Society Finch Standoff

Bobbin pulls a pinnie while preening Patches, and the standoff begins....

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• Society
• Finch
• Bengalese
• Finches
• Birds

[wilddove6]

Please think very very carefully about not doing this.  It is very frowned upon in aviculture, and in general.

Just because you *can* doesn't mean you should.

[Bears135]

wilddove6 I read about mating them today and I found that you can mate them together.

[wilddove6]

I know that Society finch will often foster raise Zebra finch chicks.

The thing is, that you *don't* want to hybridize birds, (mate two different species together). What happens if you do this is that your hybridized chicks get sold, and bred, and this hybridized version gets mixed in with the normal gene pool. Eventually then, neither Zebra finches, nor Society finches are the species they were supposed to be in the beginning before people screwed them up.

[technicolour45]

@wilddove6 Why is this a problem? People have been performing artificial selection on animals for years. The only danger I could see in this is if the hybridized form escapes captivity, and is somehow more successful in the wild than the original species - which I can see being possible because it was raised in a more tame environment,

[wilddove6]

@technicolour45

Good question.

This sort of practice used to be acceptable to some degree because the breeding population in captivity could always be "refreshed" with new "Stock".

However, in most cases of captive breeding of exotic birds, the doors are closed to importation from the wild, so what you have is what you have...your gene pool is now finite.

Hybridization and the resulting offspring mess up that finite gene pool, (not every breeder is responsible enough to forgo (con't)

[wilddove6]

@technicolour45

selling hybrid chicks as breeders, (or have no control over owners who do) and the result is a muddied gene pool of birds who are neither one species or another.

That's a huge consideration when most wild exotic birds are now threatened with habitat loss. Our captive breeding populations may one day be called upon to keep a species from extinction.

Read about the Spix Macaw...

[wilddove6]

People need to start appreciating species as they are, rather than what we can make of them. Indiscriminate olour mutation breeding has cut the lifespan of some bird species literally in half, and the half that remain are more likely to have health issues.

Once again, the gene pool of captive breeding birds is now a closed "aviary" if you will, (and it should be...we should not be taking birds from the wild populations any more)... anyone who chooses to breed should do so responsibly.

[claudiasnest]

They are both society, and beautiful I might add, They are one of my favorite little finches

[pulvaris]

@wilddove6 Society Finches are totally Eugenic anyway! They dont exist in the wild, they are a "created" species via hybreed so I cant see that mixing the genetics of them will dillute anything when their whole existance is the dilluting of other finch types...also...the chances are if you were to cross breed Zebra and Bengalese the product would be infertile...and thus pose zero threat to either species as their genetics would die with them.

[thelouisfanclub]

I have two society finches of these exact colours, I think they are both girls.

[zoeichiblondegirl]

They're really cute!!

[Sutone90]

I have a question. I have a breeding pair of Zebra Finches, and I recently purchased a very large cage for them. But I was also thinking of getting a female society finch to put in the cage with them, just as a companion. My question is, will my male try to mate with the society finch, or is he most likely to stick with his zebra finch female?

[56Steevo]

That's just funny. I do have a pair and they're a delight. Thanks...