

Here's daddy Cricket, watching the 2nd fledgling Twiggy testing her legs.
Having all kinds of problems with them. The father finch is intent on making more babies. The mom laid 3 eggs and I have been replacing them with dummy eggs, but she laid another one this morning after I put 6 fakes in. They broke the first one. The father has ripped the tail feathers out of all the kids, the mother and even his own apparently to line the nest. I gave him jute fiber to see if he would stop plucking everyone. He has been eating everyone's downy feathers and now some of the babies have taken up the habit. I am giving them plenty of calcium so I don't understand why they would eat feathers. The mom bird is eating poop off the cage floor. Now two of the kids have bloody peck marks on their cheeks. I caught the two of them appearing to be preening in the cheek area and that's when I noticed the 2nd young one also had marks. So are they fighting or preening too hard? I am thinking of separating the males and females in separate cages to stop the breeding and hopefully that would stop the tail feather plucking, but since they are only 4 weeks old I can't tell their sex yet.goldfinchowl wrote: How r the babies doing?