Dasher moves on!

Dasher has gone off to the great world beyond the nest box!  I took him to the store yesterday to be handfed for the rest of his budgie-childhood and be weaned onto pellets just like the big-birds.  To be sure, he was scared (and MAD!) being taken from his family and thrust into an aquarium with several other little birds, but he's growing into such a pretty bird I'm hoping that someone will snap him up soon.

Dasher shortly before moving to the store.

Ricky and Lucy have now hatched not three, not four, but FIVE babies!  That's quite a clutch for any birdie, much less a first time mom, and she's got one possibly fertile egg that could still hatch.  There's over a weeks difference in age between the oldest and youngest in the clutch which is requiring me to keep a close watch on the chicks.  From what I've read and heard the youngest are subject to several perils which include:  1) Overfeeding which stretches out their crop, causes atonia and results in the baby starving to death with a full crop; and 2) Dehydration from being fed food meant for the older chicks.  (New chicks are fed a more liquid food than older chicks.)  It's amazing how tiny the newest chicks are when they hatch.

                        

            Oldest on left, youngest on bottom.

This is the smallest chick from the photo
to the left. (My hands are the size of the
average 10 year old's.)

And in other news... Mr. and Mrs. Closet Finch (so named because they're living in what used to be a closet) currently have three eggs in one of their three nests.  I hesitate to get too very excited about this because at no time when I've been in the bird room have I seen either Mr. or Mrs. Finch anywhere near said eggs!  But the news is significant because while they have laid single eggs before, they've never laid more than one before they've eaten it.  This is the first time I've seen more than one egg in the nest. I've been feeding them crushed egg shells and egg food so perhaps that is making a difference.  We'll see, wont we?

That's all for tonight!  

Until nest time just do like the birds do - shake your tail feathers and keep on chirpin'!

The Bird Room

The Finches laid another egg this morning, and just ate it.  I watched them this time.  It was the two hens that were digging into it.  I'll have to do some investigating to see what's up with that.

I also finally got all my birds moved into "the bird room."  I don't have my good cages yet, but at least all the birds and their stuff are in one place now.  It will certainly make care-time easier.  There's still work to be done before I start taking pictures and showing them off, but as soon as I'm ready you'll be the first (or second) to see them!  (Parrot Paradise Forum is usually the first.  If you haven't checked it out, you should!)

Merry Christmas from the Finches!

I woke up this morning to find the tiniest of tiny little eggs in the nest of Mr and Mrs Finch this morning!  I let out a squeal that brought my husband running and even HE was excited!  Mrs Finch was sitting atop that wee little egg so proudly, I just knew that it was a sign of great things to come.

But alas, it was not to be.  I spent Christmas day cleaning out food bins at the store, something that can really only be done on a day that we're closed, and when I returned home later in the afternoon the egg had disappeared.  Seriously.  It was as if it had pulled a Houdini and *POOF*!  It was gone.  No shell fragments, nothing.

The only thing I can think of is that the egg was eaten by either the parents or the other finch couple in the cage.  Either way, I'm a little bit sad.  I was excited about the finch egg!  Now it is no more.  But there will be more finch eggs, I'm sure of it!  And the next eggs will be followed by wee-tiny little baby finches.  And how fun will THAT be?

More birds?

Oh my, what have I done?

Today I went in to my part-time job at the bird store and took the three 9-10 week old chicks I inherited when I made one of my bird purchases.  As is typical for me, I couldn't leave a bird without bringing more home!  I've been looking for more yellow-faced hens.  I really like that color mutation and am very interested in understanding the complicated genetics underlying it.  I started talking with one of my colleagues and, surprise! surprise!, she has a pair of yellow-faces.  She gave them to me to bring home and set up.  I'll bring her the first couple of clutches when they start producing and I'll keep the pair.  It seemed like a fair trade to me!

The other four birds I brought home were wee little finches.  I made the offhand comment that I wanted to hand-raise some finch and was told to take some home and go for it!  I'm going to hand raise one or two clutches of finches and see how that goes.  They're so teeny-tiny and cute when they're adults, I can't wait to see what the babies are like.  So now I have a bunch of budgies AND finch!

I suppose I'll just not mention the lady who came into the store the other day saying that her pet budgie has all of a sudden turned into a hormonal monster, and "did we know any budgie breeders who wanted an "all yellow" bird that just wanted to make babies?"  Who? Me?  So I'll be taking in a lutino hen sometime early next week.  My flock seems to be exploding and I haven't hatched a single egg yet!  How FUN!