Breeding Cages for Finches - What You Should Know

When choosing the best breeding cages for finches remember they are small but made for long flights so make sure there is enough space, it is essential to their health and will allow for freedom of movement for courting and mating. Unlike many other animals it is a good idea to think about what kind of home they are going to get before you purchase them.

Finches are one of the easier species to breed in captivity, if you know how to go about it. Creating the right conditions is the most important part.

One of the signs of 'ineffective breeding', the breeding environment being too small or that the finch hasn't adapted to the environment; the female will lay the eggs and then cannibalize them.

If you can't afford an aviary and are sticking with the idea of breeding cages for finches a good size is 2ft long by 1ft wide and 8in high, but if you can find something bigger that will be even better.

If you can't find a large enough cage think about another breed of finch. Gouldian finches and Zebra finches can be bred in outdoor enclosures as well as indoor cages.

The nests put in the breeding cages for finches are essential. When purchasing one there are a few options available to you;

You can get wooden nest boxes that fit on the inside or outside of the cage. Due to the space issue one that fits on the outside is probably going to be better. Also make sure it opens at the top allowing easy access for cleaning, maintenance, and putting in materials, counting of eggs and having the least amount of disturbance and the most amount of safety for the chicks.

Bamboo nests are very popular and inexpensive. They are very strong and come in large or small sizes. It is advisable to get the larger version.

In breeding cages for finches materials are very important; you need to make sure they are warm and soft; feathers or certain grasses are good. You can also purchase materials that are professionally made.

You can supply materials for the finches to create their nest but remember that if using stringy materials you must make sure they are not too long or fine, the finches may get tangled up in them.

The male usually prepares the nest with all materials so ones the female has laid the eggs you must remove any excess materials because the male will probably end up covering up the eggs in the process of making improvements to the nest.

Once she has laid the eggs the female will sit on them for a while, then the male will take over allowing the female to feed herself and regain her strength.

Creating breeding cages for finches is very easy if you know how. You just need to know the finches' behaviour, and the space and materials that'll work for both you and them. That way you can create the perfect environment for them and their chicks.

Room for Flight Equals a Happy Finch   Feeding Your Finches   Various Methods of Poultry Farming and Their Advantages   Parrot Facts for the Young   

Pet Birds - The Popularity of Native Australian Birds in Aviculture

Lots of popular pet bird species originate from Australia, most of the well-known pet birds are native to this country but not allof them. Many are from the Americas, Africa, and Asia, but the most popular by far and through the sheer numbers in captivity are the Australian species, which range from small finches, right through the range to large parrots.

Famous breeds like the budgerigar (know as parakeet in some countries), cockatiel, zebra finch, lorikeet, and the cockatoo all became available throughout the world via importation from Australia.

When our ancestors first discovered the Australian continent they found many types of animals that were unique to this part of the globe, such as the now infamous 'duck-billed platypus' and the 'echidna' (egg laying mammals! How strange must that have been?); marsupials such as the 'kangaroo', 'wallaby', 'koala' and many new and unique bird species; many of which were vey brightly coloured. So they desired specimens of these birds to take home, and in doing so boosted the fondness of exotic pet bird keeping.

Starting with the smaller breeds; Australian finches that are popular as pets include the 'star finch', 'gouldian finch' and the well known and readily available at a low price 'zebra finch'. However there are many more.

Small to medium sized parrot-like species from Australia include the most popular small pet bird of all, the 'budgerigar' (or 'parakeet'). The almost as popular 'cockatiel' is also an Australian native, plus no end of other well known pet birds. The list is almost endless: 'lories' and 'lorikeets' (several types of these), parakeets such as 'turquoisine', 'bourke', 'splendid' 'elegant' and 'red-rumped' to name a few, there's loads more. The medium sized 'eclectus parrot' also hails from this part of the world.

