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too many cocks spoil the show team!

Penny W

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I have bred some lovely zebras this year, the problem is only 2 of them are hens! The 2 hens are fawns, the cocks are normal and penguin so it looks like I won't have any current year pairs to show. I've just put some more pairs down so fingers crossed .......

I have had a frustrating time with some of my other finches too. I have one pair of Hecks who have had 2 rounds, each round they have fed the babies until they have feathers, then they stop feeding them and the babies die. They currently have 6 eggs so I have taken some of them away and put them under Bengalese. I don't want to foster but I thought I didn't want to watch 6 babies starve to death! I have a pair of diamond firetails, the first round they abandoned the nest a few days before the eggs were due to hatch. The second round I took 2 eggs and put them under a young pair of Bengalese and left 2 eggs with them. They abandoned the nest again so their two eggs didn't hatch, the first one that hatched under the Bengalese seemed to take them by surprise and they didn't feed it, the second one they looked after beautifully - until 2 weeks old when I removed the dummy eggs that were still in the nest which obviously upset them and they abandoned the poor chick. (Lesson learnt - don't change anything in the nest.) My pair of cherry finches hatched 4 and fed none, my timors laid eggs and sat on them for a while, but it obviously got boring so another abandoned nest.

I did manage to get a clutch of gouldians to 7 weeks old before one died, and then another died a few weeks later (no idea why). I have another nest with 2 gouldian chicks, now 18 days old but today when I checked the box, one was dead with an empty crop, the other appears to still be being fed. I am also trying to breed some more Bengalese but they don't seem to want to lay eggs - maybe I have sexed them wrong and I have all cocks! My masked grassfinches and owl finches have never laid either. I'm hoping the masked grassfinches might breed in the summer outside in the flight.

Here's hoping for a more positive next update to this blog!



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You are not alone with too many Cocks Penny. I had same problem with first round and had 8 CFW cocks and 2 hens with 4 Normal cocks and 1 hen, but things seemed to even out a bit with more hens in second round so keep going I would say.

Sorry to hear about your other birds too.

Andy

 

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56 minutes ago, amf1975 said:

problems... lol I have forgot what a live zebra finch chick looks like. lol

I have 16 cocks to 2 hens so far!

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