I have absolutely NO self control

[wilkifam]

wilkifam

Lori, looks like your Plumhead hen is a fawn mutation. They are a little more attractive than the normals because the plum colour contrasts well against the fawn.

And Painteds are hearty little angels and so easy to breed even in breeding cages (at least from my experience). All my cocks put a lot of effort into building robust nests, and all my hens are good sitters (although one pair kill their chicks so we can't win 'em all I guess).

Cheers,

Ross

Ross, How do you set up your painted finches? Do you offer nest boxes? They currently are enjoying a large mixed flight, but spend most of their time on the bottom.

Yes, one of the plum heads is a fawn. She is very pretty.

[hanabi]

wilkifam

Hello Lori,

How do you set up your painted finches?

Please take a look at this video: Cage setup

This is my standard cage setup with five nesting sites using four different nest types: canary, urn, box, and platform (two platforms in this case). Generally speaking, once a pair choose their favourite nest site you can remove the rest, but for Painted Firetails I recommend leaving all the nests in. One of my pairs began with a canary nest and after the first couple of clutches built another nest on a corner platform. A second pair built a nice large nesting site on a platform, then moved to a canary nest, then built one inside an urn nest, and subsequently built a nesting site between the urn and the back of the cage, using the artificial plants as support. I've seen this behaviour in other species too, especially Gouldians where they alternate between nesting sites for alternate clutches. So in the end I can't recommend enough the provision of several nest sites per pair of finches.

From my experience the "most preferred" nesting site for Painteds is in a canary nest, but you have to modify it by surrounding the top with mesh as seen in the video. Without the mesh the Painteds will spend fruitless days placing nesting material in the nest, only to have it fall out because there is nowhere to fix/hold the material, so it falls to the cage floor. After adding the mesh surround all my three pairs had nests finished within about half a day. I use the mesh surround wherever I provide canary nests, not just for Painteds, because (from my experience) most species of finches can't build nests easily without the surround.

As always, YMMV (your milage may vary)

Cheers.

[hanabi]

And if only I could spell "mileage" correctly

[wilkifam]

hanabi

Thank you. Currently they are in the BOTTOM corner of the flight, gathering little pieces of anything they can find. I think they might be trying to nest there. I may move them to their own cage.