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Penny W

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  1. Penny W
    If anyone had mentioned bird keeping to me 2 years ago I would have been surprised, it was not something I had ever considered. However, my partner had previously kept budgies and had a hankering to get back into the hobby. He took a sly approach by taking me to Stafford in October 2015 and buying me half a dozen zebra finches for my birthday the following week! - a cunning ploy!
    Anyway I embraced the hobby but never really thought that I would get too involved. I remember Emmy commenting on one of my earliest blogs that 6 zebras will soon become more! How right she was! Advance the clock 22 months and yesterday I caught up all my birds to list them and count them all. The grand total 169!! (that does not include Steve's 90 budgies and the 8 quail!)10 varieties of finch. Some of which I have had successes with, some of which are proving to be a challenge! I have 80 zebras but my breeding results have not been good at all, lots of normal cocks and one normal hen, good lightback cocks but no matching hens. I have done quite well with penguins but would struggle to find a show pair. Fortunately I will be on holiday for the ZFS show in September so I won't hunt around for a few pairs to show, I will try and support our local CBS show in October though.
    I have sorted out my potential breeding team for next year so have birds to go - but not matching pairs as I don't have any! I made a decision earlier this year that I was not going to keep CFWs so have been a bit annoyed that my lightback pair have given me 3 CFW hens! They are nice birds though so I should be able to sell them at Stafford this October.
  2. Penny W

    10 months on

    By Penny W,

    I haven't updated this for nearly 10 months - very lax of me! I still have my zebs - rather a lot in fact (to think that 4 years ago I had none). I bred some late last year as well as this year so have about 100 youngsters - 60 of which have this years rings. I know I need to shift some but I never know who needs to go, maybe I'll wait until they are a bit older?! I have tried some new mutations this year with some creams and one grey cheek cock and one fawn cheek hen. So far the fawn cheek hen has not laid a fertile egg, despite a selection of husbands!, The grey cheek cock is quite prolific - but he has given me a few fawns and CFWs as well as grey cheeks. I have not done so well with my creams, I was told to pair creams to fawns and made up 6 pairs - only one produced chicks, the first round, they had 4, 1 cream and 3 fawn, the next round, they only had 2 of their own, both cream but unfortunately one died. They are good parents, I have had a few pairs who will not feed their chicks so I  have done a bit of chick moving, I try hard to move chicks to nests of different colour pairs so that when they fledge I know who belongs to who!. A tip I got off one breeder is to split ring all birds of the same parentage with the same colur ring. This has proved very useful, I can look at my youngsters and know who breeds the best chicks. 
    Aside from the birds life has been busy with wedding preparations, Sreve and I get married in 3 weeks, it is a bit of an unconventional wedding with me arriving on a motor-trike (so I do not have to wear a helmet) with an bike escort - bout 30 of them! After the wedding we are off to the Isle of man for the TT races for our honeymoon. I'm taking some finches with me as when I advertised some penguins last year a guy in the Isle of Man said he wished he lived closer - I offered delivery and he jumped at the chance!
    I'm intending to put the fawns and creams down again when we go away and see if they breed better having had time in the flights strettching their wings - we'll see. I'm not holding my breath though!
     
     
  3. Penny W
    Today I got 12 new finches (none of which were zebras I'm afraid). We have had 2 bicheno (owl) finches since December and although they built a lovely nest and spent a lot of time in it, they never laid an egg which got me wondering if they were both male. Last weekend when talking to a breeder of bichenos he said to sex them put them in separate cages so they cannot see each other but can hear each other. Males will start to sing very quickly. We caught them up and took them down to the house to watch and listen - the budgies in the bird house drown out finch singing! Within a couple of minutes both birds were singing their hearts out. Our assumption was right - both males! Today we went and got 2 hens (we hope). We also bought 5 pairs of bengalese to use as fosters after a week when my best hen and her mate hatched 5 eggs which they did not feed so they all died. 
    The other finches we bought today were another pair of gouldians as the 2 we have don't seem to like each other! The new ones have settled in well and the new cock seems to prefer the original hen and the original cock seems to prefer the new hen so maybe in the future we will manage to breed some of our own.
    When checking my nest boxes today my best penguin cock was dead in the box with his 3 chicks. Mum appears distracted looking for him and does not appear to be feeding the chicks who a 3 weeks old and have just left the nest box. If she doesn't feed them would I get away with sneaking the chicks into other nests of chicks? Hopefully overnight she will understand she is now a single mum. Fingers crossed.
  4. Penny W

