Strawberry Finches

[BigBear0007]

I saw a pair of Strawberry finches today.
Would have liked to get them, but they were $350 for the pair!
I think that's insane! Or is that good?
But, they were a true pair!
If anybody's crazy enough to want to buy them, let me know and
I will give you the info here in Calgary.

Jerry

[Ginene]

Wow!!! That does seem a bit overpriced. Sally would know...

[Sally]

I don't know what they go for in Canada, but in the U.S., we are getting them for as cheap as $100 each now. We had several large shipments come in, which dropped the price considerably.

[DanteD716]

BigBear0007 i cant help but I'm glad to see you still around Jerry!

[lovezebs]

BigBear0007
Hey there Jerry, where did you see these two beauties?

[w.l.]

I usually get them here for $2-3 each.

[lovezebs]

w.l.
Wow!!! Send me a couple, PLEEEZE!!!

~Elana~

[w.l.]

If it was so simple, they wouldn't cost $100 over there, either.

However, you could hop over and Buy Your Own.
Tourists can get a "souvenir permit" to take up to 2 specimens of non-protected wildlife home with them.

[Sally]

If it was so simple, they wouldn't cost $100 over there, either.

However, you could hop over and Buy Your Own.
Tourists can get a "souvenir permit" to take up to 2 specimens of non-protected wildlife home with them.

The problem comes when the tourists get back home. U.S. Customs won't allow wild-caught Strawberries in without a 30-day quarantine and tons of paperwork, and I believe Canada has similar restrictions.

[wessel]

100$ for one bird!! I'm still suprized how expensive the birds are over there, I got my pair for 75 euros. But 2-3$ is insane. But the laws for wild birds in Indonesia are really poor. So that explains the low prize. But I still can't figure out how the prices in America are so high, if someone could explain that to me, please.

[w.l.]

In Indonesia, the law only regulates domestic trade of protected species.
None of the finches are protected, so prices are simply governed by supply and demand.

At $2-3, strawberries cost 20 times more than Javan munias or Spice finches, 4-10 times more than white-headed nuns, and the same as Timor zebras or Pin-tailed parrotfinches.
They cost less than Societies or Java sparrows.

As for US vs EU prices, I think the difference may reflect more succesful breeding efforts in Europe.
The mere fact that new imports were needed for strawberries to be available confirms this. Given that this is a relatively easy species to breed, I wonder why North American don't or rarely breed them. Some members might explain.

[Sally]

In the U.S., we are far behind many other countries in aviculture. Years ago, Strawberries, along with many other inexpensive species, were considered too cheap to bother breeding. Breeders wanted to spend their time and resources breeding species that brought more money, so Strawberries were considered almost a throw-away bird. Cheaper to go buy new ones than breed them.

When bird flu struck in Asia and all imports from that part of the world into the U.S. were stopped, breeders still didn't react. When I got my first Strawberry, Petsmart carried them for $46, and you could buy them at a mart for $25. A beat-up little hen was given to me by a Petsmart manager, which started my love for this species, but I soon found that they were almost impossible to locate. I paid as much as $125 each for Strawberries, but never more than that.

It is the old supply-and-demand rule. When they were impossible to find, some people got crazy and paid whatever they had to. I heard of unbanded, unproven Strawberries being sold for $600 a pair! That kind of insanity simply encourages unethical breeders to dump their old birds--I was taken enough times myself, paying $125 for males that were supposed to be 2, only to realize I now owned someone else's senior citizen!

There have been some recent imports, though they are supposed to be aviary-raised rather than wild-caught, but the prices have been dropping. I doubt that they will ever return to as cheap as they were at one time, though you never know.

[Colt]

Western culture in general is a bit bassackwards...

When a species is imported in large numbers like the Strawberries were in the past, or the majority of the munias like Nuns, etc. American fanciers/hobbyists don't breed them because they are so readily available. This attitude has now bitten current day finch hobbyists in the rear because of new regulations imports have become practically non-existent for some species, especially those from Asia due to fear of bringing Bird Flu in to the country.

The attitude in some circles have changed and some hobbyists/breeders are doing their part to preserve the bloodlines and species we have available.

In the US, none of the species we keep are native here. Every finch we have is the result of imports at one time or another. And when the imports stop if the birds aren't bred over here, we'll lose them, point in case regarding the loss of many species like Violet-eared Waxbills, Pekin Robins, Red-headed African Finches, Sudan Golden Song Sparrow, etc.

When the imports of the species stopped and people realized they couldn't get anymore, sellers charged ridiculous prices for birds often past their prime window for breeding. Thankfully imports have resumed for some species which allows us to attempt to breed them back up into sustainable numbers. But sadly other species are probably gone forever in American aviculture.

Also another key note to add is that many people in America are driven to breed birds they believe will make them money. So when massive amounts of imports come in there's "no point" in breeding them as the breeder wouldn't make any money off the birds. Which is a really sad way to look at it.

Another point worth mentioning is that there are individuals who breed birds that do not report that they are breeding them as evidenced in the last NFSS census. So while someone may be working with a species the general public and other breeders think are gone, they are in fact well-established in the aviaries of a few individuals who aren't forthcoming with the information.

And then you have great breeders like Scott Golden who work with a species and sell birds and within a year is unable to track down any of the birds he sold because the buyers didn't breed them...

[isobea]

There is a similar issue with Red Hooded Siskins: as far as I know it is still illegal in the US to own them because they are 'endangered'. In Europe, though, they have been breeding large numbers of them and the price went down considerably over the years. Wish we could import a lot of those captive bred birds and start breeding them here as well... Nowadays it shouldn't be necessary anymore to use them for hybridizing with canaries - there are a lot of canaries available that will show beautiful color without being color fed.

[Smurf]

It certainly seems to be alot to do with supply and demand, i've given up on the canaries as the're simply not worth breeding over here, all you can expect to get from a dealer or pet shop for an irish fancy is about €5 which certainly doesn't pay for the food, bengalese are worse with dealers expecting to only pay €2-3 euros each.
The foreign birds are similar and have the added expense of needing heat, in basic laymans terms if they don't at least pay for their upkeep breeders won't bother with them. Birds that are being imported cheaply or being bred in large quantities (often a trend for a few years) simply won't interest the serious breeders.
I think waxbills over here are going to be in serious shortage in the years to come especially if anything happens to stop their import