I have finally finished rebrushing the aviaries for the upcoming Autumn

It is amazing how quickly the finches respond to the fresh brush and nesting material

Quite a few nests have already been built, and birds are sitting. The first aviaries that I did several weeks ago have birds already feeding young.

Its a good time now as the hot weather should be just about behind us and here at Broken Head, we have quite a mild winter. Rarely do the aviary temperatures fall below 10 degrees C.

All looks good for the breeding season, which will go right through to the end of Spring.

I have given an explanation of what I have done in my article on Aviary Rebrushing.

Is there a more beautiful finch than the Gouldian? An old friend of mine said they must have been the most beautiful creature ever created and I tend to agree.

This is the time of the year when you start to see the results of the past breeding season. The birds are partly through the moult and you start to think of next season, such as what to pair with what; what bloodlines to keep and what to discard. Don’t make up your mind too soon as to what you want to breed, but be guided by what you have available – good bird to good bird. Don’t try to breed inferior Reds when you have a good supply of Black or Yellow or vice versa.

I have come across articles in different magazines, books etc where the writer advises breeders to keep head colour true such as red to red, black to black, yellow to yellow. From my experience, I have not found this to be good advice.

It seems all my best birds have been bred from black hens; Red cock – Black hen; Yellow cock – Black hen; Black cock- Black hen.

I have bred some beautiful Red and Yellow hens but have not bred many good birds with them. This seems to apply in all types of Gouldians whether they be Normals or any of the mutations e.g. White Breasted (WB) and Single Factor (SF) and Double Factor (DF) varieties.

The first thing I do when all birds are fully coloured is to pay particular attention to all the Black hens whether they be Normals, WB, SF or DF. I then next decide which cocks I want to keep and mate them to the Black hens, but obviously not always, because some Red Hens and Yellow Hens you just can’t part with. I try pairing these with different cocks, as you never know something may happen. Over the many breeding seasons I have found that the surprises come from the Black hens and the disappointments from the Red and Yellow hens.

One thing I have found recently is that the Red Faced Parrot Finch and their mutations are very compatible with Gouldians. I run two pairs of Gouldians plus one pair of Parrot Finches together in aviaries 5m length x 2.4m high and 1m wide, only using nest boxes. These two species compliment each other as they have the same needs both diet and nesting requirements and look good together in the flight.

I feed these birds separate trays each of mixed seed, canary and jap millet. Each morning birds are fed a dish of cooked seed with egg and biscuit mix. No live food is given but I give as much green feed/seeding grasses as possible.

These birds are one of my favourite finches. I have always had them. The yellow beak defines them from the eastern race, the Hecks Longtail with its somewhat stronger tones of colour and the distinctive red beak. I do not keep the Hecks as I find I need as much room as possible to keep as many single pairs of WA Longtails as is needed to keep the strain going strongly. They are a relatively easy bird to keep on a diet of mixed seed, separate trays of red pannicum, termites, clean water, seed and grasses.

They will nest in a nest box or a 10 cm x 20 cm wire cylinder, but prefer to build their own nest midway to high up in the brush. They need a roosting nest so if when they are moved from one aviary to another, or to the holding cage you should make sure they have sufficient roosting facilities.

They don’t need to be bred in a colony; just one pair per aviary I find is the best way.

Sexing from a visual perspective may seem simple when you see the cock with a big round throat spot and the narrow pear shaped throat spot of the hen. There are some hens that have a very large throat spot and there are some cocks that have the small throat spot. The problem is defining the special hen from the inferior cock. Some people say that when the young are first out of the nest they can pick the cocks from the hens, but this is still only picking the good cocks and inferior hens. What we should do to improve the birds is to find those good hens and mate them with the good cocks. The easy to pick hen should be discarded, that is the hen with the narrow throat spot, because if you breed this bird with a good cock bird, chances are you will not improve the quality of the birds. The improvement in overall quality will come from the hard to pick hens.

Question:

How to pick the good hen from the inferior cock bird by not using just the throat spot?

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