    3 weeks later

    By Penny W,

    I spoke too soon saying I was having a good run on chicks, I had rung 9 zebra chicks when my ZFS rings arrived, 3 have since died and other nests which have hatched have not been fed, or have been thrown out of the nest, I do have one nest with 2 chicks, one I rung last week as he was plenty big enough, the other obviously is not getting enough food - enough to keep alive but not enough to grow - it is tiny, I'm not sure if it will survive. My other finches are doing slightly better - the 4 gouldian chicks are being brought up well by their parents, I have 3 fledged hecks with nests of both cherries and hecks eggs.
    I tried fostering some star finch eggs under a pair of Bengalese, I'm not really sure what to expect as the Bengalese started laying on top of the star eggs. I have fertile eggs in there - are they stars or bengies?? I have to wait and see.
  5. Penny W

    a newbies view

    By Penny W,

    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.
    I spent the next few weeks looking up genetics, colour variations, diet, breeding advice and anything else I could read - if anyone had told me a year ago - even 2 months ago - that my spare time would be spent googling finch information I would not have believed them!
    I joined the Zebra Finch Society and have ordered my rings for birds born next year so am carefully keeping males and females separate until December - I don't want any accidents! (I am a family planning nurse - I am fully aware that accidents happen!!)
    Today we trekked up North and acquired another 10 cocks and 10 hens, I'm not sure that we meant to end up with that many................
    I'm now studying the birds I have for colours, shape etc to make sure that I make up the best possible pairs. I bought a set of 8 breeding cages so will just put down 8 pairs at first - but which ones........ I'm very excited to see what comes out!
    My partner will be building me an outdoor aviary ready for the spring, I am very excited to see it al come together. We are imminently going to move house (solicitors permitting) and so the new bird room has been made and dismantled in kit form so it can be reassembled in a few hours - very exciting.
    I tried to upload some pictures but my compute crashed! Maybe another day.........



  6. Penny W

    All change!

    By Penny W,

    I keep my hen and cock zebras in separate flights. So far it is has been the hens, and the foreigns having access to the outside flight. Today it was time for a swap. the flight cages are designed so this swap can be done without having to catch all the birds so it was just a case of encouraging the hens into one long flight cage and the cocks into another then opening different doors and voila - their accommodation is swapped over. It didn't take the cocks long to realise they could go out into the fresh air which they seemed to really enjoy - and they put themselves to bed when it got dark, I didn't have to chase them back in like I do the hens.
    The widowed hen has worked out that it is her who needs to feed the chicks so they seem to be doing OK. They won't go into the nest box but as it is not cold I'm not too bothered by that


  7. Penny W

    And then there were 4!

    By Penny W,

    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!
     
  8. Penny W

    and there are more....

    By Penny W,

    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 a live chick being fed by the parents. Just waiting to see if the other 3 eggs are good. I have ordered a special torch for checking the eggs but it has not arrived yet - the birds have beaten technology! I'll be interested to see what chicks I get from my first pairing - black cheek he with normal cock. Bit early to tell just a few hours after hatching!!
    My partner has now paired his budgies too so we are setting up a busy maternity unit! Life is going to be busy in the next few weeks.
  9. Penny W

    bird room finished!

