gradually getting there.
Photo's possibly tomorrow to view so far.
Thanks for reading.
Trevor
This top photograph of the nest was taken this morning (29thNovember 2014)
This nest of my Pied BC contained 5 eggs -three of the eggs have hatched, only one more egg is fertile.
After I downloaded the photograph into my picture folder I candled the photo using the two methods I use.
Photos:
1. The above photo cropped to show position of one of the chicks
2. photo 1. candled using the first sequence I used to candle the eggs
3. photo 2. cropped to enlarge image.
4. photo 3.
All,
During the next few weeks I shall be completing a big task in my shed and will be posting blog plus pic's
Got to finish cleaning cages out first then we're ready to make a start,
I've done some prep work which takes time and you can't really see what i've done but it's necessary,
I look forward to my next blog,
Trevor
