Hi,
I recently moved saturday,Upon moving i covered my 4 finches and held the cage in the moving truck.After getting to my new place i set the cage up on a table and the finches looked fine.I left to return the moving truck.Upon my return.The youngest of the 4 finches.The mothers offspring was puffed up.I noticed blood on her beak.As i got closer i noticed the back end of her was bleeding,it was raw red.She had a few tail feathers but was constantly pulling feathers out of her back end.It was like a bubble,alot of feathers were missing there. <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />not sure if this was her butt.She must have been in such pain.I immediatly put a heat light on her.She was still active,going on the swing but then would twitch as the back end must have been stinging and she would start to dig at it.irritating it even more.I kept thinking if i could put one of those cone thingys they put on dogs so she would leave it alone.It was breaking my heart to see her like this as she was my fav.She loved the heat lamp on her as it was nice and warm.But the damage was too bad.I lost her a few hours later.I wish i knew what caused this.She was fine before we moved.The other 3 finches are fine.Just trying to understand why this just happened to her.Hoping to hear from anyone who has experienced this.
thanks

Thats so sad. I have no idea what could have caused this to happen.

Kelley,

Hi! I'm Jerry and am new to the forum. This is my very moments on air so to speak. I onced raised birds for the pet industry and had around 2000 finches of various types at any one time. You said it was the youngest of the four finches but you did not mention its age. The average life span of a finch is only 7 years. At 7 they pretty much just fall over dead. Your little friend sounds like it might have been egg bound meaning it needed to lay an egg but was physically unable to do so. This condition will stress out a bird and it will pick its feathers and eventually die. Also in the animal world, and especially birds, when one gets sick or enabled the other birds will jump on it like a june bug and help in killing it. This is somewhat akin to the "pecking order" thing. The weak does not have a chance.
I'm so sorry this happened to you and your bird but there are several million more to takes its place. Things like this will happen til the end of time.
Jerry