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MisterNiceGuy_iz

Finch Lovers, Help please

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Dear finch lovers,

 

Hope all are fine and staying safe. We are relatively newbie in finch care, and we now have 8 zebra finches at home. We love them, they are absolutely adorable.

Lately, a set of eggs hatched and there were 2 male and 2 female chicks. When the babies were out from their nest, we have observed that the parents are not taking care of the female babies very well. Other adult birds are pecking the poor babies. So we took them out of the cage and started handfeeding them. Now it has been more 1 month since we are handfeeding. One baby passed away the next day, but the other one is very healthy and staying with us inside our house for last 1 month. She is very much attached to us, very active and our kids are very fond of her and named her “Cuddles”

 

We have below questions: Could someone guide us, please ?

 Cuddles

  • ·        Attached is her picture. She has pink beak and pink legs, whereas all our other finches have orange/dark-orange beaks. The other babies used to have black beak in the beginning and turns orange as they grow. We are worried/curious to know if this is normal or not.

  • ·        Coincidentally, the 2 babies that were ignored by their parents have pink beaks. Might that be the reason why parents were not taking care of them?

  • ·        It has been a month since we started handfeeding our baby. Till now she hasn’t started eating of her own. She always pecks on the millets and other seeds, breaks the shell but do not eat the germ inside the seed.  She is actively breaking the seed shell and keeps chewing them but never eats it.

 

Thanks a lot !

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Hello Mister Nice Guy,

Welcome to the forum.

Looking at the photo you have posted, it looks like you have a very young pied white or a chestnut flanked white. Chestnut flanked whites have a dark beak when they hatch and the hens also have dark patches on their heads. It's hard to give you a true colour without seeing photo's of the parents.

Zebra Finches use markings on the inside of the youngsters beaks when rearing, these marks show up in low light, this allows them to feed their young through the night. There could be a number of reason why they stopped feeding the two youngsters. I have found that hens are more susceptible to problems than cock birds.

Zebra Finches learn from others and it may be that your hen has only human habits to pick up from, generally, if a bird is removing the husks from millet they are eating the Kernel. Just a question, what makes you think that your young hen is not eating seed.

I hope this answers some of your questions and if you need any further help, please let me know.

Gary

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