FINCHforum

Hello All. I got a mule today from a friend and he sings like crazy he is a young bird born 2015 that's what shows on his leg band. His singing is more like the canary tune i don't hear the goldfinch melody in him so far. Just want to know from experience people that will these mules change its singing Melody when they grow little older and regarding the mask on his face is yellowish green now do we feed him canary red food in the molting season to get the red mask?? . Thanking all.

First of all ( hamilton ) congrats on getting a mule, they are great birds!

Secondly, his song will improve with age and it will get more goldfinch notes in it, but you can help him along the way.
Download some goldfinch songs and play it for him, and train him to sing only that and forget the canary or at least minimize the amount of canary in his song.

Thirdly, when he has his first moult, feed him the colour food,not now, It's a wast of the colour food.

Jerry

Thank you Jerry for the info. Yes as the mule was among canaries when he was born that's why he is singing like them it's amazing how these small lovely birds adapts singing melodies Now I hope he sings the goldfinch melody too. I am playing a lot to him now fingers crossed. Is there a time frame for them to learn I mean if they are over a year can they still learn? Jerry..
Thanking you. Stay blessed

I have never seen a goldfinch mule with a yellowish-green mask.
Can you upload a picture?

hamilton
if the mule is of 2015 then it is max 3-4 months old as it is very rare that gf will breed before february, even with artificial light.
if thats the case than you have very good chances of teaching him a nice gf song. the mule might still keep the canary song though but will be a lot more pleasant if it has the gf too.

if the mule is older then 1year is very difficult, almost impossible to change their song even though it might catch some gf notes when is molting.

Pretty soon it will start molting as September is almost here, so either way you should provide him with some nice gf song. Molting is the best time to do that as usually bird do not sing very much during this period and will pay more attention to the gf song.

as for the color, mules that come with yellowish green colors, usually have green/yellow canary parents. if you try to feed them red pigments will be the same thing as trying to color a yellow factor canary, not really the best thing but that's up to you.

here are some pics of my mules as an example.

this one has an intense yellow canary mother.




these are his parents




this one had an intense red factor canary mother.



this is its parents

crapy old pics though. this is almost 9years ago

Thanks for sharing your photos!

jonvill
welcome. i have had not much time to upload pics but ill do soon.

my mules are from a canary father x goldfinch hen, they are shaped more like canaries than goldfinches.

that is pretty difficult. only tried that once and because the gf female paired with a male canary when they were together in the aviary. but other then that the mules actually come out very pretty, especially if you use a lipochrome red eye canary of any color.

ThankYou all for your kind information it means a lot to me. Stay blessed