Green singing finches - info needed

[BigBear0007]

That's the way these green singers seemed to be at Petsmart. There were 2 females and 1 male. The female that actually looked somewhat healthy was pretty mean to the others. I watched them for about 15 minutes and at one point she reached over to the male and yanked out one of his feathers. He looked like he was in kind of bad shape; already missing a lot of feathers.

That just means that the female wants to breed and the male isn't ready yet.
The male should be seperated till he is ready.

Jerry

[kilroy]

Why would a male not be ready? Afraid of committment??
Seriously though, does that mean that pairs of this species should not be housed together except when they are breeding? I've read that of canaries and I know green singers are closely related.

[BigBear0007]

Why would a male not be ready? Afraid of committment??
Seriously though, does that mean that pairs of this species should not be housed together except when they are breeding? I've read that of canaries and I know green singers are closely related.

If the male is younger, then he isn't ready.
If the ages are similer then they can be kept together.

I have had hens pulling feathers from the young that
were out of the nest.
The hens were ready to lay again and didn't want the older
ones around.

Jerry

[Intyme]

I went to my local PetSmart today....I was very upset to see a few sick looking birds today!

[can]

Hi, I have 3 GS, parents and their chick in a separate cage. (Sometimes the father and chick (also male) are so loud (singing back and forth to each other), you can't stay in the room with them.) But otherwise, they are some of my favourite birds, not that I have favourites (I love them all equally). They have a beautiful, varied song. Our female is one of our friendliest birds, comes up to the bars of the cage to see us and will sit in our hands to eat (our other female, that pasted away awhile ago, was also very friendly).

Currently, I am housing the parents together, and they won't breed unless they have a nest, so everything is peaceful.

I am a strong believer in adopting one's pets (most of the time you still have to pay for them), but I feel it creates a stronger bond and most of the time you do have access to a verbal history of the animals. More personal than buying from a pet store. I'd look around a little more, waiting can only bring more meaning to the human-bird relationship.