Thank you Jan for all the information you gave. Echt geweldig de moeite die je er voor deed ;-)
As you now probably suspect, I'm from the Netherlands too.
It doesnt matter how big it is, they will always find and fight eachother.
That's what I read too. Thanks for the confirmation.
You can see a post of mine here of last year when i had a single couple red siskins.
I never heard of that species, they are beautiful.
generally speaking they follow the local weather.
I read that some follow the seasons south of the Sahara. But there is more contradicting info about them online about this subject.
Mine got as many light as the current amount of daylight in the Netherlands. No artificial light, also not from the outdoors.
This time of the year that isn't a many hours of light and less each day. The days are short. Temperature 17-18 °C (indoors)
I was surprised the male wanted to breed her already, after 7 weeks with her, but I didn't give them a nest until she was ready for it too.
Curious what they do next.
I removed the nest today as i don't want to encourage breeding and am not giving them nesting material atm. The male is 1 year old, born about a year ago. Also not during spring/summer.
But they are very prone to draft and moist.
Thank you. For now mine stay indoors, and I will make up my mind next spring.
As soon as the little siskins fly out of the nest, the man does indeed take over feeding because generally speaking the female will start laying eggs again rather soon.
Aha!
Today I saw (no I heard) the female feeding the tiny young that is way to young and helpless for my likings. At 13-14 days old it's very fragile. The parents don't feed it as much as the young siskin that does way better. That one begs for food more often and moves around surprisingly well. It gets fed more often also.
Fingers crossed for the tiniest of the two, hopefully it will make it.
If you have a good matching couple, you can easy breed 4 times a year. Thats why a lot of breeders will seperate males from females after 3 nests. And i really believe this is the max.
I totally agree! I wouldn't mind at all if it were 1 (wishful thinking) max 2 nests.
To be honest, if I can stop them now I will. For me it's not about breeding although, can't deny it, I love witnessing the process.
As I explained, they didn't have longer daylight hours than what nature gives them and I only fed protein rich food once a week. But I prolonged the daylight hours gradually while the hen was sitting on her eggs, until 12 hours a day, that way they have more hours to feed they young. I have LED above them which fades in/out slowly, programmed with an app on my phone.
Once these young don't need to be fed by the parents anymore and need to be separated from the parents, I will reduce daylight hours again and refrain from egg food / frutti patee or live food for the adults.
Good to know that eventually separating the male and female is the only thing that can prevent them from breeding. I defenitely will do so if that is needed.
Otherwise the female will use up all her bones to create calcium for their egg shells. Nobody should want that.
That's something we should protect her from. Agree. They'll live longer and will reward you with young next season. 3 Nests is more than I hope for. Witnessing the process from mating until the young are independent of the parents is wonderful. Amazing how nature/instinct kicks in and how the adults know what to do/feed the young. Love to witness that process again but not when the animals suffer from it.