FINCHforum

before my question can be answered, there is a story behind it. I have a zebra finch that i have had from birth and he has had roommates before. he has never acted aggressively towards other birds. I've had him for about two years and he has been living alone for several months.

Last week i went and bought a society finch from petsmart. i put him in with the zebra finch and they seemed to be getting along. they werent fighting. the society finch wasn't doing much except sitting in one spot on the perch and watching the zebra finch. he would hardly make any noise. a day later, he was dead at the bottom of the cage. The food dish and the water bottle were both full. they have grit for digestion aid, they have a cuttle bone and a nest with some nesting material. I was guessing that he was sick.

Petsmart has a ten day gurantee so i took him back to petsmart and they gave me another male society finch. they checked him and siad they didn't know the cause of death. so the second society finch seemed to be doing okay for a while. in fact, he and the zebra finch were sleeping in the same nest on the first night. about five days later, he started acting sick. i woke up one morning and the society finch was sitting at the bottom of the cage and was breathing heavy. i picked him up gently and he didn't try to fly away. he tossed his head around a little bit but that was it. i gave him some water through a syringe and put a small drop up to his beak and he shook it off. i wrapped him loosely in some tissue so that he could stay warm until i could get him to the pet store to see what was wrong with him. i put him in the travel box. a few minutes later i went back and checked on him, and he was dead.

so i returned him to petsmart. I don't know if they had a bad shipment of birds, or if it was something i was doing. petsmart told me all their birds were healthy. a few days later i decided to go to petco instead and get a finch there. i bought a society finch, and i've had him for over 24 hours now. he seems to be doing fine but i'm still seeing a little bit of a pattern i saw with the past finches. he sits in one spot on the perch, and doesn't make any noise. he and hte zebra finch arent fighting. He seems to be acting healthier than the past two, but i just want to be sure. something i changed is that i put separate food dishes in teh cage, and separate water dishes.

so my question is, with the story given, was there anything i was doing wrong with taking care of the society finch? what can I do to make the society finch more comfortable? i asked the people at three different pet stores and i couldnt get a good answer from any of them. can anyone here give me an answer to my question?

angelxofxmusic891
Welcome to the forum if you fill in your profile we will know where your from in the world.
The only thing I can see did you see the societies drinking from the bottles all finches don't know about the bottles until they learn. If this one does the same thing if you get another I would keep it away from the zebra , I always try to keep new birds away from my old birds so they can't spread something .
Sorry not the help you need but maybe someone else will give you a answer A lot of smart people here

i haven't seen the society drink from the bottle, but i put a dish in there so he could drink out of the dish in case he doesn't learn how to drink from the bottle, because they had a water dish at the pet store. i'm hoping he could probably learn from the zebra finch about the bottle.

I would question whether it's something that the zebra has grown used to but could still be fatal to finches that have not been aclimatized? Such as are you cleaning around the cage with cleaning products? It sounds like you've taken care of the water, which would be my first suspect. I would recommend separating the birds and seeing how the new guy does - could be the zebra is a carrier of something that doesn't affect his own health. Sorry that we don't have any definitive answers!

Was there any other source of water than the bottle? Petsmart doesn't use those, and while some finches will learn by watching others, some don't catch on fast enough. A day without water can kill a finch. Also unsure about the food blend -- Petsmart does a pellet/seed mix for finches with supplemental millet and veggies daily.

I don't know what part of the country you're in, but it's rare for us here to get a "bad" shipment of birds here. In fact, it's never happened to my knowledge. Our loss is low to nonexistant on birds.

I'm not sure how Petco handles their birds (there are only a few Petcos here and they are too far for me to visit normally), but I would call them and ask what brand/mix of food they feed, etc.

Also, someone at any moment is going to jump up on their soapbox and tell you about quarantining.

kittani79 wrote: Also, someone at any moment is going to jump up on their soapbox and tell you about quarantining.

...actually it was mentioned previously by BCamp in his post (yesterday).

i'm from the US, and i've heard of some stores getting a bad shipment of animals. kinda what i mean by a bad shipment is usually the animals are sick. I used to buy gerbils at petco, but i stopped doing that because they would sometimes get shipments where the gerbils would be sick because, they are shipped from minnesota (to nebraska, where i live) in the back of a cold van. thats about a six to seven hour drive. but the cold would cause the gerbils to get sick, and when they came to nebraska, some of them would be so stressed out and sick that they would get wet tail. i was assuming that maybe the same thing happened at petsmart with their birds. its been about four and a half days since I got my society and so far he seems to be doing pretty good. i think the water was the issue. I have a water dish in there and that seemed to really help. when i put it in there my society took a few drinks and he started hopping around the cage and chirping a little more. he's singing now and he likes to hang upside down from the top of the cage sometimes. lol. I don't use any cleaning products around him and the birds are in my room, so i also try not to spray any perfume around them. thanks for the help though guys. if i have any more questions, i'll be sure to come here for them

I would keep the bottle and the water both the bottles are good it just takes time for all your birds to learn to use them ,they keep the water so much cleaner.
Glad the society is doing better

"Bad" shipments of small animals and reptiles are more common. I've never had or heard of a "bad" shipment of birds at the stores nearby. (Reptiles are prone to temp related stress, and the small animals are simply stressed by the noise and commotion of shipment.)

It's odd, we think of birds as being so delicate, but among all the animals at my store they are the most hardy as a group!

And yes, keep the bottle.... just provide a water dish as well until you're sure all the new animals know about it.

So originally you just had the water tube, and only recently added a cup? I'd say that was the problem.

I would definitely suspect the water tube or bottle as the source of the problem. I almost lost a new male Gouldian recently--I thought he was drinking out of the Water Buddy, and then I got busy, and he was close to dying before I saw him. I actually had to give him water with a syringe, and for almost two days, it was touch and go. Now, he is doing fine, but lesson learned.

I always give new birds a water dish, unless I know what they are used to having. Even water tubes can be overlooked by birds that aren't used to them. This was a case of a bird that went from dish to tube to Water Buddy, and I shouldn't have done the last stage until I had time to observe.