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Penny W

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Blog Entries posted by Penny W

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Penny W
    Well, I have now actually bred a reasonable number of hen zebras. Unfortunately so far I have no normal hens, so my about 20 normal cocks will have no part in my show team for current year bred birds (if I decide to show at all). I have lots of lightback hens, and one lightback cock, several fawn hens and only one fawn cock. The only variety I have pairs of are penguins - I have lots of them!. My best, most prolific pair from last year have not repeated their success this year. The first round - 2 chicks, both thrown from nest, second round 3 chicks, 2 thrown from nest and 3rd removed and fostered with the lightbacks, 3rd and final round, just 2 chicks again, all was going well for 4 days then today one dead chick - empty crop so I have removed the other chick and put in a box with some similar age normal.
    My other finches are doing well, I have now bred 11 gouldians, about 15 hecks, and eventually some Timors. This week I had a nest of cherry finches fledge, and yesterday we spotted 2 young chicks that we were not sure of. I wasn't aware of any other nests. After close watching we realised that the star finches were shadowing these young chicks and feeding them, I hadn't realised they even had eggs! Also this week we have had a nest of diamond firetails hatch - not counting my chickens (or firetails) yet, I've never had a firertail fledge before!
    The chick that was brought up by the silverbills that I mentioned in my last entry has a bib like a hecks but its beak has never gone orange but has stayed grey. Maybe it is a hybrid? One of the silverbills has died (never knew which was the hen and which was the cock).their adoptive chick is devoted to the remaining silverbill and follows it around everywhere, it is very sweet to see!
  4. Penny W

    Yes, I'm still here

    By Penny W,

    it's  been a while, probably 6 months since I updated my blog so I thought I ought to write something!
    I'm currently concentrating on breeding my zebras, the aim is to finish breeding them by the end of April rather than carrying on until October like last year. I paired up early December and went away over Christmas and new year with about 15 pairs down. When I got back from holiday I found I had several pairs sitting on clear eggs. 4 pairs had chicks, 3 lots of 3 and a singleton. One of the sets of 3 had been brought up singlehandedly by Mum as Dad had died when the chicks were just 2 days old. I spent my first weekend after my holiday sorting my pairs again and trying again. I have now rung 34 chicks with another 10 or so chicks just hatches and a dozen or more good eggs in nests. 
    My timors are a proving to be a bit of a challenge, I only have 3 hens so all are paired up. Pair 1 hatched 2 chicks and didn't feed them, they then laid good eggs again but have given up sitting on them. The other 2 hens did nothing for the first month, I then swapped the cocks over and one pair now have 4 eggs - I think they might be clear - but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt for the time being and letting them sit a little longer.
    I tried using Bengalese as fosters but that seemed a waste of time. I have never managed to get my bengies to bring up anyone else's young. Before we went away I had a pair of zebs with 7 good eggs, they were a good pair of zebs so I moved 3 eggs to a pair of bengies replacing their own eggs. They never hatched them, the eggs were still there, cold when I returned from holiday. 
    I put down a pair of birds which (I thought) were a fawn penguin hen and a fawn cock bird who is split penguin. Result - 3 fawn pied cocks! Where did the pieds come from??? I was hoping to get a fawn penguin cock! I have another penguin pair who seem to have produced a pied. There must be some link between penguin and pied. 
    I've had a few pairs of my foreign laying in boxes in the flight. I managed to get 3 diamond firetails hatched, one died before it fledged, the other 2 died, one at 6 weeks, one at 10 weeks. I was disappointed, the parents have gone on to lay a clear round since so still waiting....... I have 5 nests of gouldians and 1 nest of hecks in the flight, so far 3 rung hecks and 3 day-old gouldians. Fingers crossed........
  5. 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!
  6. Penny W

    update

    By Penny W,

    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, she was most definitely NOT interested, so we tried our second choice cock - they were all over each other (literally) in a matter of minutes - there are obviously personality traits in finches to be taken into consideration. They now spend almost every minute of the day in the nesting box out of view! (what husseys!!). So we will wait and see! Of the pairs I put down earlier this month, most of them got down to business straight away so I'm concerned they will hatch their chicks too early for my zfs rings - and I thought I had waited long enough to pair them! Oh well, what will be will be!
  7. 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
  8. 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.
  9. Penny W

    update

    By Penny W,

    it's been a while since I updated my blog.
    I'm winding down on breeding now as we are away at the end of April and I don't want to have to ask the neighbour to have to check nest boxes. It's giving me a chance to take stock and work out what I have and what I want to keep. We seem to have ended up with an abundance of cages (a lot of which are flat packed in the loft at present) Last weekend, when it was the Stafford Sale we had arranged to buy a load of cages from a guy who was giving up the hobby, he lived nearby so we made a weekend of it, collecting his cages on the Saturday, staying overnight in Stafford then a quick whizz in and out of the Stafford Sale on Sunday morning. The finches there were a bit of a disappointment but Steve got some budgies that he was pleased with.
    Yesterday we drove to Kent in a hired lorry (with a 56mph speed limiter), a 4 hour drive, to collect a shed for the birds, problem was we had to dismantle it and it was not just a shed, it was insulated and lined. We got there at 9am, left at 3pm. By the time we had unloaded and returned the lorry to the depot it was almost 10pm, we were exhausted. I'm sure it will be worth it when the shed is built and up and running.
    This evening we took the latest 11 babies from their parents and put them in a bigger cage. I seem to do really well on breeding cocks - hens are a bit of a rarity in my fledgling cage so if anyone has a glut of hens they would like to swap...................????!!!!
  10. 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!
  11. 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!
  12. Penny W

    Stafford

    By Penny W,

    Steve and I booked a table for todays Stafford sale, Steve had some budgies to shift, I sorted out some Zebs to go. I put pics of them on one of the Facebook finch sites and sold all but one pair before today! I found another pair of Zebs and decided to shift 3 of my Timor pairs - as my other 2 pairs now have eggs. I also had some spare Bengalese to go. I had also pre-sold 2 hecks grassfinches but the buyer didn't show - isn't that annoying?
    We travelled up yesterday afternoon and stayed in the Holiday Inn just off the M6. We set up this morning - the table wasn't really big enough for all our cages but we made do! We sold most of what we brought and managed - in a very restrained manner - NOT to buy any new birds!!
    My Zebra breeding season has been a bit slow, but over the past few days I have had a nest of 7 penguins hatch, also nests of 4 and 5. Previously most of my clutches had only successfully reared 1 or 2!
    I had one pair of normals who, when the chicks were very young Mum plucked all the feathers off Dad's face! Poor thing looks very odd!. I removed Mum (I thought that if I removed Dad there was a risk of Mum plucking the chicks). Dad has done a fantastic job and this afternoon, when we got back from Stafford I found all his chicks out of the nest looking very good.
    Here's hoping all goes well - I need Timor chicks, I bought 20 Timor sized rings!
     
  13. Penny W
    I'm winding down my this years breeding - I've rung about 100 - plenty (too many??) 
    Now for the hard part - I'm determined to show this year so need to sort out a show team - and keep back a breeding team for next year, then try and sell the surplus. I'm pleased with what I have bred so far - apart from the odd pied who has appeared this year - my biggest surprise was a lightback pied from 2 normals!! I have at last bred - and rung one Timor, my Australians have bred, and not raised, several young but I currently have 4 fledged Hecks, and today have rung 3 diamond firetails and 2 stars - just hope they make it to adulthood. It seems the australian don't like breeding in breeding cages but prefer to breed in the outside flight