Red-Headed Male Gouldian

This is one of the three males we have with red-heads and bright purple breasts. So beautiful! They're one big happy family, all ten of them. We brought the bronze-winged manakins in with them as well. They all get along great.

I notice that I have to keep an eye on the gouldians for air sac mites. The parents had them when we got them from a breeder but nobody was aware. Apparently you can't get rid of them for good and they go inactive then will suddenly start causing problems for the birds. We keep the medicine onhand that I got from Dr. Rob's website. It's on my link section. (LOVE that website!)

All Grown UP

Our gouldian babies all grew up and colored in. Three scarlet-redheaded males and five black-headed lilac breasted females. They're SO pretty. I put iodine drops in their water bottles to make sure they get enough and it helps with their colors. I saw a gouldian at the petstore that had the most severly faded colors. I felt bad for it. I think it's because petstores can sometimes not realize that gouldians have special nutritional needs beyond just birdseed. I don't know if it's the iodine or the protein or some trace mineral, but that little guy (or gal) needed help.

How do you bring that up at a petstore without insulting the staff? It's a great store. You can tell they care for their animals.

We lost our mama gouldian. I don't know what happened. She just started to sleep more and then she was gone in two days. Nothing obvious.

So she's survived by her eight babies and the daddy is still in there with them. They're one big happy family.

Gouldian Finches for Sale in Abita Springs, LA

Gouldian Finches for Sale in Abita Springs, Louisiana!

Our pair of gouldian finches have raised two clutches this winter and now have 8 goulds ready for new homes. They still haven't gotten their adult plumage yet. The first batch of three have started to color-in enough that we can tell two are black-headed normals and one is a red-headed normal. One is a male, two are female.

Price is $75 each.

They're healthy, well-muscled birds who were raised by their parents. They've been fed fresh millet, chopped greens and spinach, egg food, oyster grit, cuttlebone, finch food, feather fast to help them through moulting.

They've been raised in a roomy 3 ft by 3 ft by 4 ft cage with lots of room for exercise.

Please contact me for arrange appointment to purchase by posting a comment. Thank you!
All photos shown on this blog are either of the available babies or of the parents with the exception of the youtube video.

Bird Show Visit

We went to the bird show in Westwego, LA last weekend and got a couple of diamond dove hens to go in the large cage with the four bronze-winged mannikins on our covered porch. So far they're all getting along great. I try to set up a nest for the doves but the mannikins keep stealing the materials and the doves don't seem too interested. They've been sleeping on branches and haven't been hanging out on the bottom of the cage like I thought they would. We'll see what happens. (The cage is 3ft x 3ft x 4ft)

I also saw a blue gouldian for sale for $350. It was the first one I saw in person and since it was moulting it didn't have it's "colors on". The gouldian finch that caught my eye most was a vibrant white-breasted gould with a red-head. Very cute!

Spinach Frenzy

Lately I've been feeding my ten gouldian finches spinach and they LOVE it! I chop it up and sprinkle feather fast on it as some of them are getting their adult plumage and it's so fun to watch them eat it. They pick the leaves up and next thing you know, spinach is flying all over the place. I wish I could get a video of it without the black cage bars getting in the way.

We can only handle them like this for the first few days after they leave the nest so we have to enjoy it while we can! After that they don't much care for being held. (I hear that if you hand-feed them they are more tame as adults. We are lucky to have excellent gouldian parents that don't need our help with that.)

The Big Day

Today the five baby gouldians left the nest.

Bronze-Winged Mannikins

We also have Bronze-winged mannikins in another large bird cage. This shows the father and one of the babies shortly after leaving the nest. They're so tiny! You can't tell by looking at the photo but they are absolutely the tiniest birds..and very fast! I love the little sounds they make. Pleasant, lively chatter. They eat millet, finch seed, and greens. I offer grit and cuttlebone but they don't go for it like the gouldians do. (For one thing, they don't need iodine like gouldians.) They definitely go for the grit when it's breeding time.

Bird Cage

What kind of bird cage/aviary/flight do you keep your gouldians in? I have mine in a 24"x24"x30" black wire cage that lifts out of a metal high-edged tray. It's pretty easy to clean. I line the bottom with multiple layers of newspaper. Every day I peel off a few sheets so the bottom of the cage is clean. About once every week or two I take the cage off the base and clean the seed hulls that end up underneath the newspapers out. Works out pretty well!

For perches I'm using a few that I purchased at bird shows and several thin branches that I got off of trees in my yard. I just stick them through the wire and use a small cable tie to secure them on either side so they don't pop out easily. I like using the branches because they look natural. I have one of them in the cage vertically, arched like a bow. The gouldians love landing on that one and eating a spray of millet I hang from the top of the cage with a plastic clothes pin. It helps them to be able to eat the millet from top-to-bottom so there's less waste.

View into the Gouldian Nest

There are five gouldian babies in this nest but you can't see them all in the picture. I took the photo in with sunlight behind the nest and the colors came out so strange! I tried to dabble with the photo to make the colors look more realistic but couldn't quite get the gray in there. That's okay, it looks kind of artistic, almost sepia. The birds are gray and the feather pins are starting to plume out with olive green, which looks more ochre in the picture. Aren't they uglycute? :-)