Here's a photo of the way my finch cages are set up right now. I have eight zebra finches: three couples and two bachelors. Paul and Tippy are upstairs, pied Sandy (not Spot!) and Little Girl are in the middle and Randy and Fay are downstairs. Andy is on top of Clay on the TV. I think in the photo only Sandy, Little Girl, Andy and Clay are visible. You'd probably need a magnifying glass to see them.
A few days after Squeaks died, Randy became Fay's new mate. He moved in to her cage and they lived happily enough together for a couple weeks, but no sex. It was like they were roommates. She enjoyed having the company. He enjoyed exploring a new cage. Sex didn't seem to cross either of their minds.
Well, that's changed. He nailed her good yesterday. She chased him around some last night. And Randy's back to swinging.
He's the zebra finch who has his tail worn down from clinging to the side of the hardware cloth cage and yanking on the swing. When he does that, his tail goes through the openings in the cage wall and frays. He doesn't care. He's having fun.
When he lived alone, he didn't swing. We began to wonder if he didn't feel like it, or if he felt there was no point if he didn't have a female to show off for.
At the moment everyone seems really happy. I have all five cages together. The three cages containing couples are stacked on the table, and the two bachelors' cages are stacked on the TV that's on the table. I was concerned that Paul wouldn't like Andy's cage beside him, because Andy's cage is a half-step higher than Paul's. For awhile Paul wasn't happy unless his cage was highest of all. Now it seems he and Tippy enjoy having a neighbor. Andy certainly enjoys having neighbors after being off by himself on the Juki for months.
There's all kinds of excited chatter among the five cages, so apparently this is a happy arrangement. Everyone's feeling fine. Tippy is thriving on a regimen of five drops of Systemajuv Monday through Saturday and ProBac Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. It's been weeks since she has exploded diarrhea everywhere. Thank goodness! She feels good enough that she's laying eggs regularly again.
Her mate Paul has an overgrown beak. He has a slender point sticking out in a hooked curve, so narrow and thin it looks like it could easily break. I've been waiting for it to break, because they freaked out so badly when I tried to catch him to trim it last time. I'm going to have to catch him when he's asleep and trim it off because it's not breaking off and it looks like he could put somebody's eye out if he's not careful. He eats fine, yanks on a swing, transports egg shells up from the floor into the nesting houses or, better yet, drops them with a crash to the floor. Great fun.
I don't know why he developed an overgrown beak after all these years trouble-free. I'm experimenting with Vita-Pak and various foods to see what nutrient he may be needing more of. Haven't discovered a cure yet.
