FINCHforum

Good Morning,

I care for an aviary located in a nursing home. We have someone contracted by the company we purchased our aviary and finches from who comes by every three months to clean and aviary good, and trim nails. We currently have two babies in one nest. We had a new service person come by this weekend and I have been told by two people who were working at that time that the service lady removed one of the babies from the nest, gave it to an employee, and told the employee to take the baby around for the residents to see.

I was horrified to hear this and have sent the lady an email asking her not to do this again, and will contact the company as well.

I would assume it would be ok to remove a baby if is was in danger or distress, but to just remove it as a "show and tell" item is reprehensible to me. But because I don't know near what you guys know about finches, was this a bad thing she did, or was is a common thing? BTW, I think she also removed momma bird, but it appears the other birds are caring for the young.


Kim

Their level of tolerance varies, but in general nesting birds should be left in as much peace as possible.
It sounds very stupid to remove a chick from nest just to show it around, and I can't even imagine the reason to remove the mother.
I'd certainly postpone any nail trimming and even non-essential cleaning till the young have fledged.

It is very dependent on your birds.

I have always handled my zebra, canary, society, dove parakeet babies, and the parents quickly become very accepting of it. You don't do that with wilder bird species, though, or they will often abandon.

Removing the mother is obviously not right at all, though in these situations they usually select a random few birds to remove whenever the aviary becomes overpopulated, and may not have known which was which.

Your birds are fortunate to have someone who knows their care needs watching over them. When my great grandmother was staying at a nursing home in town, they also had a finch aviary. The birds were fed nothing but a single type of millet, had no opportunities to bathe, and often had babies which died very young and ended up on the cage floor. They had a Gouldian which periodicaly fell on the cage floor and had severe neurological problems and mixed very aggressive species such as weavers with the gentler birds, resulting in severe plucking. I went in once and saw a gouldian dying of eggbinding, and was not allowed to administer any aid because they do not own the birds, only rent them. But the lady who fed them didn't take any of my advice, not even the provision of a cuttlebone to prevent further eggbinding.