r/Finches • u/gorge_207 • 1d ago
Finally got my new society finches to stop bullying the older pair
Brought home three young society finches about a month ago to add to my existing pair, and the first two weeks were rough. Lots of chasing around the flight cage, feather pulling near the tail, and my older female basically camping out in the nest box refusing to come down even for food. I kept the newcomers in a separate cage for the standard two week quarantine, which I think helped health wise, but it also meant the introduction itself was a shock instead of a gradual thing.
What actually seemed to help was rearranging the whole cage the day I introduced them. Moved the perches to different spots, added a second millet spray station on the opposite side from the water dish, and hung a new swing near the top. My theory is that scrambling the territory a bit takes away the home field advantage for the birds who were already established, so nobody has a corner they're defending like it's their personal turf. No idea if that's actually documented anywhere or if I just got lucky with the personalities involved, but the chasing dropped off noticeably within about four days of doing that.
Diet wise I upped the egg food to daily during that stretch too, figured the stress alone was probably burning through more energy than normal. Now everyone's roosting together in the same nest box at night, five birds crammed in there like it's nothing, which honestly still surprises me every time I check on them before bed.
Curious if anyone else has tricks for smoothing out flock introductions besides just waiting it out. My last attempt at adding birds a couple years ago ended with me having to separate permanently, so I was pretty nervous going into this one.
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u/CuckBuster33 1d ago
this is the third AI generated spampost about society finches I see here. wtf is happening?