2017 Gouldian Breeding Season - Australia

[wildbill]

hi all
ive been a bit busy over the past few months with different projects and the breeding season here in oz for the gouldian finch is just about ready to kick off. this year I plan to set up some-where between 27 and 30 pairs and all will be housed in outside flighted aviaries with breeding shelters.

I have an interesting collection for the up coming season consisting of purple breasted blues - white breasted blues - lime - white breasted lime - blue/lime and lime/blues. these are all full mutation colours.

then it drops down to possible rung splits and then possible splits of the above mutations colours. what's the difference between a possible split and a possible rung split you ask - the rung possible splits are nest mates from actual coloured birds from last year breeding season. say for example I scored a lime and 3 green backs - the 3 green backs were rung. if in another nest that pair produced 3 or 4 greenbacks - no rings.

i then drop to a few pair of pure green back normal stock. it is actually getting very hard to get this stuff here now and I plan to breed and mix these birds later with my own bloodline. the gouldian or the normal is badly contaminated this way with other mutation genes and its hard to know what your buying until its too late.

so that's what i have planned for the season and only time will tell how it goes. last year 230 young flew -my best year ever. lost maybe 10% of those during the molt but that is the gouldians weakest moment here. their stress level is up and it's a very difficult time for them.

our winter was colder than the normal too. that didn't help much either. i might even be able to post a few photo's in the next few days.

[lovezebs]

wildbill

Ahhh, the prodigal son returns

[GouldianGuy]

I was wondering where you went! Can't wait to hear and see all about it!

[wildbill]

well ive been a bit busy with cars lately purchased another one a lotus and then decided to strip and re-spray my white miata to red

[GouldianGuy]

I've always wanted a Lotus!

[Sally]

Great looking cars! Glad to hear from you wildbill, and looking forward to hearing about your breeding season. Normal Gouldians are harder to find in the U.S. too, I believe, as breeders have been working so much on mutations, and you never know for sure what you are getting in splits.

[wildbill]

GouldianGuy

and it's not your average lotus either


@Sally

I think it's important that I breed a few pure normal black headed birds this year to help improve my bloodline further down the track. it appears a couple years back I bought birds which were not as they were advertised and caused unwanted mutation genes in the breeding stock.

this has been fixed up now and my new source of normals comes from a very reliable breeder

[wildbill]

lovezebs

back again for 017 how's things....all good with the birds. just waiting now for a bird delivery from west aust - 4 pair pied fire finches and 4 pair pied red cheek codon bleus

fires are fine but those cordons are a pain and require live food. did a deal on a gouldian swap so no choice on what I take but will see how it pans out

[lovezebs]

wildbill

Hey there,

Glad to hear that life's been good with the cars and the new birds coming along. Congratulations.

Since my move last Spring, I've lost birds, sigh....
For a while I was finding little bodies every day, which was not good.

Right now, dealing with three sick dogs, which is not much fun either.

Haven't done any breeding since forever.

Good luck with the fires and the rccb's ( both species are cute little guys, and both appreciate live foods).

[wildbill]

lovezebs

well I really cant complain as the excess gouldians bought half the lotus so that was pretty good. just looked in a couple of nest boxes today and I have eggs that was pretty quick seeing the temp is up in the high digits too.

time will tell what happens next as I usually go through a settling in period with first year breeders and after that they get the idea what's going on and get better as the season progresses.

hope your animals get well soon.

[lovezebs]

wildbill

Thanks.

[GouldianGuy]

Bill, I'm sure youve done this before, but can you briefly describe your breeding philosphy?
# of pairs per aviary, separation of male/female during the year to avoid "early/undesirable mating", etc

thx

[wildbill]

i will go into it at a later date. meanwhile something for you to look at. here's one of my lime/blue hens. once molted it was about the same colour but upon close inspection she has fawn flight feather on top and under wings.
breeding season has started and she has now laid 6 eggs and is paired to a white breast normal green back with the possibility of this male being split to lime or blue or both. test breeding will solve this pretty quick.

[lovezebs]

wildbill

That's really different.
Did you plan on this, or was it a surprise?

Are mom and dad, a Lime Blue split each? Or is one Lime and one Blue?

It will be interesting to see what the kids turn out like.

[wildbill]

mother was a blue/lime and the father a green back double split for lime and blue. prior to the mating I wasn't sure if the cock bird was carrying either the lime or the blue gene. plus I had no idea the blue was split to lime. that young hen confirmed all.

meanwhile it has not been what i'd call a good start to the breeding season. actually pretty bad so far. as usual I started off with all first time breeders or almost all.

weather ran extremely hot then cold then hot and rain.. rain.... rain. really was a bit of a drama but you'd can't control the weather or not totally.

as usual with first timers I got the usual run of clear eggs in various nest boxes. not a huge amount but i'd say around 100 or so of them next round they got the message or some did anyway and I had a few fertile eggs. sounds good but those birds which hatched young decided to sit and not feed. tried a few nest swaps with young to no avail and that wiped more out.

as of today I have a total of 9 young flying about - all greenbacks but most split to lime and blue. on a more positive note I have maybe 8 pair of second go nesters on clutches of fertile eggs. those may hatch within the next 48 to 72 hours.

so although I am down a bit down on numbers I feel once the young pairs get their acts together I still have a good chance of breeding a few young. time will tell there. i'd say it all should be under control by the end of april and they can get into the breeding cycle properly

but unfortunately you have to take the good with the bad and I've had at least 3 really good breeding seasons in a row. if I can breed say 100 young i'd be pretty happy with that number but compared to the 230 young bred last year - my success so far this season isn't what i'd call crash hot