    By Penny W,

    We moved into our house 6 months ago and have worked hard since then. We have hardly touched the house but the garden and bird house have had a lot of tie and effort spent on them. Before we moved we were planning on a bird house approx. 8x6'. When we first moved we had to set the birds up in the garage - far from ideal but they were OK. Before we got around to building out smallish bird house we saw a shed being sold off which was perfect, just a bit bigger - well, a lot bigger to be precise - 24 x 12' in fact!. We had to hire a 7.5 ton truck, drive to Sandwich (Kent, 4 hours away) dismantle the shed - which was still full of bird cages, seed etc, etc. The shed was fully lined and insulated and the deal was we took everything away with us! We left at 5am, had dismantled and loaded up by 3pm, home by 7 then an hour to unload and then had to return the van. A long day.
    Before we could begin to reassemble the shed we had to do some major ground works, levelling the garden and digging down so the 12" sleepers that the shed stands on could be buried. For a long time our back garden was a patch of bare earth and mud. Over the next few weeks we painted and reassembled the shed and Steve wired it all up so there are plenty of lights, sockets, extractors etc. Steve is a perfectionist so it is all done to a very high standard. Eventually, about 1 month ago we moved the birds in. They were instantly happier in a light, airy environment. It is easy to clean and a joy to be out there.
    Over the past month we have been working on the outside flights and today the birds had their first taste of outside sunshine, they were a joy to watch. I have recently diversified with finches other than just zebras and now have some silver bills, owls, gouldians, diamond firetails, hecks grassfinches and masked grassfinches (may favourite). The masked grassfinches are the boldest and were quickly out exploring the outside world.






  10. Penny W

    busy week

    By Penny W,

    well, since the weekend there have been ups and downs - maybe more downs than ups :-(
    One nest of 4 CFW chicks, nearly fledged, one died, it looked like it had moved away from its siblings and got cold?, its crop was full.
    Of my 2 first chicks, today I noticed them feeding themselves which cheered me, 2 hours later when I went into the bird room, one of them was dead
    A nest of 5 CFW chicks have all been plucked by one or both of their parents, the hen has also been plucked bald. I have removed the hen and the cock seems to be feeding the chicks OK, I'm not sure if they will regrow their feathers though??
    On the plus side, the pair who hatched their first chick last Saturday now have 4 chicks - so far all doing well, but it is early days.
    I'm expecting my bigger babies to leave the nest in the next few days - they are beginning to look a little cramped in their nest boxes, especially the pair with 6 chicks!
    I'll see what the next week brings.
  11. Penny W

    Confused dot com!

    By Penny W,

    So, trying to sort out some birds to show, some to keep for next years breeding and some to go. Now getting confused! What is the difference between a lightback and a silver?, a fawn and a cream?. I have pied penguins - are they showable? as pied or penguins?? Why do my normal hens have darker bellies than the cocks? I will have to take them out so I can compare them with other peoples birds. 
    My timors have not done well this year, I rang one chick before we went on holiday but it died before we got home, I have now rung a second - but one chick per round is not really increasing my timor stock!
    My australian finches seem to like the hot weather that we have been having. I have rung 4 hecks (but 2 died), 3 firetails  and 2 stars. I lost all my gouldians but have started again with them and have 2 nests of eggs at the moment - fingers crossed. I had 2 cherry chicks but the parents had built the nest low down close to the fence and it attracted the unwanted attentions of one of the local cats and the chicks were abandoned when they were about 1 week old - so annoying. 
    We are currently fostering a racing pigeon who wandered into our coservatory! She has a phone number on her wing so I rang it and the grateful owner is driving down from Derbyshire (I am in Somerset) tomorrow to collect her!
  12. Penny W

    Exciting times

    By Penny W,

    I seem to be having a good run on chicks at the moment, I have a nest of zebras starting to hatch today, I now have 4 Hecks chicks and best of all, my nest of gouldian eggs started hatching today, I know that gouldians are not renowned for being good parents so I hope they will raise their young. I have some Bengalese, but none ready to use as foster parents yet, I spent a long time yesterday trying to sex my Bengalese - but gave up! The star finches have started laying again, I hope they see it through this time rather than abandon the nest.
    I bought a pair of cherry finches today - we now have 13 types of bird between us, 11 different finches, budgies and quails, to think that I started with 6 zebras! 18 months ago we had no birds at all!
  13. Penny W

    expanding outlook

    By Penny W,

    This bird keeping hobby is taking over! Today we went to a bird sale and came back with a pair of Bicheno (owl) finches and a pair of firetails. Both beautiful birds, this is for our aviary scheduled to be up and running this spring, oh, and I managed to acquire 6 more zebras - not quite sure how ;-)
    The pair of finches I put down as I left for holiday had one egg (from 5) hatch yesterday - no others have hatched so I'm thinking they may be no good - well, one baby, 2 parents, it should be well looked after!
  14. Penny W
    I may be new to this game but I am trying to get on top of different mutations, I like the penguins, and have a pair, but they are both quite small so I have paired them with better sized birds with the view to next year crossing the babies and getting some bigger penguins (well, that is the plan). Last weekend I managed to acquire a large penguin cock and have paired him up - but so far, no eggs - we'll see. I also have several split black cheek chicks - with the intention of breeding some of my 'own' black cheeks next year. I know it will be a long journey, if my understanding of genetics is right by crossing 2 splits I should get 25% pure, 50% split and 25% who are not carrying the recessive gene. One chick I have from 2 normal looks like it may turn out to be a black cheek, meaning both parents must be split. I need to wait for him/her to moult out to be sure.
  15. Penny W

