Daryl

Geez Richo, I hope you don't mean me! I can only dream of breeding birds like that at the moment. You mean Daz?

RIP, I agree with all of the comments you have posted above but have a question with the birds shown above. I agree the second bird appears to be SF YF Mut I but could the first bird also be the same? Or have you called the first one Mutant II as the yellow appears a little darker than the second. On my monitor they appear about the same.

The article linked in 2 parts below goes a fair way to clearing things up. But you may need to read it over a few times: http://www.birdhobbyist.com/parrotcolour/peter/yface01.html http://www.birdhobbyist.com/parrotcolour/peter/yface02.html

The grey baby seems fine.......quacking its head off :rofl: I don't mind the look of the Grey at this early stage. Be interesting to see how he comes on.

You may scare a few people if you turn up looking like that avatar :fingerscrossed:

Good post Jimmy and you have highlighted yet another hurdle newcomers (and not so newcomers) must face: who to trust when buying birds. It might sound strange, but if I'm buying from someone I don't know very well or not at all then I'm not only assessing the birds offered for sale but I'm also making a gut call on whether I'm being fed a load of BS. I guess the better way is to become friends with others in your club (when you join) and over time you will decide for yourself who the "shadier" characters might be. When I used to breed Rosellas I found that there was a lot of BS fed to prospective buyers of parrots because the birds were invariably expensive and provided an extreme test of the scruples of the breeder. Some find it easier to pass on a problem bird as being a top breeder which is pretty sad. As to your request to list all the things that can go wrong, that could turn into one almighty depressing list. Best to try and enjoy the good things and slowly pick up on some of the not so good things by reading this forum I think When it comes to buying budgies there are a lot of them around. Therefore you can afford to be more choosy. Probably the simplest piece of advice I could give you to avoid being ripped off by some scumbag passing off problem stuff is to only buy current year stock. That way it is untried and you stand as good a chanced as any of it breeding. Plus, younger birds usually settle down better at new premises. For KAZ, the "boys club" mentality has reigned for a LOOOOOOOONG time. When I was a junior in the 70's any women in the club were generally expected to help out with preparing supper Times have changed a bit since then and I'd hope that this attitude is well on the way to disappearing as it's downright stupid. Something I've noticed on this forum though is that women are well represented numbers wise (and knowledge of course) compared to the ratio you find in most clubs. It's perhaps 50:50 in here whereas I'd guess it's more like 80:20 men:women at most clubs. Also, as far as the cliquey groups go, I think it's unfortunately pretty universal that most (not all) of the very top breeders won't speak much to you until you've "proven" yourself. I know I've certainly found that to be the case. Looking from their perspective they maybe get a bit bugged out by every Tom, **** and Nancy asking them the same question, "What have you got for sale"? Have to find a patient one. So, in summary: Buy current year birds (and don't buy anything you consider super expensive) Get to know some of the breeders in your club before you buy. When you find a decent one, ask LOTS of questions! Don't forget Chookbreeder09, he goes alright on the show bench!

Gee, I hope you sold them to yourself cheap I reckon if you ask her nicely she might be able to rush through a quick sale

Can relate to all of this, although given the small size of my flock I usually do "need" what I buy. And, after breaking open the moneybox I'm going to an auction on Sunday! Hope I come back wearing a shirt

