Our Birds

We currently have 46 adult Gouldians in our aviary including normal (green), yellow, dilute, and blue backed as well as all three head colors (red, black, and orange). We also have a few white breasted birds as well as many purple chested birds. We aquired the majority of these birds during the fall of 2006; most of these birds are between the ages of 2-3 years old and, although quite a few of them have paired up, there are still many that have not yet paired up and have yet to produce any young.

All of our birds undergo a thorough quarantine prior to being introduced into the aviary. We follow the quarantine procedures as outlined on the Lady Gouldian Finch website, which lasts for 45-60 days and consists of treatment of extermal parasites, airsac mites, Coccidiosis (if symptoms or conditions warrant treatment), protozoal treatment, and worming. We also repeat the above treatments each spring prior to breeding season to ensure a healthy flock.

Our birds are fed a high quality seed mixture that I specially blended for them. They also receive fresh millet sprays once or twice a week as well as receiving fresh greens (kale, collard greens, mustard greens, etc.) and a fresh egg food mixture twice a day for the majority of the year. During the short Arizona winter we cut the fresh greens and egg food mixture back to one feeding each day to try to discourage breeding. Although the adult birds handle the winters just fine (we do make some cold weather adjustments to the aviary); the baby birds just aren't equiped to handle the really cold temps during the peak of winter so we try to discourage breeding during this time.

All of our Gouldian finches are parent raised in the outdoor aviary to help ensure a healthy, hardy bird that has had the benefit of learing parenting skills by their own Gouldian parents. We do not use other finches to foster our babies to increase production. I have actually observed on many occasions my older fledglings feeding newly-emerged babies out of the nestbox; I believe this is a good indication of stong parenting skills which have been learned. They get to grow up in a large aviary that allows them extensive flying room, allowing them to develop strong muscles and grow into large, healthy adult birds.

Here are a some pictures of just a few of our birds. You can see more pictures located under the "Pictures" heading to the left.