Garret

I sympathise! And yeah, thanks Kaz, I was wondering about having customers here and what they might see in that regard.

Yeah they did say 8 10 weeks but they also said as long as they were eating seed and not off the parents. The ones we sold were 8 weeks. Thanks for all this wonderful info - am feeling more confident about it all. :rofl: My daughter has already spent the day making her Homepage as we've just had more babies hatch in the last few days - she gets so excited.

okay, so I'm getting that its not a big money-maker - that's okay, but does it pay for itself in the end or is it a costly hobby? Thanks for the free web idea - she's already into that. She is definitely doing it for love and has an expensive 'just another one please' habbit but I want her to learn the economics of it all and throw in the 'value of money' lesson too. :rofl:

My (9) year old daughter has become a bird addict and as part of her Homeschooling, has decided she would like to take up breeding seriously. She has our full support and is researching everything. I as a parent, who would like to guide her through the process, would appreciate some expert advice on what direction she should go, in a business sense. We have an aviary, but are planning a bird room, have several nesting and breeding boxes set up. She has about 4 sets of adult budgies, 2 baby red-breased parrots and 2 sets of adult breeding finches plus a few babies. We've had suggested to us that leaving a notice up with photos/phone numbers might be a good place to start and i think we are a bit detered from selling to pet shops and would rather sell direct. We do live north-west outer suburbs of sydney on a rural property so website may be better than advertising locally??? Anyway, can anyone suggest an appropriate path to take with a long-term view.

Oh okay then - that does sound sad and worrisome.... thx for explaining.

Thanks Lib - that's a great idea. And yes of course we did go with her but because we were told that they needed to be 8 weeks old, I didn't question it till we saw the price tag the next day - unfortunately the supervisor wasn't there so we were left wondering with a part-time sales assistant who looked at us blankly when quizzed. Meanwhile, she is researching bird room set-ups with a long-term view of breeding (I think she's becoming a budgie addict! LOL). and is talking of setting up a website wanting to sell them directly. She's a Homeschooler so has the time to invest.Oh and yes, we had to convince her that 5 babies was too many to keep.... thankfully she realised this despite the emotional attachment.

I am preplexed by this comment - what do you mean? Are you saying children should not consider breeding? She has been researching for some time now and bought her first birds because of a love for them. As far as I can tell, she has done everything right and wants to be a serious breeder, with our full support, but of course is still learning from the 'experts' (her grandfather used to be a Finch breeder). This comment made me raise an eyebrow & seems quite discouraging..... I don't see anything wrong with earning a bit of pocket money to help pay for the expenses at the very least.

Unfortunately he doesn't have control over everything he is invloved with - I know this from recent dealings with a pet shop he supports but it does tarnish his reputation a little - how else are we supposed to feel about things he puts his face or name to? I would not be willing to publicly show my face with something that is 'dicey'.

My (9) year old daughter took her very first baby budgies into a 'reputable' store a few days ago and received around $9 for each of them, however, she didn't mention that she had been handling them since they were 3 weeks old and were hand-raised because the store said they needed to be 8-10 weeks old before they would take them, however, we visited the store the next day only to find them for sale on the hand-raised perch for nearly 10 times that. I think she has been taken for a ride. They said because she didn't 'tell' them they were hand-raised, they had to figure it out themselves and 'tame' them themselves. I don't get it - how can the shop do that in just 1 day? This is our first time at selling babies - did we do something wrong? They normally pay between $20-30 for hand-raised babies. She's feeling ripped off understandably....