**KAZ**

Reading is a skill that assists you in giving advice................read back through and you will see why your answer does not help gbs post GB seems to have her new flights but noone to assist her to put it up. Whilst we are all kinda close on here as far as helpful with advice and birds etc, we dont all live close enough to help in a more physical way. The solution is GB needs a workforce at her place to assist getting this aviary up and running and none of us are close enough distance-wise to help out.

Well one may be.....the other one's dead

Simple.....he is moulting in new head feathers. All normal. Moulting is a budgie replacing its feathers which it will do about 3-4 times a year. Its a time when you will see a lot of feathers about the aviary and cage. What you see as spiky looking heads on budgies is the new feather shafts with the sheath around the feather. Budgies also lose their tail feathers and flight feathers at this time. Its a time where they will be low on general energy, they may be cranky, and some budgies have a HARD MOULT and can get quite ill due to not eating well at this time. These are times where you budgie needs the best of vitamins and food. There are supplements for moulting like MOULTING AID. If your budgie goes through a hard moult and looks to be ill or very depressed pay very close attention at this time. SOME budgies have been known to get so ill during a hard moult that they dont eat and they get sick and a small number of them can die at this time. If you notice your budgie looking sick during its moult, put it in a hospital cage for awhile with a warm lamp and spoil it rotten. Budgie will moult at other times and it can happen with a change in its diet.....if you suddenly chnage its seed type or drastically chnage the food you are feeding it, a budgie will go into a moult. Do not breed a budgie while its moulting as its a time when it is at a low ebb and needs all its energy for feather replacement and breeding is a stressfult time as well. Keep some white pepper on hand in your medical kit as during this time a budgie can break a newly emerging blood feather ( causing bleeding ) and white pepper is one of the best things to apply to stop bleeding. click on link below http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/index.php?showtopic=22897

Floor is better either concrete or concrete paving slabs. If you go with the gap between floor and earth it will allow a colony of rodents to dig and and live under the aviary. Mesh down to ground level allows rodents into the aviary. You need tin up to at least 2-3 ft up the sides all round to stop rodents and possible snakes. Extending roof sheeting out over the front a reasonable distance will help stop rain coming in, wetting floors and damp creates opportunity for disease like coccidiosis. Hawks and predators are less likely to strike the wire front of an aviary if there is an overhang of roof sheeting. Think hard about your actual measurements as what may seem like a good breeding area may be a bit tight and squeezy and not be all that practical once in use.

damp tissue should do it. Mothers dont abandon if you handle the chicks.

Hi and welcome. Please check out an article I did in the FAQ section called Care of Baby Budgies in the Nest....... http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/faqs/index.php?sid=89407&lang=en&action=artikel&cat=8&id=125&artlang=en it will help. Once you have chicks arriving you need to check morning and night and do all the things to help them that the mothers dont do like cleaning their butts, their feet and legs and getting stuck food out of their beaks etc.

Upshot of all of this is...............if the breeder had a massive colony of birds he may not have known that these babies who had just fledged werent eating on their own yet. Once fledged they take a couple of weeks with their fathers learning to feed themselves. To sell any on he should have been more sure of this than seems to have happened in this case. Noone should ever assume a bird out of the nest is fully independant. I suggest he owes you a couple of birds.

I agree. Just because you think it worked out fine this time doesnt mean it should on an ongoing basis. Quite frankly you are shortening the life of that cockbird dramatically by allowing him to proceed in this way. For every hen and every extra chick he has to feed he gets less food into his own body. Many a cockbird has fed others to the exception of himself and died not long after of starvation or heart attack in the attempt to look after everyone but himself.

sounds like they werent weaned and fully self sufficient. Did you think to feel their crop to see if they had eaten enough ? Food in their crop will keep them warm and keep up body temp. If no food they will die quickly.

NO...check your linking process

Sorry about the pied Splat.................you did all you could.

lol i know im like ...... huh .what the Well this was for some little unrung chicks. I am assuming that all the "pale deaths" came from the chicks fostered on from the Lute nest, from memory there were 4 of those but then there were a number of fatalities that I really don't know which chicks died and which survived. I think it is between the third Green split RP chick, the Green split Cinnamon and Lute, the Grey split Albino chick, or maybe the Cobalt DP & Green. For some reason I was confident that the 4th and 5th Cobalt and Sky's chicks did not die but I am now wondering ... Any way technically speaking I am counting them all as dead until they feather up and I can see what they are. Covered here Dave

Almost pointless having a safety area if you are building a suspended aviary as you wont be able to step into the safety area. Why dont you sketch some plans or ideas so we can see where you are going with this ? and then advice will be more specific.

Can the pair in the garage hear or see activity in the aviary ? Could it be too far away or too quiet for encouraging mating behaviour ? also a hen napping in the bottom of the cage is a worry...........I would pull her out.

Dillster...... you said you want to breed and sell finches. You cant put budgies and finches together. AND you posted this in the FOR SALE section as well so I had to move this topic. You also edited budgies into this topic after I posted my post. If you had mentioned budgies at all in your original unedited post then both Splat and I would have addressed that in our replies.

The one with the swelling and no egg could be an internal egglayer too

Off Topic Forum Notice NOTICE Questions regarding health and support etc. of other animals besides budgies will be removed. However, feel free to post about your other pets with images etc.

Look again

Breeders rings in Australia have a 6 year cycle. 2001 - Green 2002 - Black 2003 - Red 2004 - Blue 2005 - Purple 2006 - Gold 2007 - Green 2008 - Black 2009 - Red 2010 - Blue 2011 - purple 2012 - gold you need to look on those purple rings and see what number goes vertically up the ring next to a symbol

weird

I think you need a different cage. One that is wide and set up so they can fly across the cage. That cage looks not only too small but too crammed for flight and exercise inside it. Even if they are out a bit, you dont want their cage feeling like a small cupboard they are "punished" by having to go in it.

Caesar is from Cec Gearings famous ino line

How old are these hens ?

ONE persons opinion.......just one

Breeders DO sell to pet shops too Taylor, especially when they have an excess from breeding.