Glad to be here! Would appreciate some advice!

[tamichels]

I am pretty new to keeping finches, but have had great success so far due to the research I did prior to purchasing my birds. I truly enjoy these beautiful little creatures! I would love to get some advice from those of you who have been doing this for a while though. Here is my situation:

I have four society finches. Although I was not able to sex them when I purchased them, luckily I ended up with two males and two females.

I later wound up seeing a lone red-cheeked cordon bleu finch at a local pet store, and felt so bad that she was by herself that I decided to buy her to add to my group. After an initial separation, she was added, but she was always alone. The society finches didn't bother her, but they didn't accept her into their group. I didn't want to breed any birds, so I decided to purchase another female cordon bleu. They seem basically happy, but they have been making different calling noises lately, which makes me think they are wishing there was a male around!

Finally, I ran across two spice finches at another pet store, one of which was in pretty bad shape. Lots of missing feathers, including around the neck, feet didn't look great, etc. The other one looked OK. I seriously purchased them just because I wanted to help them and I believed the one would have died soon. The person at the store indicated that they were a pair. I kept them in another cage in a separate area of my home and took them to the vet a few days later, once they had de-stressed a little. They both had scaly mites and are being treated with Ivermectin. Once they began feeling better, I heard a male mating call and it seemed to be from the healthier of the two birds. So, I figured the other one was the female. Well, now the scruffier bird is doing a male mating call! It appears I have two males!

So, my questions to the group are:

1. Regarding the red-cheeked cordon bleu females, should I add one male, two males, a male and one female (I've heard that you never want odd numbers) to give my gals (the wonder twins) a better life - or should I just leave things as-is?

2. Regarding the spice finches, once they recover and can be integrated into the group of societies and cordon bleus, should I add two female spice finches, or keep just the two males? I've heard the spice finches integrate better with the society finches, but will that be too many males and possibly cause fighting?

I really appreciate any help you can give me!

Theresa

[Sheather]

Male cordon bleus fight viciously when hens are around, I would only get them mates if you were willing to keep two pairs in separate cages. Otherwise your hens should be just fine together.

Your spice finches should get along well with your societies; in my experience these species are extremely similar in behavior and I found they flocked together like one species. I even had a baby spice finch raised in our aviary that imprinted on a male society and copied his song exactly. You will definitely see the spice finches do their best to court the society hens, and while in my experience the society females never solicited mating from them, the spices would wait in the wings for the right moment when a male society was singing to a hen and the hen gave the mating crouch to jump in ahead of the society and mate with the hen. If this happens you can end up with hybrids, but I didn't happen to get any in my group.

They won't fight without hens, but adding hens wouldn't cause problems either - your call.

[Sally]

Agree completely with Dylan, the two Red-cheeked Cordon Bleu hens will be fine without mates, but if you decide to get two males, you will need to get another cage, the males will fight.

Welcome to the forum! There's lots of good reading at www.finchinfo.com, where you will find many articles on finch care.

[tamichels]

Thank you both for the great advice! I'm sad for my cordon bleu females, because everyone will have potential mates but them! Fighting isn't good for anyone, though, so I will not be adding any males. Truly appreciate the help!