This has been a very interesting thread that has covered a multitude of topics. Just want to add to a few things I related to in it. 1. I think one of the biggest tips I'd give a newcomer is to determine a level of $ you're comfortable with spending in the first 2 years because you WILL make mistakes and hopefully from this you will learn. Buying the best birds at the first auction attended by someone new to the hooby is almost certainly going to end in tears unless they have a fair share of luck. Buying a larger number of affordable birds will help you serve a useful apprenticeship. 2. Yes! I just don't get it. Every auction I attend there is always an assortment of top level breeders bidding on the better birds. However they generally have (IMHO) much better birds than what they are bidding on! So why are they buying these birds at auction? If it's for a new variety then fine. Maybe they just have bags of money and like buying birds. If they need new bloodlines surely there is a cheaper way to do it than this by swapping birds. Or just maybe the conspiracist in me says it's all part of keeping the prices of birds artificially elevated. I don't know. Maybe IF I ever reach the Open status one day I'll be able to answer this. Until then I'll just continue to wonder why I'm bidding against these people. 3. Interesting to read of the show scene in WA where the numbers of Novices are sometimes limited and the showing of bought birds is allowed. Here in Sth East QLD it's the opposite. The Novice section generally comprises the same numbers as the Open and Intermediate combined and runs into the hundreds! Winning anything here is a real achievement so I enjoy the rare win I'm lucky enough to pick up. Also, elevation from both Novice and Intermediate is both time and points dependant. And showing of bought birds is not allowed at any level (with one exception: our club has a special Beginners bought bird section at our large shows, but no points are gained from winning in this section). 4. Personally due to family commitments I don't show at many shows. So while it's nice to get the occasional win this is not the criteria by which I judge my (attempted) progress. Instead it is by the mix of birds I have in my avairy and the birds I am able to sell which tells me if I'm progressing. In Sept just gone I sold the best bird I bred in 2007. A year ago I would never have considered this. Also in Sept I sold others which a year ago were definitely in the "keeper basket" but have been surpassed by birds bred this year. Will these 2009 stock win any great awards? Almost certainly not. But I gain pleasure each morning by being able to enjoy looking at these birds which at the beginning of the year I did not have. By mid next year I hope that a couple of the best cocks I bred in 2008 will be on shaky grounds 5. A few feathers were ruffled earlier over the posting of a sale price for an auction bird. Whilst I wouldn't have posted the price either, I don't think it's too much of a deal given that the sale price occurred in a public arena. I (along with lots of others) mark down all the prices of birds sold at the auctions I attend and I retain these catalogs so they are pretty much public knowledge. However, discussing the sale price of a private exchange is definitely not on without prior permission of the purchaser. 6. On a side note it was mentioned that many breeders don't like to make public if they've lost birds for whatever reason. I posted a few weeks ago in another thread that I hadn't lost a bird for over 12 months. Well hasn't that come back to bite! In the last few weeks I've lost an 8 week old that crashed due to night fright, a cock I bought at auction only a few months ago who got an internal blockage (but luckily bred 3 nice chicks) and another cock (also an auction buy, but from last year) who come down with canker and died in a day! Next time I boast about not losing any birds I'm writing "touch wood' in BOLDED CAPITALS

Holy $@!t alright. Love all of the Greys. The 2 new ones are beauties and huge but I still really like the feather on the first Grey you posted. If he grows on he will take some beating.

Kaz, i'm really sorry to hear all you're going through. Stay strong and i hope your luck turns.

Try this link: http://www.absbudgieclub.org.au/?doc=Events

Good stuff. Will look forward to following this thread over the next 5 or so weeks (hint: keep the pics coming :laughter: ) With 3 chicks your chances of getting at least one good one must be pretty high.

Aah, okay. I forgot to add, very nice looking babies you have there too

Maybe, maybe not. Are you aware that a lot of opaline spangles now are coming out with normal markings as well on the wings. If you mean the grey spangle in the photos..........higher up the wing is showing opaline markings. Here are some of my opaline spangles with normal wing markings too Kaz, i'm a bit confused as to what you mean by "Normal wing markings" in yours above. As far as I can see they all have the typical green Opaline markings through the wings, faded head markings and also have Spangle markings, making them Spangle Opalines. In the grey from the original picture it is quite different from it's Spangle Opaline Grey sibling at the back of the shot in that it doesn't have any of the grey through it's wings. Also it's head markings are darker at the crown than the other Opalines.

Yep, I like the Pied too. Also the DF Yellow hen further down is very nice.

I agree, the Grey in the front looks Normal and therefore a cock. So, the DF Spangle mum would NOT be masking Opaline if the Spangle Grey is not Opaline.

Hi Hamish and Sebastian, good to see your setup. I like the Sky Blue baby on the back perch in the 3rd picture. As for who to put the Spangle Cinnamon Grey with: in your last picture on the middle perch, is either of what looks like a Spangle Opaline or a Dominant Pied Grey Green a hen? They look pretty good from the photo.

Outstanding birds nubbly. The Grey is magnificent and of course I love the Lacewings, especially how you have gotten some really dark marking on the wings as babies. Also, on first looking at them I thought the birds in the 2nd, 4th and 6th pictures were adult birds. It wasn't until looking again more closely that I realised they were all babies as advertised! Very nice.

Haha. Stick a net in the door and start chasing. The smarter ones soon work out where I can't reach and that's when I recruit one of the kids to help with sending the birds down to my end. It's not a job they look forward to but a little bribery always helps . Mostly I can do it alone though. Have had one escape past me in 3 years and luckily enough caught him again. This will always be a risk unless I fit some sort of safety net over the door while catching them. I'd hate to have Red Faced Parrot Finches in these cages. I had a few of them when I had the Gouldians and lost 3 in 6 months due to them rushing by my arm unseen. Budgies are pedestrian compared to those little buggers.

No mate................theres better breeders than me Hang on, hang on. You are a great breeder Kaz. Kazoo did not say you were the greatest breeder in the history of feathered flight. You chicks are beautiful. You should be very proud. Agreed. Your birds have made a big jump from last year. I'm really looking forward to seeing Thundra and sister when they're fully through the moult as they should be very nice.

