Just wanted to add my confirmation, that if your thinking of doing colony breeding with your Budgies my advice is DON”T. I had to get it confirmed for myself, I thought that if I just used a few pairs, that it would work okay. Well it didn’t work; I put up some batches of three pairs in aviaries. I put in more nests than pairs, one aviary so far hasn’t had any trouble, but it’s like playing Russian roulette, the other aviary had three pairs in it, then two hens started fighting, so I removed one pair, leaving just two pairs, both had young at almost the same age, almost feathered up. Well yesterday when I went to the cage, I notice the hens had been fighting, as one had a little injury on her head, when I looked in her nest, I made a terrible discovery, her two younguns, had their head almost chewed off, not a nice sight. Needless to say I’m giving up my project to try colony breeding & now all my breeding will be in cabinets or separate cages at least.

Sorry to hear that Norm. But this can occur in breeding cages when the Hen wants to start another round.

 

It happen last week to me. The hen ripped off one of the chicks beak and I had to put it down. Out of all the breeding i've done in the two years this is the first and only time to date. But it can happen. Just be aware of that. The cock can also attack the chicks..

 

I have seen chicks attack the parents too.

Oh gosh! That sounds horrid!

:S Eesshh.

Daz the chicks were attacking the parents? That sounds so bizarre.

Yes Norm, it has happened to me too, first time in all the time I have been breeding. A cock ripped the beak off one and I had to put it down and then the hen totally destroyed another baby. I now have little refuge boxes and cans in the breeding boxes so the young can escape, SO FAR SO GOOD.

Yes standbyme the chick would stay on the floor of the breeding cage and everytime the parents can down to eat it would go at them. I had to add an additional feeding station up high so the parent could eat. The chick would beg for food and the parents would feed it. But when it was full it had a go at them.

 

Bad behaviour, I sold the chick last year as a pet. It was very lovible.

In over 20 years of aviary breeding I had lots of hen fights but very few serious incidents. I also had HUGE aviaries and always had way more boxes than hens (like 1/3 more boxes than hens).

 

My most serious maiming happened in a large aviary that only had a few pairs and not many boxes. However I took the maimed youngsters in and hand reared them. They'd had their upper beaks bitten off and were perhaps not a pretty site, but they survived, adapted to hand feeding, then learnt to feed themselves and were eventually returned to the main aviary where they lived out a normal life. They were quite able to crack seed and just looked like a "cleft palette" budgie. All long gone now, but they were sweeties and survivors.

 

It's a bit anecdotal, but the smaller the population, the more likely they are to get on each others nerves.

 

KathyW.

I have had a bad run of late, I had that pair that the cock plucked the young ones when they were almost fully feathered, that I mentioned on another post, then he did it even worse on the second batch. It’s funny as he was such a good feeder & spent lots of time in the nest with the hen feeding them when they were young, then all of a sudden one day attacked them.

 

Then another good pair had a good batch with no problems [6 young]…first off, then on their second batch another 6 young, when the first one left the nest the other day, it was attacked on the floor, I suspect the cock, but could be the hen as no proof. It lost feathers on its head & neck, so I removed it to the aviary.

 

Also I had another pair that had two young on their first batch & now on the second [6 chicks] one fostered to another pair, it was one of the young killed, I mentioned above. When the fifth was almost feathered I noticed they were being plucked on their breast feathers, also they didn’t seem to have much food in their crops. So I thought it would be best to put them on the floor of the aviary, as that usually stops any feather plucking. Well it was a disaster, the horrible parents seemed like they were just interested in going down on eggs again & I haven’t seen either parent feeding them at all. But young are a lot tougher at that age than most think, as I read lots about people worrying about when to take them away. Its been three days & they are still going okay, the surprise is that about three other young birds that have just been out of the nest themselves, a little over a week, have been seen feeding the smaller ones. They are all eating seed also, it may not be ideal, but they are pretty tough & in a few days will be experts.

 

I also had a hen that got sick while feeding two babies, so as soon as they got feathered I put them on the floor hoping the father would feed them & removed the hen. He was useless too, never did anything for them, I was worried about them, but after a few days they were doing good & are both flying around looking real healthy now, with no sign of their suffering. I have noticed that good fathers that have been feeding real well & feeding chicks at the nest entrance, often just seem to stop when they leave the nest. I think even in the wild it’s probably a difficult time for chicks & they seem mostly to be able to get over it with little trouble.

Edited July 6, 200717 yr by Norm