Sunday, December 2, 2012

Black Throated X Gray Singing Finch Breeding

This is an accident of the breeding proccess anyway. Basically I intended to breed pure blood of singing finches, avoid any mules product of species crossing. Unfortunately, when I tried a couple of Gray Singing Finch to start with, as these days it is rare to find Gray Singing Finches in the market, proven that I have missed and got double female Gray Singers. Opposite of the seller marked the couple I bought from him, the birds laid a lot of eggs oftenly and never sitting on it. So I decide to separate them to prove what I am thinking is correct, those both Gray Singers are female.
Each of them laid 3 eggs in their own cage, several days after separated. After 20 years of breeding, it is still difficult to me to recognize sharply the sexing of Gray Singing Finches. Sexing the Black Throated Canary/Yellow Rumped serins or Green Singing Finch, by its physical appearance is easier than Gray Singing Finch.
Since I don't have any male Gray Singing Finch and had more male Yellow Rumped Seed Eater/Black Throated Canary ready for breeding, pushed me to put a male Black Throated Canary into the cage of one of the female Gray singing Finch. The couple seems ready for breeding, both of them, I also didn't found them fighting. Within a week, the couple has laid 3 perfect eggs and started sitting. Next 13 days, I found 2 chicks, hatched, and remains 1 egg, which I have to remove since I don't find signs the egg will be hatched.
The are good parents, good in feeding and never stop to feed the chick. It is resulting the chicks to grow faster and within 2 weeks they already started to move out of the nest. I have to wait until the chicks are independent enough, can take the wather temperature, which is now coming into rainy season in Java. But the most important thing is, they can eat the seeds fooding, after hard learning. Sometimes the parents also beat them, force them to get their own food and eat it, instead of asking from the parrent. It is now the time to take them out of the breeding cage, once those signs are clearly shown, and put the in the ordinary solitaire cage.
In case you don't well informed, the Black Throated Canary is little bit different than the Gray Singing Finch in physical appearances. It has yellow feather color in their rump [that's why they also called Yellow Rumped Serins] beside their black feather in the throat part. Ignoring the whole feather part around the body, the streaks, colors - the most considerable are those major signs, which the Gray Singing Finch doesn't have [they have white feather in rump part and throat]. Based on this facts, the chicks of this cross breeding is usually has feathers color appearance in between. The black feathers in the throat becoming fade/paler, we can say it is only the black spots now, and the yellow feather in the rear part is duller. The size of the chicks also between the size of its parrents. Usually the ablity to sing [means the volume, the freqwency, the style, the variations, etc.] also combination between the Yellow Rumped Serins and the Gray Singing Finches.
It is very important to create a good song from them, by put them near and close to the other adults birds until their molting period. This is the period for the chick to copy and adopt from other birds. So, it is very important to have singing finches with good songs for the 'mastering' purpose, if you want to have chicks with better songs in future.