female has no tail feathers

[Tish]

I come home to find that my female society finch has no tail feathers not even one. I can't figure out what happened, she had them when I left. Could she or my male have pulled them out?

[Sally]

Tish Either one could have pulled them out. Are they in breeding mode? If so, they will use whatever they can to make/line a nest, and tail feathers work. Fortunately, they grow back fairly quickly.

[Tish]

I hope they grow back quickly, because she looks silly. I don't have a nest in the cage, but I have notice the male doing a lot of dancing and singing since they moved in this cage. Also they been cleaning each other alot, and hoping on each other. Maybe their telling me to put in a nest, but I can't until coconut fibers arrive from amazon.

[Stuart whiting]

I'm inclined to agree with Sally here,

It appears that yer society finches are probably in breeding condition and as Sally has mentioned birds will literally use anything they can find in their cage or avairy to build and line their nest with,

IE any feathering, news paper floor covering which the birds will rip off from, wood shavings and even the twiggy bits of millet sprays I've seen used,

The tail feathers will grow back and under normal circumstances will normally take around 6 weeks until fully grown back

[Stuart whiting]

Tish

Add on from last post just noticed that yer waiting for coconut fibre from Amazon, that is fine and very good nesting material but incidentally you can use any form of clean hay, dried grasses and also moss, find an old feather pillow and take a few feathers out and supply this aswell with the hay and moss,

The moss you will normally find in damp woodlands and have used this for a lot of my breeding birds for well over 30 odd years and has proved very affective

[Tish]

Thank you for the help