Finnie

Your way sounds good too, Robyn. Everyone has to make use of what they've got. I would dearly love to have an outdoor aviary, or even a walk in flight indoors.

If you can buy or make a seed skirt like this, it helps a lot: http://www.amazon.com/Sheer-Guard-Bird-Cage-Skirt/dp/B00856MOUA/ref=pd_sim_sbs_hg_4 Oh my word, please tell me that cockatiel is in a travel cage and doesn't LIVE in there!!! I have also found that if the cage is over carpet instead of bare floor, the seed doesn't scatter all over the whole house as quickly.

Females can talk, too, and many males will never talk. I think it depends more on the trainer and the individual bird, regardless of gender.

I don't know if they have proven that aluminium is linked to Alzheimer's. I think they have ideas, but no answers on that yet. I could be wrong. Anyway, aluminium is a great conductor of heat, so the best pans will have aluminium cores, but then be coated with stainless steel or whatever. I'm pretty sure these new ceramic coatings are safe.

My method is slightly different than Robyn's. I keep my hens and cocks separate when they are not breeding, and when I want to breed, I put the cock and the hen in the breeding cage at the same time. But I keep the door to the nest box closed for the first week, because I don't want the hen getting the idea that she can just go in there and lay eggs before she mates with the cock. I don't put the hen in by herself, because I don't want her to get territorial of the cage, and then fight with the male when he is added. But it sounds like Robyn doesn't have that problem, so maybe I'm being overcautious for nothing. Anyway, when I put them both in at the same time, there is usually mad courting immediately, followed by shameless mating before I have even finished getting the next pair into their cage. I attribute that to their having been deprived of the opposite gender for most of their life. But it doesn't always happen that way. Sometimes there are pairs that take a while to bond. Most of them usually do eventually. I've not had any pairs take an instant hatred to each other, but I've read it can happen, so you have to watch for signs of fighting, too, just in case. If I want to pair up two that aren't in breeding condition, I just keep the door to the box closed until I see signs that the hen is ready to breed. (Brown cere, chewing up the newspapers, laying an egg on the floor of the cage, etc.) When I used to house both genders together, I would set up my pairs and then make them wait two weeks before giving them a box, to make sure the hen had no leftover sperm from any possible mating in the community cage. It sounds like your first pairs are doing well, and you will have some good experience under your belt for next season.

By The Way, this would be impossible to know, and unnecessary. Then hens themselves wouldn't even know whose eggs were whose. Budgielover, I'm glad the situation worked out well for you.

Unless the parents are hurting the chicks, you should just leave them alone to fledge when they (and the parents) are ready.

Paulie, I think you meant to say normal hens here. The ino gene does not pass from the mother to a daughter. There will never be visible ino without the cock carrying it. Ino mothers can only give /ino sons. (Just to clarify.) Also, some people think that lutino and albino are separate genes. To clarify that, albino is the same lutino gene but on a blue based bird. (Which SunshinE explained very well up above.) That's why it helps to say "ino" instead of lutino or albino, to emphasize that it is NOT connected to color.

There were a lot of these threads to sift through. I've picked out links to some of the ones I meant. http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/index.php?showtopic=27633&st=0&p=328756&hl=+black%20+eyed%20+selfentry328756 http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/index.php?showtopic=15223&st=0&p=282353&hl=+black%20+eyed%20+selfentry282353 http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/index.php?showtopic=20512&hl=%2Bblack+%2Beyed+%2Bself (This one has a good article some ways down the page.)

Where did you learn this? I have never heard of an opaline clearwing being called a self.

I think I would be kicked out of the club If I made a statement like that to a customer. In my opinion the breedershouldn't have sold a bird with a beak in that condition. Good job on the beak trim. Based on the first photos of the bird, that breeder was out and out lying. She looked like she was already starving to death! Rhiannan, I hope she is able to eat enough now to make a comeback. Good for you helping her out. Paulie, I don't think a breeder like that would even be able to get into a club in order to get kicked out!

There are a few different types of budgies that fit the description of black eyed white or yellow. One is a double factor spangle, which will get iris rings when it matures. Another is the Dark Eyed Clear, which is a combination of the Clearflight pied gene and the recessive pied gene. That bird will not get iris rings. And then there is the third kind which it seems like you might be thinking of. That is called a Black Eyed Self (BES), and it is a form of dilute that is so diluted, that neither markings or body color shows up. They are sometimes called Suffused, because they might have some body color showing. Some people think the Black Eyed Self is a separate gene, and other people think is is just the regular dilute gene that has been modified by other factors to create such a pale bird. Also, since there is a difference in terminology from one country to another, and a difference in terminology from older articles published and more recent ones, it can be a little difficult to figure out who means what when they are writing about "yellows", "whites", "suffused" and "selfs". BUT, I have read that breeders like to add cinnamon when they are developing their BES, because it helps to further wash out any color. To breed a BES, it is necessary to have either the BES allele, if there is one, or the dilute allele, if what we are dealing with is really just a modified dilute. A regular greywing won't work, unless it is split to dilute or BES. I guess since the exact genetics of the BES aren't known for sure (and I could be wrong, perhaps this point has been settled recently and I'm not aware) then if you had a poorly marked regular greywing that was on the pale side, and you added cinnamon, which would wash it out more, then you might be able to "fake" a BES. Please keep in mind that I'm just an armchair geneticist, lol. These are things I've learned from reading. I've bred lots of cinnamon and greywing together, so I'm familiar with how they turn out, but I've never made a BES yet, and I know nothing about show standards. (Just a pet breeder in the U.S.) If you do a search of the forum for Black Eyed Self, it should turn up several threads, which is where I learned most of what I know, or think I know. That, and some of the classic Budgerigar books, which we have a thread about as well. Some good recommended reading.

