Hello. I am enquiring about purchasing some gouldian finches but have been informed that it is too cold to keep/breed them in an outdoor aviary in Sydney. I would appreciate your opinion. Thank you.

My first thought was to say try it and see. But this may not be the best answer, as disaster could follow.

If I was going to offer advice, as I live here on the North Coast of New South Wales, it is a bit hard to say what would be good for finches kept in Sydney.

I started my finch keeping in Sydney, keeping Western Australian Longtail Finches and Masked Finches in an outside aviary, but never Gouldian Finches.

I know for a fact that there are breeders in Sydney that keep and breed Gouldians successfully, but I am not as sure about the types of housing that these bird breeders use.

The best advice that I could give is to contact the local bird society or finch club and talk to the breeders that live in your local area.

By talking to members of bird clubs, you find out who the successful breeders are, and you can visit them and see how they do it. They will give you the tried and tested knowledge that I can only give to breeders in my local area.

There is nothing like visiting successful breeders and looking at what they have built and listening to what they have done to become successful a breeder.

Good Luck, and Let us know what you find out.

The example is that if you have five pairs of a particular species in an aviary at the end of the year do you really know

• what has bred,
• what has had two or three nests,
• how many young has a particular pair bred,
• and what has not bred.

If you breed single pairs of species per aviary you know exactly what has happened in a particular season.

The most likely scenario for people who breed a colony of a particular species with another colony of species is hybridization. If you lose the odd bird from one species and the odd bird from another species, the likelihood of these odd birds pairing with the other odd birds is far greater and the unwanted hybrids will come from these pairings. If you breed single pairs and you lose one bird of a pair you know this very soon and are able to rectify the situation by providing a new partner or removing the odd partner.

If you lose a particular bird, do not be afraid to introduce a new partner because pair bonding only lasts until a new partner is introduced. A lot of people say finches pair for life, this is not true, as I have found in my experience if a bird is healthy and fit and loses its partner, it does not spend the rest of its life alone but will take the first mate that comes along.

Finches all over the world usually are a flock bird from just a few pairs to maybe flocks of hundreds or even thousands. If in the flock situation, a hawk or another predator attacks that flock and kills a bird, does the surviving partner of that bird take a new mate or does it not. I say it does.

In addition to this, if you have a particular pair that are bonded but are not breeding for example they may not be laying fertile eggs or just not really compatible, if you break that pair and put them with new partners this will be okay as long as you move the original pair as far away from each other as possible because an adjoining flight is not far enough. They will still sit side by side at the wire, but removed from each other and given new partners this will almost certainly prove fruitful for at least one of the pair. You will then be in a position to work out which of the birds was the problem as far as breeding goes.

In the single pair situation if a species breeds it is then up to the breeder as to how long the birds stay in with the parents. Early in the season I choose to take the young out of the aviary at least after the second nest has flown. This is obviously long enough for the birds to be with their parents as the parents’ attention goes to the new brood. It is not really a matter of 5-6 weeks as a standard, but when the parents have fledged the second nest. Towards the end of the season I will leave the young in with the parents longer, if overcrowding is not a problem. Of all the birds I keep, I don’t have any that are aggressive towards the previous young birds. Most times the previous young are removed from the parents sooner rather than later, to avoid the young being a distraction to the parents going back to nest if the parents have not already done so.

In the colony how do you ever work this out?

The colony young cannot be identified as positively as the young from a single pair. This is important for making up future pairs. It is very difficult to establish their parentage and blood lines if you don’t know exactly who the parents are.

The following articles are derived from my bird breeding experiences, reflections and are wholly my opinions on what I have found works for me. Although I have gained a lot of knowledge and experience from the past with regards to breeding birds, what I write about here is what I do today.

It gives me a lot of satisfaction and is very personally rewarding when each day I can cast my eye over the collection and say to myself “That’s a nice bird; that’s a nice pair; that’s a nice lot of young birds”.