Here is a link to the manufacturer of my aviaries showing pictures. D & S Aviaries Some of mine are like the one at the bottom right. My breeding ones are a custom design I came up with. I don't "get in" to them, I can generally reach through one of the entrances to do whatever I need to. The wire floor prevents birds from rumaging through dust and droppings in a concentration they would never encounter in the wild.

Nubbly, I've read your thoughts with a sense of deja vu. I believe you've made a lot of valid points with concerns regarding the welfare of your birds and I sense you going through exactly what I did about 10 years ago. Let me explain. And grab a cuppa, I'm about to embark on a post of novel proportions! (which I hope some may find interesting and informative). I bred my first bird on 5th Oct 1973, a pet type green. It came from a nest of 4 eggs, 2 of which hatched. My other pair of blues had 5 eggs, 3 of which hatched (I still have the journal with my thoughts at the time on this, very amusing seeing it through the eyes of a young kid). I acquired my first show stock early the following year. Of 3 pairs, one had 2 chicks, 1 a nest of infertile eggs (the cock was four years old, not that I knew at the time) and the other 3 chicks. So, my early experiences were that my show stock bred around the same number of chicks as my pet stock. I didn't get a lot of large nests and there were clear nests from time to time. Babies were feather plucked, French Moult visited and splayed legs occasionally appeared. I did not routinely medicate for anything (except canker but I didn't really understand why). I used baby vitamins in the water following the dosage rates that someone else had guessed seemed right. My birds lived in a conventional outdoor aviary with concrete floor and bred in very small wooden cabinets that my Dad made for me. The stud size varied from 70 to 150 birds. Only sick birds were medicated, generally not very successfully, and usually birds lived a longish life with the show stock living to around 7-8 years. Medications were not as we know them now, (specifically developed for budgies or other caged birds), but were generally borrowed from the poultry or pig industry and the dosages adjusted to suit. I believe a few of them are still used today! I continued showing and breeding for 9 more years with moderate success before I sold up all my birds when I began work and moved interstate. Fast forward to 1992 and the budgie bug which had remained dormant in me for so long once again re-ignited when I spotted a couple of English birds at a show that I "accidentally" found myself in. I immediately set about getting myself a conventional aviary and large wooden breeding cages. Birds containing the sought after English blood were purchased for the cost of a small castle and I was away again. I eventually purchased a much larger, but portable enclosed conventional aviary. My job required me to move interstate every few years (which stuffed up the breeding cycle no end) so I used an assortment of paving blocks for the aviary base so I could move it with me. My stud size varied between 100 and 150 birds. During this period I bred some okay birds, nothing startling, but generally the breeding results were about the same as I'd experienced 20 years earlier. However, I learnt the hard way that new birds required a period of quarantine and that birds seemed to get sick for no apparent reason way to frequently for my liking. I learnt that Megabacteria (now called Avian Gastric Yeast) seemed almost as common as the sniffles, although affecting different birds to varying degrees. And no matter what medications I threw at my birds it seemed something was always sick or dying. Gradually I began to question my motives for breeding and, for the first time, whether I had ability to act in the birds' best interests. I questioned that had we, in our quest to develop the modern bird, overlooked the fundamental traits of fertility and vitality. I became disillusioned with the quest for type first and variety second given that there was (and still is) so much scope for variety improvement. I wondered if this had contributed to the apparent demise of breeding success. Finally I decided that, if by breeding the birds I was breeding was causing me, and them, so much grief, then I'd be best off not doing it at all. In March 2000 I sold all of my budgies for the second time. Over the next few years I took up breeding Gouldian finches. In a few short years I'd bred all the mutations (it's easy when you've learnt genetics thru budgies!), my birds were healthy but I was bored. There was no challenge. So I sold those and bred Eastern Rosellas in most of the mutations. Absolutely beautiful colours but way too flighty. Birds were healthy but I was bored again. Still no challenge. So, at the end of 2006 I decided once again to have another crack at my true passion and the one challenge I am still to master: breeding healthy, quality exhibition budgerigars. I'd learnt a few things about diet and housing from breeding the finches and rosellas. My setup had consisted of suspended aviaries. These are very common in most parrot breeders but not so in budgerigar breeders. I have kept and expanded upon the suspended aviaries for 2 reasons. Firstly, I now don't have anywhere near the problems with accumulations of droppings which is, in my opinion, a big cause of disease. Even all my breeding cages are a combination of suspended aviaries. No messy bottoms of the cage and also the birds live in an open air communal setting when breeding (in individual cages of course, which each measure 90 X 70 X 90cm giving them room to fly if desired). The birds seem to love it as you often find up to 4 cocks all in their respective adjoining corner of the cage talking to each other. The second