The 'rosellas' are also medium parrot from Australia and about 6 different varieties are used as pets; 'Eastern', 'Northern', 'Western', 'crimson', 'green', and 'pale-headed'. All are unique and different in their own way but are closely related. Rosella are known for their strikingly rich colouring, making them a very desirable pet.

Finally the big daddy of Australian pet birds, the 'cockatoo'. There are about 20 different species of cockatoo but not all are popular as pets, and believe it or not the famous 'cockatiel' mentioned earlier is a member of this bird family but of course nowhere near as large as some of its cockatoo cousins. All birds in the cockatoo family are distinguishable by the crest of feathers on the top of the head.

Many breeds of Australian birds live in massive flocks in the wild. The sight of hundreds of budgerigars, cockatiels, finches or lorikeets flocking together is an awe-inspiring sight, and very noisy.

To summarise there is a massive range of Australian birds available as pets all over the world. Many are very colourful, easy to keep, very hardy and all have unique and sometimes entertaining characteristics. The least costly of exotic pet birds are also native Aussies. Is it any wonder that these pet birds are so popular?

Room for Flight Equals a Happy Finch   What Is a Chicken Run and Coop? Build Your Own If You Are Planning On Keeping Chickens at Home   Grey African Parrots - Why Are They the Most Liked Among All Parrots   Many Types of Finches Make Good Pets   Guidelines for Housing Your Spice Finches   Flight Cages For Finches   

Important Poultry Diseases

Poultry farming is a method that involve breading and rearing of chickens, ducks, turkeys, and other such birds with a purpose of obtaining eggs and meat for food. Poultry is considered an important source of the animal protein throughout the globe and are considered the most intensive species for rearing. There are a number of ways in which there is a big use of poultry products like butter, bread, bakery items, and other recipes.

Poultry industry is known to be a major contributor of food and plays a significant role in the economy of any country. Poultry rising in different parts of the world has proven it a profitable enterprise as it is considered a best and vital source of palatable, nutritious, and cheap food protein. In different parts of the world there are hen birds that are maintained in the backyard of houses on small-scale in small villages. A very little investment is needed in terms of material and money for this backyard poultry farming.

Some important breeds worldwide involve leghorn, buff rock, Rhodes Island red, light Sussex that are hatched successfully in different parts of world. An average of almost 250-300 eggs are produced by lying birds per year whereas the average live weight of lying birds is usually recommended at the age of 8 weeks as 1200 grams.

Over the last few decades, the production of poultry eggs and meat has shown a positive growth in the performance of livestock sector. Poultry farming is considered one of the most profitable and promising sources of extra income.

Rearing and breeding poultry is a tough job as there is an increasing risk of diseases in poultry, both locally as well as internationally. There are different causes of poultry diseases but there are two main categories of the direct cause that include infectious and the non-infectious. Some non-infectious condition may cause reduced immune responses; secondly this non-infectious condition may result in increased contact with different infectious organisms that can lead to an increased cause of infectious diseases.

Comparative to the production of modern poultry, the poultry production that is village based is usually characterized by different disease ranges that occur at same time. There are some free range poultry that has sub clinical infections with an increasing number of ectoparasites and endoparasites. Backyard poultry result in low productivity and the major cause of this is high mortality that is due to the diseases, mismanagement, lack of nutritional predators, and feeding. In this backyard system the rate of mortality has been estimated about 80-90% within one year of hatching.

In many flocks of family poultry, poultry disease is an important and increasing problem. Diagnosing, treating, and preventing poultry disease are considered essential to any of the attempt at raising the productivity.

In the commercial production system, broilers are vaccinated routinely against different diseases like Avian Influenza, Infectious bronchitis, Mareks Disease, Newcastle Disease, and many others that depend on some specific recommendations and situations in each country. There are a number of poultry diseases so they are divided into five major categories that include poultry diseases caused by fungal infections including Aspergilloses, Ochratoxicosis, Fusariotoxicosis, flatoxicosis; virus such as Fowl Pox, Avian Flu; bacteria like Escherichia coli, Pasteurella multocida, Mycobacterium avium; parasites like Coccidiosis, Haemoparasites; and those are caused by nutritional deficiency like the food that may be deficient of vitamins and minerals. There are also problems that involve poultry diseases caused by the stress, poor management and housing. To avoid different poultry diseases it is recommended to have a regular examination of your chickens to avoid any type of serious and fatal disease.

