FINCHforum

Hello

We have just acquired two lovely black cheeked zebra finches and they live in a large cage in the nice warm living room with big windows. They are two males. I am wondering if it is unkind to keep them without females and whether we ought to transition to 6 in a big aviary!

If we were ever to acquire more finches, we would want to build them an aviary, which would have to go
in the garage, which gets cold in the winter, but doesn't get below freezing. How cold can they get and still be safe? Similarly there are 2 other rooms in the house which are less cold than the garage but not as warm as the main house. Again, would these be OK?

The garage has 1 frosted glass window, so I would probably need to put some lights on a timer.
There is a fluorescent tube light in the garage with a wall switch, but also power in there so
other lights could be used.

Thanks
Rachel and Jeff.

I have waxbills, which are not as hardy as Zebras, so I would have a heater out in the garage, set so that the temperature doesn't fall below 50F. I believe Zebras are much more hardy, but I still would have either a small heater or a heat lamp so that they would have some heat.

Welcome to the forum! There's lots of good reading at www.finchinfo.com, where you will find many articles on finch care. If you put your general location in your profile, it makes it easier to answer locale-specific questions later on.

I have 3 society finches which I kept at low temperatures this season and they are just fine by now. See the thread here, maybe it helps you:

Society finch - temperature experiment