FINCHforum

i am looking for some advice on possibly splitting up my birds into male and female community cages right now i have mixed community cages and everyone is doing ok.

i am thinking of doing this as i just adopted 11 zebra finches (7 males and 4 females) from someone who couldn't keep them anymore due to allergies. they all came to me in one cage! a few of the females are looking pretty plucked, so i want to separate them by sex for a while and let them have a break so their feathers can come back in. this will also give me a chance to split band them all so i can see who is who!

this got me thinking about my other birds as well. for those who have separated their males and females into large community cages, how is it? do you see more aggression from the males when they are together like this, or less? i know that its a way to guarantee parentage when setting up pairs in the future, what are some of the other benefits?

thanks!

The primary reason I split by sex is to manage breeding.
I want to control which birds mate to get specific offspring color scheme.

Next reason is to control population growth, especially for zebras which breed easily.

The sex separation also prevents brother sister mating.

As for zebra aggression. I have had no luck there.
I had to separate my zebras down to 2 per cage and even 1 per cage, in an effort to manage the aggression and damage (plucking and bleeding) to the birds. Maybe with a large enough cage the zebras will mellow out. But I do not have enough cages to keep the zebras separated, and will have to send some to the bird shop.