FINCHforum

lovezebs Stine

Elana honey, pay up it's a WB!

Stine, he looks like he's going through a rough molt. Pile on the crushed boiled egg and eggs shells. Keep the lamp there for warmth. Should be okay with the added protein and calcium. The boiled egg has vitamin D for calcium absorption too.

I'll take your word for it. It just seems to be everywhere at once - legs, wings, breast. His body must be really determined to get this molt over with ASAP. I'll keep trying with the eggs

Stine

Heavy moults can be HEAVY moults.

Some youngsters come through them unscathed, some don't do as well.

Continue with the warmth, and the best diet you can get into him. Hard boiled eggs, are extremely important for your little chap at this time. He needs some protein going into him, which seeds won't give him.
Have you tried my egg food recipe?

I haven't tried adding meal worms yet and my commercial egg food is not Tropimix but Kings, but other than that I'm following it (scaled down to a 'one button quail egg' sized amount - it fits neatly into the garlic press, wouldn't have thought of that myself ^^). If you think the meal worms will make him eat it, I'll get them.

Stine

If you haven't got the mealworms, don't worry about it for now.

You say he likes Canary seeds?
Mix some into the eggs, and offer this mixture alone for a couple of hours at usual feeding time. If Canary seeds are his favorite, he will go for them in the egg mixture and ultimately ingest some of the egg as well.

After two hours, offer his usual seed mix.

See how it goes.

BTW~ If you do decide to get the freeze dried meal worms, don't buy them at the Pet Shop (way too expensive)
Walmart, has a nice sized bag of them in the wild bird/pet section for a fraction of the price.

Just remember to pulverize them into almost a powder before mixing into eggs.

Will try that

We don't have Walmart in Denmark (where I live) but as I happen to work in a pet shop that sells dried meal worms I can get them at a discounted price, so it shouldn't be all that expensive

Stine

In a pinch you can scrape cuttle bone shavings/powder into his favorite seed mix and coat the seed well, offer multi vitamin in the water that has vitamin D to absorb the calcium.

He will ingest the cuttlebone powder as he hulls the seed. You already know how important calcium is in growing new feathers.

Eventually he is going to eat the boiled egg mix, its just a matter of time. Keep offering it daily. However, using the cuttle bone powder in his normal seed can get calcium into him sooner since the molt is now in full throttle.

Oh, now that you mention cuttle bone powder - I've been wondering how much those finch beaks are actually good for. I know zebra finches can handle whole cuttle bone, but can gouldians? Canaries? Societies? And what about the regular calcium/mineral blocks - those are even harder. Can any of them handle those?
The vitamin powder I'm putting on his sprouted seeds is actually mainly calcium and I think it's supposed to be in a form that's easier to absorb than cuttle bone is, so I guess he is fine with that? It has vitamin D as well.
There were canary seed hulls in the egg food today but I can't say how much of the actual egg food he has eaten.

Babs

The winner of The Great Breast Color Competition is:
lovezebs

He turned out to be purple breast:

Guess we can also safely say by now that 'he' is indeed a he?


Still looking forward to seeing what the pin feathers on his head turns out to be, but as you both guessed red head I assume you are correct until proven wrong