reason was for my health. When I had the conventional aviary with concrete or paved floor I would get a massive reaction to the dropping and seed dust, with runny nose and eyes and sometimes even coughing up blood! All while wearing a dust mask. Nowadays, feeding the birds doesn't even cause a sniffle. Now this can't have been too good for the birds either. There is one down side of an outdoor setup and that is keeping cats away. But our local council now requires that they're locked up so they don't cause problems much. The next change I've made is lots of uncrowded space. I don't have a large setup but neither do I keep a lot of birds. At the moment there are about 60 and a few of them will disappear shortly. Let's face it, how many top notch birds do we really have? I can count mine on one hand. So I believe it's cheaper and healthier for the birds and me if I have less of them. Plus they get more attention that way. Nest boxes full of older chicks are cleaned daily and new shavings are added. I've had no French Moult for 2 years and have not had a plucker in the 3 years since I restarted breeding. Had a couple of splayed legs though. Now, onto medications. Mine get NO routine meds at all. Nothing. Only sick birds get treated if I deem they require it (with 1 exception, read on) or I would treat the flock if I perceived a threat. New birds go through a quarantine period and, when I'm satisfied that they appear safe, they are then placed in a cage with 1 other bird. Most of my birds are subject to wind, rain and sun. But the only bird I've lost in 12 months was due to an accident which was my fault. The one exception with medications I make is that in times of summer rain here in QLD cocci goes nuts. Even with my suspended cages I still think they need a bit of Coccivet to control the threat of rampant cocci. Winter rain (when we get it) doesn't bother me. One of the most important changes I've made is to avoid buying in, or using, birds with known problems. I've seen birds at auctions with lumps and birds at auctions where you can almost see the keel bone sticking out. And of course the ones with multiple flights and tails missing. Basically if the bird is not so healthy that it's jumping thru the wires to come home with me then it's not coming back to my place. I mentioned in another thread some baby Spangles (and siblings) I have just bred and that they have come from large nests. I bought the father from Henry George because not only is the line said to be fertile, but the mother of my bird is 6 years old and still breeding at Henry's! These are exactly the sort of features we need to be aware of when acquiring stock to establish a stud of birds. Hopefully I can retain these "hidden features" and that this approach stands me in good stead in the following seasons. Another thing I've done this time is checked my water. I measured the pH and it was alkaline. You can sometimes even smell the chlorine in our drinking water. In the wild budgies drink a water that is slightly acidic and lack of acid is thought to be a catalyst for AGY. For the past few months I've had mine on my tank water (which I measured to be slightly acidic) and it's made a huge difference to the couple that were a bit thin (along with a sprouted seed diet). This is not meant to be advice not to see a vet or medicate a sick bird, but just that there are sometimes other ways to help certain non-critically ill birds through diet. A member of our club who only passed away a few years ago bred for 50 years and the only "medicine" his birds got was green tea! True. His aviaries were a huge outdoor setup with full exposure to all the elements. And to this day his birds were by far the healthiest and strongest I have ever seen. Anyway, back on topic. Fertility in my birds is not really any worse than what it was all those years ago when I began. I used to get clear nests then and I still do now for varied reasons. In fact I think fertility may be better now for me than then going on the pairs that have bred for me this year. However, where clear nests were just one of those things that happened long ago, now I can usually work out what happened and act to rectify it. I remember reading an article published in the Victorian publication Budgie News in the late 70's titled "Are our budgies sexier than the British?" Strange title, but the jist of the article was that whilst those breeders in the UK were reportedly getting a routine 1 to 2 chicks per nest, the Aussie breeders were getting 4 or more every time. My own results of that time don't fully support that, but I've included it to make the point that I believe the situation we find ourselves in today is not all that different from the early 90's (with English imports) or the 70's (pre-English imports). Like Billy Joel said, "We didn't start the fire". I think a lot of it comes down to fully understanding and recognising what breeding condition is all about and after all these years I'm still learning about it each year. And the challenge of breeding that good bird is still burning away inside. Maybe it's even in one of the nest boxes I will check tomorrow morning. One can only hope. Daryl

Oh no, I'm so very sorry to hear this. Best wishes to Ken and yourself in this difficult time.

Thanks nubbly. I will keep him if only to be able to show him next year as I haven't bred many red ringers (edit: damn, just realised I cut the red ring off and kept the blue one!) Don't get me wrong, I think he will turn out to be one of those "nice" birds. But for the breeding cage I'd like to try and use only cocks that excel in something and I reckon he'll just be nice overall without having an outstanding feature. Whereas the Spangle Grey cock, whilst not a fantastic bird, has a bit of shoulder about him and I don't have many that do so he should stay.