    fledglings

    By Penny W,

    My first proper round of babies are beginning to leave the nest now.
    The chick in the picture is pure white (smudge from camera lens over left eye!) - no tear mark - parents are both CFW
    (Shame my camera has a black mark in the centre of the lens!)
     

  16. Penny W

    Flu! (human, not bird!)

    By Penny W,

    Having moved house my body decided that the stresses involved in house moving were too much and my body has gone into meltdown. For the past week I have been almost bedridden with high fevers and feeling rubbish, when I have a window of feeling slightly better I pop out to the birds, check a few cages, then collapse back into my bed - it's rubbish! Steve has been working hard - at his job, then DIY around the new house and keeping on top of the birds, I just hope he doesn't catch this bug off me. Anyway this weekend in a 'better' hour we set up a new cage for all my fledglings. They seem very happy - I have two more to move in with them in the next couple of weeks, I have 2 nests of chicks that have just been rung then another 5 pairs with eggs due to hatch in the next week or so.
    I had 2 nests of chicks last week - of similar ages (luckily). Steve suddenly noticed the cock bird in one cage was trying to take nesting into the box, he looked in - the 2 babies (there were only 2, the other 3 eggs were clear) had been completely buried, their crops were empty so he removed them and put them with the other babies where - one week on they are doing well. I was dying of my virus at that time so would never have noticed
    I would have attached a picture of my fledglings setting into their new cage but it appears the file is too big and I can't work out how to make it smaller!
  17. Penny W
    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 doing better than my partners budgies - of 10 pairs he put down only 4 have started laying
     
     
  18. Penny W

    I'm a Granny (sort of)

    By Penny W,

    12 months ago I had no idea that I would own any birds, in fact if anyone had told me I wouldn't have believed them! BUT, in October I got my first birds. I was impatient to pair up and put one pair down too early to use 2016 ZFS rings. The net result was 2 chicks, only one of those survived. I put a split ring on him so I knew which one he was. Anyway, I paired him up a few weeks ago, result 6 fertile eggs, 2 hatched yesterday and one today (but that baby was dead and the parents through it out), so 3 eggs to go, but whether they hatch or not, I'm still a granny to 2 chicks! (Proud Granny moment!!).
    The birds in the big flight have been enjoying the outdoors, I shut them in at night (with a little persuasion). I haven't let them out the last few days - it's been so windy I think they would have been blown off the perches! Roll on next summer!
  19. Penny W
    I have been very slow to update this blog - not found time to visit the site for a while.
    My breeding seems to be improving - I have actually bred some hens now!! (Still have an excess of cocks though). I have rung my first round of Timors too - there were 4 originally but I am left with 2, I have another nest of Timor chicks a few days old and a nest of Timor eggs too. With my zebras I am doing well with Penguins, I have a few fawn penguin hens so I'm tryong to work out how to get a fawn penguin cock. My thought is that if I put a fawn penguin hen with a fawn cock who is split penguin I might get a fawn penguin cock, the other way I thought of would be to put a fawn penguin hen with a pure fawn cock, then at a later date put any cocks from that pairing (should be visual fawn but split penguin) with fawn penguin hens. I think that is right.
    My other finches are doing quite well, I am breeding hecks grassfinches at a great rate, I also have just had a nest of 5 gouldians fledge, I have 2 other nests of gouldian chicks - one of 3, one of 4. They are only days old so I am well aware that it can all go wrong.
    I currently have a nest with 3 chicks in it - hatched 2-3 days ago. I have no idea what breed they are I have never seen anyone going in and out of the box - but the chicks are being fed. I shall have to wait and see!
    I had a pair of silverbills who raised a chick, it is only now, 2 months on, that I realise that the chick is a grassfinch, not a silverbill at all, they were duped!
  20. Penny W