When bringing home a new budgie, it is a good idea to cover the top and three sides of the cage for the first few days. That way the bird won't feel like it has to protect itself from every direction. It can just keep an eye out the front. Then every day I start to peel the cover back an inch or two, exposing more of the top of the cage, and the sides as well. By the time I have backed the cover up to where it is only hanging on the back of the cage, several days have gone by, and the bird has gradually gotten used to the extended view. It's normal for them to be afraid and go into statue mode for a couple of days. Keeping a spray of millet clipped near to where he sits will help him out when his hunger is battling his fear. Eventually he won't be as afraid, and he will explore the cage and find the other food and the water. Letting him get used to your presence and voice during this time is fine, but your main goal those first days is to get him to eat, and if you stress him out by trying to "train" him before he has eaten much of anything, you will scare him more, and delay his adjustment. Best to keep your hands out of the cage except to do necessary chores, and then just do them calmly and get it over with. There will be plenty of time for bonding with him after he starts to eat. For birds that don't get scared and adjust right away, then yeah, go ahead and start training whenever you want. But even for tame birds, remember, you have to let it have time to rest and eat enough to make up for all the calories you burn off by playing with him.

Gotta love this photo. That's probably what all the birds wish! Allen is looking great, Birdlove. What a fun bird he is!

Welcome to the forum, KiwiBudgie. I finally made it on here to to say Hello! -Finnie (Diana)

Hi Kiwi Budgie, I moved your topic into the Food and Nutrition section for you. When my customers ask me what seed to feed their budgies, I always tell them to get a blend for finches. I always found that those had a lot more variety of seeds than the budgie mixes, and a lot less extra junk added in. But I guess it's been a long time since I looked for bird seed in a pet store. I just checked both Petco.com and Petsmart.com, and I couldn't find any finch food that was just seed! It seems that now even finch and canary blends have added pellets and dried fruits and other odd things in them. I think that even if people's birds are willing to eat those other (unnecessary IMO) added things, having them mixed into your seed bag in a proportion that you have no control over will lead to a lot of waste. If I were going to use pellets and dried herbs and whatnot in my birds' diet, I would rather buy those things separately, and only use them sparingly. If the stores don't carry seed mixes that are just seeds only, then it may be a good idea buying seeds on line.

Hi Robyn, if mom is albino, then the albino chick can be either gender, and dad must be split to ino. Also remember, any sons you get from an albino mother will be split to albino.

He is a male. He is a recessive pied, and they don't get blue ceres. The male will retain the baby pink color for life. Don't be concerned about a little white around the nostrils. That's very common. The white would have to be pervasive over most of the cere to be a female. Plus, a female will have gone into breeding condition by 8 months old, and you would have seen the cere turn to brown, then crusty, and then flake back off to white/light blue. He's gorgeous, by the way, and has nice size and shape to him, for a pet type.

Nice try. Not a sky blue normal, but an opaline cobalt. And the yellow face is visual spangle. A bird cannot be split to spangle. It appears to be opaline recessive pied spangle yellowface mutant two sky blue. I cannot tell if the wing markings are black or some other color.

Congratulations on the two fledged budgies! I wouldn't mix budgies with finches. The only bird I've heard of that mixes well with budgies is Cockatiels, if you have a large aviary.

Yes, very pretty males.

How are your chicks doing now? Sometimes new parents will decide how many chicks they are willing to raise, and then not feed or properly care for any more that come after that. Hopefully your last one hatched and is thriving.

Yes, an opaline cock can only give opaline daughters. A non opaline mother can only have non opaline sons. (But the sons will all be split to opaline, from their father.) That is how all sex-linked genes work, so you could substitute cinnamon, or ino, or whatever into that sentence for the opaline. )

Yeah, we can't really see what's wrong in that photo. Sometimes when they molt, the skin around the eye gets swollen from the new pin feathers. But it wouldn't be bloody, unless he was overly scratching it against things, due to it being itchy. A good thing to try is to get a wet tea bag and use it as a compress over his eye, for a few seconds. That may not cure it, but could offer some relief. Then you can continue to evaluate over the next few days. Good luck.

Aw, that's sad. I'm sorry for your loss.