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Finches for Pets: An Introduction to Cordon-Bleu Finches

Their distinctive coloration, lively behavior and intriguing songs make the Cordon-Bleu finch one of the more popular finch varieties as people make the choice to raise finches for pets. A mid-sized finch, measuring not quite five inches from beak to tail, they are quite handsome birds.

The males generally sport a light brown head, back and belly with a distinctive blue coloration on the breast. Males have a distinctive mark the females don't have and that is a red, slashing coloration along the neck. Females have the same basic coloration, a bit more muted and without the red slash across the neck.

In the wild, the Cordon-Bleu finches live in the steppes and savannas, dry forested areas and in the bushes and hedges outside of African villages in a large area from Senegal and Guinea to Tanzania, southeastern Zaire and Angola.

These finches always live in pairs building nests in thorn bushes or thorny trees where, in the rainy season, the female will lay from four to five eggs. They raise their young on insect protein. Their normal diet consists mostly of seeds, mostly from grasses. They, like many finches, are omnivores. They eat small, ground dwelling insects like termites as well.

Fair warning...Cordon-Bleus are among the most delicate finches in captivity. If they are newly imported they require a long period to be acclimated to their new surroundings. They don't like change. When moving them from the pet shop or breeder to your home, give them several days to get acclimated. If you house your finches in an aviary make sure they can find their way around.

Cordon-Bleus are very sensitive to cold. Temperatures must never drop below 65oF (that's 18oC for the rest of the world). They are perch sleepers, choosing to sleep on a branch or perch rather than in a nest. They don't have special requirements for housing. A standard flight cage or a larger aviary is just fine. The only exception to this is that during mating, mating pairs must be separated into brood cages as the males become quite aggressive toward other males.

Their diet consists mainly of small grained seeds and sprouts. You may supplement their diet with small insects like mealworms as well as green leafy vegetables and millet sprigs.

Cordon-bleus breed well in captivity. Because they stay in bonded pairs all year long, when they are mating it is easy to separate them into brood cages and hold them there until their young are independent. The young hatch after twelve days of incubation. The parents need lots of live insect food to feed their young. After about two-weeks seeds can be added to the diet. If proper food is not available, the parents will throw their young out of the nest, abandoning them to die.

Cordon-bleu finches make great pets if you just take the care needed to raise them properly.

Room for Flight Equals a Happy Finch   Feeding Your Finches   Various Methods of Poultry Farming and Their Advantages   Gouldian Finches Are Spectacular!   What Is a Chicken Run and Coop? Build Your Own If You Are Planning On Keeping Chickens at Home   

Keeping Finches Happy Is Easy

If you want to get a pet that is easy to care for, makes very little mess, does not take up much room, and is very easy to keep happy, you want to get a finch. Keeping finches happy is easy to do.

When people get their first pair of these little feathered charmers they are scared that they will do something wrong in their attempt to care for finches. Actually keeping finches is easier than keeping a dog, or a cat.

When you have one of these birds for a pet you provide it with a cage that is at least 30" long. The cage does not need to be really high, as finches fly more sideways than they do up. Inside that cage make certain you have a place for plenty of fresh drinking water, and a food dish. Place a perch, or two inside the cage spaced far enough apart that the birds have to maneuver a little to change from one perch to the other. Do not situate them where they just step off one and step onto the other one.

Go to the store and pick up finch supplies for your new pet. Find out what finches like to eat, and make sure you have some on hand. Then you are ready to pick out your birds. Yes I did say birds, not bird. You see, finches are very social beings and if you only have one the little creature would quickly become depressed, and would not be happy. To ensure that your pet is happy, and healthy, you must provide it with a friend.