    moving house

    By Penny W,

    Well, last week saw us moving house. No mean feat with a shed full of birds! Fortunately we were able to get access to the garage the night before the official moving date so we moved the birds then. That night I had a dream that one of the cages of budgies had managed to escape.  My partner went to the  new house with a van load of stuff,  opened the garage door - and out flew a budgie! My dream had been true! The rest of the birds had survived the move and we even had 2 finches and 1 budgie hatch that night . Later that day one of our new neighbours came round asking if we had lost a budgie as one had moved into his conservatory when he had popped into the garden!
    We were planning on erecting our bird house this weekend.  My partner had made it in flat pack form but the weather had other ideas! They will have to stay in the garage for another week!
    I have recently paired some more finches, one of which was a white finch, sold to me as a cock bird, but I wasn't convinced!  I paired him/her up with a definite cock and this weekend The pair have started laying!  I think maybe I was right!
     
  21. Penny W

    My first babies

    By Penny W,

    I'm on holiday, left my birds with my stepson. Today he sent me a picture of my first 2 babies with their parents, fledged and doing well. Very pleased with them. My partner thinks probably clock birds, how long before this is obvious?

  22. Penny W

    my growing babies

    By Penny W,

    Bearing in mind that 6 months ago I would never have believed that I would own zebra finches I am really please with the way my babies are colouring up, hopefully I can upload some pictures




  23. Penny W

    New Year, new chicks

    By Penny W,

    Having paired up in early December we went on our Christmas sunshine holiday leaving the birds in the charge of my stepson. When we left I had 21 fertile zebra eggs, I also had a nest of Hecks eggs and my star finches had just started to lay. I awaited my return from holiday - and my ZFS rings - with anticipation. We got back on Thursday afternoon and, after a much needed cuppa headed out to the bird house to see what was going on. There had been quite a lot of clear eggs and chicks not being fed but I had 9 zebra chicks, one nest of 4, one of 2 and 3 singletons. They were getting quite big so I was glad to see my rings arrive on Friday - 8 chicks were rung then and the 9th was big enough today. As well as zebra chicks I had 1 Hecks chick and 5 good star finch eggs.
    I spent the weekend doing a good clean up of the flights etc as my stepson does food and water but isn't so hot on the mucking out! I don't clean out breeding cages while birds are sitting so didn't go near my star finches but something appeared to have disturbed them as all the time I was in there they were staying out of the nest box. By the evening the eggs were quite cool so I decided to swap them with a nest of clear zebra eggs. By the next morning the zebra eggs with the star finches were stone cold indicating that the stars were still not sitting, the star eggs were lovely and warm. Yesterday afternoon one of the star finches hatched, the question was, will the zebras feed it?? By this morning it was dead and another had hatched, by tonight another had hatched and the one that hatched overnight was still alive - were they feeding it?? I guess tomorrow morning will tell.
    I now have some fertile gouldian eggs and 2 more nests of Hecks eggs, my silver bills have also laid but I think their eggs are clear. I'm looking forward to seeing how I do with the other finches, although they seem to give more challenges than zebras.
    I bred some Bengalese at the end of last year so next winter breading season I will put down some pairs as possible fosters although I would like birds to be parent reared if possible.
    Time will tell.
  24. Penny W

    nice surprises

    By Penny W,

    Got back from holiday today. My ZFS rings had arrived - and so had several chicks! I ordered my rings when I had just 2 cocks and 4 hens, so thought 20 rings would be plenty for my first year - how wrong can a person be?? I now have 22 chicks - from 5 pairs (9 pairs were put down). 2 of the chicks are too big for 2016 ZFS rings but the remaining 20 were all rung tonight! Now to order more as I have another pair sitting! My CFWs are very prolific. My light backs did not seem to know what to do with their chicks and threw them out of the nest, maybe they were too young? - I will give them a break and maybe try again later, maybe split the pairs and see if they look after chicks better with a different partner. We have spent a happy 2 hours in the bird house, there are a few budgie chicks too. Lets face it, who wants to unpack / do the laundry after a holiday??
    Back to work tomorrow
  25. Penny W

    Not a great day

    By Penny W,

    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)