Welcome

Hi, I am new to this but I am willing to give it a shot.  I am a small hobby bird breeder in Missouri and I mostly breed finches and canaries.  I have over 30 kinds of finches and enjoy them all.  My hope is those that have not had finches before and those that have finches now can learn some new helpful hints.  I will be giving thoughts on care, housing and general maintenance, along with money saving tips that work for me.

Did you know that finches need food available at all times.  Their metabolism is so fast that some can starve in as little as 18 hours.  Fresh seed is more important than you think.  Summer is a bad time of year for seed, often stores sell seed with bugs in it and it is often OLD seed.  Check the expiration date, if it is past, then the seed won't have the proper vitamins in it any more and you will starve your birds. 

You can check for bugs sometimes by holding the bag of food.  Look at it carefully, is there anything moving around that shouldn't be in there?  Slowly move the bag on its side, upside down and look again, do you see webs in the food?  Is it clumping and sticking to the sides.  If it has any of these things, don't buy it and go somewhere else.  Most bird stores will have fresh seed, the most often stores that don't specialize in seed will have the bad seed.  Also watch some of the larger pet food chains, most are good, but you should still look.

More to come, hope this helps.