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About Lady Gouldian Finches

Tossed out abandoned gouldian baby finches

Gouldian baby kicked out of the nest box

Gouldian baby kicked out of the nest box

Baby gouldian finches tossed out and abandoned by their parents

Gouldians in captivity are known to be good in tossing out babies from newly hatch egg up to a full feathered babies that are still in the nest boxes.  What seemed to be an issue and what will you do if the baby gouldlian is still alive?

Based on my experience and observation from the years of breeding lady gouldians, the first thing I have noticed was that the dominant males are the ones that tossed out the babies from the nest boxes to take over that particular box if they like to start breeding.  They will chase both parents away from that nest box and start throwing out the babies then he will start rebuilding for his own use.  Another sign of babies being abused before they got tossed out of their nest is when you can hear a loud cry coming from inside the nest box and you know that the babies are being bullied and push away even if they are not ready to pledge on their own. The best way to do is trying to find his nest box and put him back or leave him alone and hopefully his parents will feed him.

The picture above is one example of a bullied youngster that got kicked out of his nest box.  Usually at this stage it will refuse to be hand fed even when all his reserved food in his crop is all gone.

If both gouldian parents are young, usually they don’t know what to do so they will tossed-out the newly hatched baby bird.  The pictures below are from few days old babies which are also killed before I had a chance to provide assistance like putting them back to a nest box with babies of the same age or hand feed them until they can eat on their own.

I’ve noticed that about 25% of the babies that I have found were tossed out by their parents or other adult gouldians were already weak, malnourished, deformed of some sort and brutally beat up.  I believed that an experienced gouldian parent knows if there’s a baby bird in her clutch that is sick or dying they will toss it out so the remaining babies will survive.  These babies only have a 50/50 chance of survival and if they make it, these babies are going to be disabled (missing toes, deformed beaks, part of the wing is cut off and will have difficulty flying.

For babies that I end up hand feeding with finch formula will have a special leg band and they are for keeps.  I’m not sure if Gouldians do the same thing in the wild, but it’s something that gouldians are known to do more than the other breeds.

Gouldian baby tossed out and died         Baby gouldian wing and chest injury

Young gouldian finch tossed out of his nest box

Young gouldian finch tossed out of his nest box

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