You do not necessarily have to have a male and female pair. You do not even have to have both finches be of the same variety. You simply need to give them a friend to hang around with. If you do decide that you want two different varieties of birds to reside in the same cage, make sure that the two you pick have close to the same characteristics. If you get one type that is easygoing, and you get one type that is slightly more dominant. Then the easygoing bird will soon become an unhappy bird. To make sure you have happy pets do a little research on which types of finches can live in harmony in the same cage.

If you do decide you want a male and a female these little fellows are fairly easy to keep satisfied enough that they breed in captivity.

Your new pets are not really keen on being handled, so you will not want to pick them up a lot. Basically if they have food, water, a friend, and a place they can stretch their wings a little, then you will have pets that are content in their surroundings.

All you will need to do is sit back and let them entertain you with the way they interact with each other. You can share little bits of fresh veggies with them every now and then, to give them a special treat.

Room for Flight Equals a Happy Finch   Parrot Facts for the Young   Gouldian Finches Are Spectacular!   What Is a Chicken Run and Coop? Build Your Own If You Are Planning On Keeping Chickens at Home   Grey African Parrots - Why Are They the Most Liked Among All Parrots   

A Brief Introduction to Spice Finches

Spice finches are social birds that organize small groups in the wild. Adult birds measure a bare 4-3/4 inches from beak to tail. Because they have no distinguishing gender markings it is not easy to identify male and female birds.

The Spice finch's head and throat are a reddish brown while the sides of the neck can be described almost as a chocolate brown coloration. Their back and wings display white shaft lines. The Spice finch belly is white while the breast is edged in brown and their feathers form a scallop pattern. Determining gender is difficult but not impossible. Males make the most noise, singing constantly. It goes without saying that the females produce the eggs. Careful observation should reveal gender.

In the wild they live in areas of wild growth. Grasses and weeds are great for them. They also tend to choose the edges of villages near rice paddies in Ceylon, India, Indochina, southern China, Formosa, Luzon, Malaysia, Sumatra, Bali and other islands in the Pacific.

Spice finches live in small groupings, sometimes mixing with other related variety. Their diet consists mainly of grass seeds they forage from the ground. They are also known to pick maturing rice kernels right off the plants. Small, dense bushes are the perfect place to build their apartment style nests. The use dried grass straw and bamboo leaves to build the nest. Spice finches raise four to seven nestlings while feeding them a diet of green seeds and insect protein.

Requirements in Captivity

Along with Zebra finches and Society finches, Spice finches make the perfect birds for the beginner. They adjust quite well to cage life or aviary life. They make few demands outside of food and water, cleaning their cage and a bit of attention and they are wonderfully peaceful. If you intend on breeding Spice finches, however, consider a larger aviary as they tend not to breed in a flight cage. In either case, you should provide some leafy branches or a thick bush for nesting purposes and some tall grass for them to climb. You should also know that you will have to trim the birds' claws from time to time as they tend to grow long especially when housed in a cage.

Basic seed diets that are supplemented with vitamins and minerals are ideal. I would give them a choice between small seeds for finches and somewhat larger seeds sold as parakeet seed. It seems that some Spice finches like the larger seeds that come in the parakeet mixture. See which seed mix disappears first and stick with it. Like most finches, they are omnivores; supplement their seed diet with green, leafy vegetables, chopped up boiled eggs and mealworms or ant pupae.

If you are breeding spice finches then provide them with coconut fibers, broad leaved grass and even some straw to build their nests. It is also good to have more than two or three pairs of males and females so they can choose their own partner. Provide plenty of insect protein until the hatchlings reach independence as well as a standard seed diet.

Room for Flight Equals a Happy Finch   Guidelines for Housing Your Spice Finches   Flight Cages For Finches   Feeding Your Finches   Various Methods of Poultry Farming and Their Advantages