About 2 weeks ago, a friend of mine gave me what I think it's called a saffron finch ( Sicalis flaveola ), born in the little ranch she has, but I never had one and I know very little about the business. The bird was - and still is - in a small cage, about 15 inches wide, 8 inches deep and 10 inches tall.
In her family's ranch, they have a big aviary, but it was flooded, as the birds were having too many 'children'. They were selling to get rid of some of them, but not too many people wanna buy, so, here and there, she, her father and brother were giving some to people they know. She told me to feed the bird basically with canary grass, water, some lettuce leafs and scarlet eggplant ( jilo ), but I felt not enough, because my uncle used to have birds and I remember he gave'em other stuff. I started to make a little Internet research and found out that I was right, they need more to keep healthy.
Reading the info in this site and some of the things you tell in the forum I realized that:
1: The cage is too litlle, I need to buy another one, in a hurry;
2: More food variety is important;
So, I need a little help here:
What you think it'd be a good size for a cage with a single finch?
In this site I got in the [ Nutrition Section.Seed Mixes & Formulated Diets ] ( http://www.finchinfo.com/diet.htm#seed ) and I'm trying to make the proposed seed mix. Being a brazilian, tough, I'm trying to figure out some terms that you use in english, so I can buy the proper food in portuguese. I know what you call canary grass, niger and other terms, but got confused with those millets, as they have a variety of species. What type those are ( white, plate, panicum )? What I got in the Internet is something like proso, foxtail, pearl, finger...
If somebody knows the scientific name of each one, I could translate accurately. Any help will be appreciated.
And a last one: Have I to get another finch as a companion?
Thanks a lot in advance for any help you can give.
