Our Story
Finches Friend is a family business, striving to minimise the spread of trichomonosis among garden birds, by helping to educate people on the importance of a regular cleaning routine and creating high quality bird feeders that make it easy.
2016 Trichomonosis at Trapham Barn
Dick Woods lives in Kent, and together with his wife Tina, loves to feed the birds. In 2016 they had various conventional feeders, which were very popular with local finches, Greenfinches in particular, who numbered around 60.
Tragically, within the space of two or three weeks, all the Greenfinches died.
Dick and Tina researched the issue and learned about Trichomonosis which is spread by a parasite transmitted through damp food in their feeders.
“We were devastated. We were trying to help the birds but didn’t realise the danger." remembers Dick. “I set about trying to find a solution."
2016-2020 Creating the Cleaner Feeder
Dick is an engineer with over 40 years experience of product design and manufacture.
“My experience is in commercial vehicle superstructure development, I love problem solving, if I see a can, I have to kick it! I couldn’t let disease in bird feeders beat me!”
So he set about making a feeder that’s easy to clean, and is also a wonderful place for birds to feed and be observed.
The solution didn't come quickly though, it took five years of thinking, developing, trialling and prototyping.
“The key was separating the feed store from where the birds feed. The design enables the feeding area to be removed without waste, and the food in the storage area to remain clean, dry and free of the parasite.”
The final design features a removable feed station making cleaning quick and easy, and two or four, enclosed feed chambers to hold a variety of feed and protect it from the most extreme weather
By 2020, operational 3D printed prototypes proved successful.
“The "Finches Friend" feeders worked, and as if in celebration, Green Finches returned! With weekly cleaning they have started to thrive!”
2020 Finches Friend, a home grown business
With a product design finalised and relevant patents requested, the next step was to bring the feeders to production and build up the business.
“I take great pride in having supported UK manufacturing throughout my work life, with the majority of my products manufactured here. Building in the UK means we have control over the whole process, and can assure the environment credentials of our feeders.”
Dick worked with a local injection moulding business to acquire the tooling and setup a production line, which includes no single use plastic and sustainably sourced cardboard.
“I felt quite comfortable developing the production process but wanted some input taking the feeders into the retail market, selling online, managing the media, that sort of thing. My children, Kerrie and Andrew, had helped out throughout the process and quite naturally their role within the business grew. Before I quite knew it, they’d assigned themselves lofty titles!”
Kerrie has extensive experience managing health research programmes and Andrew is a Director of his own IT company.
Andrew says “We’ve worked on different projects together over the years but for Finches Friend, it all seemed to come together at the right time!”
Working closely together, they have built a business around the product and are working hard to raise awareness of Trichomonosis and the benefits of our feeders.
2020 - Martin Hughes-Games joins as brand ambassador
We wanted to find a brand ambassador who could help to raise the profile of Finches Friend but who also shares our passion for wildlife and drive to make things better.
“I knew of Martin from Springwatch and thought I’d reach out see if he knew about Trichomonosis and wanted to find out more about the feeders. ”
When Martin read the story, his heart went out to Dick and Tina.
“It was very sad to hear about the loss of Dick’s greenfinches, when all he wanted to do was help, but I was excited to hear about the feeder and how it can help, so we arranged to meet (over Zoom nowadays of course) and I’m delighted to say the rest is history! I’m really excited to get involved in helping to protect our garden birds.”
