Gouldian Finches - EJ AVIARY

I mentioned in my last news article that I had a young blue hen (Sarah) who loved to lay eggs but didn’t like to sit. That's her in the photo above (ignore the tail - she's been living in her nest for the last month!)  She laid ten in a row with no sign of sitting, so I took the six freshest eggs and gave five to a pair of societies.  She’s the only chick I ever got from Gus and Alice, who were two of my first birds, and I really wanted some of her chicks so didn’t want to “waste” all of those eggs. (Her mama is the yellow hen pictured with the "I Must Be Getting Old" news article.)  But I still wanted to give her a chance to figure out parenting, so I left one good egg along with a couple of duds in her nest. Well, all five hatched under the societies, and the kids are getting ready to fledge soon. Woo hoo! And maybe the three eggs weren’t quite as intimidating, because Sarah finally jumped in and started sitting! Double woo hoo! The chick hatched and she’s proven to be a wonderful mother after all. So good, in fact, that it turns out that she had laid two more eggs just for good measure and when those hatched a week after the first chick she’s fed them as well, even though the new chicks are so much smaller than the first. Arnold likes to spend most of his time out of the nest, but takes his turn whenever Sarah needs a break.

What I find really interesting is that Sarah was raised by fosters – her parents showed no interest at all in parenting. Her mate, Arnold, was an extra egg Elvira gave me so he was also raised by fosters. There has been such a debate about fosters versus natural parents, and whether fostered chicks are as healthy, whether they learn parenting skills, and even whether they learn to “be gouldians”. While I do everything to encourage my goulds to raise their own, and almost all of them do, I have no problems pulling in the societies when I need them.   The result can be two birds like Sarah and Arnold, who prove that fostered birds can be healthy, can raise their own chicks, and can “be gouldians”.