**KAZ**

wish I had known this as I was interested in at least two of them that you bought and didnt need but thought your NEED was greater so I let them go

YF cobalt dom pied.

:rofl: :hap:

The blue.............. the grey ( grey chick had a nasty fall from the nestbox into the breeder cage early and seemed winded...a bit stunned.....I will have to keep an eye on it )

Eldest chick ( hen ) is getting all her pretty cobalt feathers in. Other one is grey as it seems. Added a third chick to the nest yesterday from a nest where a mother plucks. Foster chick is being cared for well in this nest.

I am sure if I wanted the price I paid for him to be known I would have said so...but I didnt some people suffer F.I.M at times F.I.M AWARD http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx57/pr...footinmouth.jpg

Yes Liv is coming for another visit in a few weeks Here is one of my new perching arrangements in the aviary....to save birds heading straight for the windows I arranged three perches ( two done one to go ) over each of the windows. I used the brackets for hanging curtain rods, attached them and drilled perches onto them so if the birds fly at the window they have somewhere to land and somewhere to be feeling the breezes through the windows too. Curtain rod brackets are good for things like attaching perches.

I used to colony breed ( never again ) and once one of my babies did go into another nestbox. Result ? The mother in that box and her chicks were killed by the fledged baby believe it or not You ask about when to put them in a nursery cage .......this is kind of more a thing you do with babies that fledge from breeder cages and its where they go until such times as they can go out inot an aviary. Any budgies under 12 months of age should never be where breeding is going on and nestboxes are or you have trouble right from the start. Maybe removing your fledged babies to a cage would be a good move assuming they are eating some on their own and are old enough to really be fledged fully feathered.

No offense taken. A lot of people shortcut quarantine due to anxiety over wanting to put new budgies in with others. If you had ever expereinced what I have when a carrier bird gave psittacosis to another bird ( it died ) and killed all those others in cages around her, you would understand exactly why I give this advice now.

Nestboxes get hot in summer. You have up to two weeks to get eggs, another 2 weeks for laying of a clutch, another 3 weeks for eggs to hatch and then another 4-5 weeks till chicks fledge.

No biggie squeak crumble.....a lot of info out there talks about chocolate coloured ceres but its wrong info. The thing is....we are coming into hot weather when most breeders shut down for the summer and start again around March or April. You would need a really good cool breeding room to be breeding from now on.

I will save the first aviary cleaning for you Babe :emoticon112:

Seven to ten days for an egg. Be patient ...it will happen based on what you have described :emoticon112:

Will be home....Renee and Tony are coming to help finish the aviary :emoticon112:

Not only is quarsntine essential to determine any diseases being carried but stress brings it out in them.... stress is being caught being moved being sold new food new friends BREEDING. so putting a new bird straight into breeding is a stress that may bring out an illness and cause its new partner to die also. Not a good move.

Chocolate cere is considered PAST breeding condition. Lighter nut brown is considered the right time to breed. By the time it goes dark to chocolate brown its just past breeding condition and the brown then peels away to reveal the whitish blue underneath. Also time of year ....its when we are soon to get the really hot weather if not already. Your birds know the timing and have missed the boat so to speak. A few weeks earlier would have been right.

1. Wash and scrub wire down 2. Fill holes between cement slab and corrugated. 3. Do perches in front aviary section 4. Wall in front of aviary and add window. 5. Add feeding platform to each aviary.

They will make fine parents BUT why waste two perfectly good handraised budgies in an aviary ? The idea to getting handraised budgies is to keep them tame for pets. If you wanted aviary birds or breeders you could have got parent raised budgies. :emoticon112:

Back to work on the aviary...some new photos. I put another piece of timber down the middle of the perching setup due to too much bounce in perches over wide distance. Used garden fittings to attach. the popout open air sections ( two of )

Good plan...let us know how you get on at the vets :emoticon112:

Hi Nic and any unusual pooping activity means the bird isnt well and it must be treated as a serious issue. First thing to do is remove the bird to another cage with clean water and seed, and a warm lamp next to the cage. Put white paper under the perch and try and see what kind of poops its doing exactly. Look here http://www.birds-online.de/gesundheit/gesa...katorkot_en.htm if at all unusual you may need to see a bird vet. If the unusual droppings also coincide with weight loss ( feel for sharp keelbone ) then the need to see a vet will be more urgent.

Simon he sounds like he is splayed but not to a great degree. If he is enjoying life with you and getting around, just go with what he can cope with. He is too old to do anything about now anyway as repairs must be undertaken from 12-14 days. If he needs ladders or platforms I am sure you can make these to make life easier for him.

Very cute look forward to hearing about your new babies progress

There's not too many novices I know who are chequebook breeders........i.e. just buying birds in to show. Most novices never anticipate what birds will actually cost them and struggle with the right price for the right bird. Some helpful breeders will sell you great breeding stock for as little as $15-$30 and then theres the $500 plus birds. Very few novices will take a chance on a $500 bird as that bird can fall off the perch just as quickly as a $30 bird. The thing is when you start out you have a certain idea of what you think you want and the direction you are heading in. A mentor to me once said you will change your birds three times over before you gain your actual direction and move forward. Also many novices new to show breeding who may have started out pet type breeding, always have an idea in their head about pretty coloured birds and show breeding is more about size and type than colour. It takes a little while to figure this out and move in that new direction,.....that new way of thinking. I know I got talked into certain mutations that werent my cup of tea to start with and now I am clearing them out and buying in some of the ones I wish to move forward with. Greywings and dominant pieds are my direction. Re buying of bulk birds, I now only buy in certain ones I think I need to be compatible with what I am doing. These singular birds are generally now costing me much more money than I ever thought I would be paying. Then there is the odd bargain bird still to be had. We make mistakes along the way, and sometimes we pay an arm and a leg for a bird that may not be seen as being worth it. Noone can really criticise ones purchasing or direction as everyone has a plan in their mind and a direction they are taking. It may not make sense to some but it does to the breeder. I agree with RIP saying that more often than not a good mentor may be hiding in the wings and not necessarily one winning on the top bench.......some of the better mentors to me have been this way. Re showing bought birds....it works for awhile for novices so we gain some knowledge as to whats acceptable on the bench and what judges deem the right kinds of birds........buying in birds and showing them teaches us a few tricks. Further along there is no real sense of acchievement at all if a bought in bird wins for you...............hollow victory and a victory that belongs to the original breeder and not yourself. So as soon as you have bred some of your own, those are the times when you win that you can feel proud. There is also no real sense of acchievement winning or looking at trophies on your shelf if those trophies were obtained merely by having numbers of birds and no real competition. Personally I do not hold a lot of store in trophies...they mean little to me. My satisfaction comes from nestboxes and seeing them bloom into reasonable showable adult birds. You also have to get past the odd one or two nice chicks coming out of nests and more a case of consistently seeing nice chicks come out of your nests. A well known breeder recently told me he can now recognise birds of mine as having been bred by me..in other words they have a "look "now that he sees as mine. I didnt see this myself, but he swears he would recognise a bird of mine and he is a judge....so

Theres a SWBC meeting on this Sunday too