This is not going to be the way with all the birds you breed, but if you can truthfully say this to yourself often, you are on the right track to achieving what you have set out to do and to feeling this sense of satisfaction.

To achieve this you must have a basic knowledge of certain facts and principles that not only govern finches but all birds, including budgies, canaries and poultry. It appears from my experience that not all pairs or pairings produce better than themselves; it is probably less that 10%.

For example, if you breed ten Longtails from a pair, you are lucky if have one bird that stands out above the rest. You must keep this bird and to make sure this bird does not slip through the net you must:

1. Not sell uncoloured birds; because until you have seen the bird in full colour you have not seen the bird properly. So resist as long as possible the need to dispose of the bird, either by sale or giving it away.
2. What every bird breeder needs to have is a very good holding cage. Then you can take your young out of the breeding aviary and band the bird with an identifying ring; give them sufficient room to grow, socialize and develop mentally and physically to change from a juvenile to a beautiful, mature and most importantly fully coloured bird ready for the owner to appreciate the end result and decide what will be the future for this particular bird. One should never be in too much of a hurry.
3. Even if you do not exhibit your birds you should have a good set of show cages. You need to study each and every bird you breed, and I repeat, do not let any bird go from your possession until you have had a good look at it. Assess each species as a group; take the time because this is where you will get to see your birds up close and to view them separately and to look for any differences or characteristics that stand out in a particular bird as against another of the same species even a sibling. You are looking for any distinguishing features that appeal to a breeder. The good birds will stand out and these are the birds that will define your future successes. It is so much easier than looking at 10 birds in a box; sticking your hand in and hopefully pulling out the bird that looked all right.
4. If you find a bird amongst these birds that you would like to keep, then you must decide what to pair with this bird or birds. The next step in pairing is to find a suitable unrelated partner for the outstanding bird or birds.

So what next? There are several paths to follow.

Pair your best birds to best birds and keep them as unrelated as possible. It is hard to have completely unrelated birds because it is hard to track birds that may have come from your initial birds, they may have gone all the way around the country and back to you. But in their journey they may have picked up some genes along the way, so in reality they are not exactly the same.

But really, if you find you get two birds together and they breed good offsprings, then that is all you can really ask for, because even the best bred birds with an impeccable pedigree can still breed ordinary birds. I find that breeding good birds to good birds you give yourself the best chance.

When we think of genetics we try to pair birds that, as far as possible, are not related. If we think of most finches in the wild, they are a flock bird, so how do the rules apply? How do the birds know what bird is not related to them?

For example, take wild Gouldians. They breed at a particular time of the year. They leave the nest, join other juveniles and go through the socialization of the flock life, and moult into their adult plumage. They are heading towards their own breeding season to bond with a bird that they are attracted to and it is pot luck as to which bird they will pair off with. It is possible that the bigger the flock the better the choice of mating with a partly unrelated partner.

What we have to do as breeders is try to keep that flock gene pool and we can eliminate those brother-sister matings that inevitably diminish the flock’s genetic strength. You should always keep a record of your birds. Keep your gene pool intact and ensure that you do your best to pair birds as far as possible from each family.

In 1984, I bought five pairs of wild W.A. Longtails at a pet shop in Tweed Heads. These were of the last legal shipment from the west.

Since then, I have introduced five or six birds I acquired from a bird breeder in Casino, NSW in 1990, All the Longtails I have are from these birds and because I keep many single pairs and have a system of banding that tracks the family groups. Consequently, I have no problem with fertility or genetic defects, etc. I can go about my business, feeding etc and often cast my eye over the species and still say “What a nice lot of Longtails”.

You cannot do this if you just throw ten pairs of Longtails in an aviary and hope for the best. Birds will breed in a colony of same species but it is too time consuming to observe what is actually happening in the colony. What works for me, and the only way I know how to get results, is by breeding birds as single pairs of species in with other single pairs of species.