Geez Kaz - talk about focus on the Negatives of our National show which is the pinnacle of our great hobby
My experience of having birds selected to represent Victorian at the Nationals has been extremely postitive.
All my birds that have gone away have come back in as good or better health than before they left, and all have gone on to breed successful for a number of years. The work the team carers do in getting the birds presented on the day is exemplary.
I find it hard to beleive that someone would be in position not to send there best possible birds and send lesser birds from a family - there isnt a breeder in the country who has that luxury!!!!
I'm sure there would be birds that do dying shortly after going away to the Nationals, but from my experience they are very few and far between, not the "many " in Kaz's post. This could be for a numbers of reasons and the bird may have died anyway.
With respect to quarantine, I'm not a big fan of the elaborate procedures that are bandied around on this forum. Mine go back into a stock cage for a few days to week, where i keep an eye on them, then depending on how they fit into the breeding program they may go back into the flight or a breeding cage.
To get a bird selected into the national team is a great achievement, considering the myriad of problems that arise with breeding top quality Budgerigars. I think the positive side of our current National show arrangements are FAR outweighed by any negatives that Kaz has bought up.......