Rainbow

They are both beautiful birds, Nodders. They both have nice deep masks. I think you are correct that he is a clearflight pied. Sometimes they are called Dutch dominant pieds. The hen is lovely to look at. I imagine you will get some very nice birds from them. And the baby pictures just melt my heart.

I'm not convinced Pistachio is a greywing. Greywings will have greyish tails also, and his tail looks normal. He might be dilute. It does look like he is molting, so once all his feathers are replaced it might be easier to accurately tell what he is.

If you want to take a fecal sample to the vet without bringing your bird back, remember that a fresh sample is only good for about 45 minutes. Any older than that and your vet will not be able to get accurate information from looking at it. The best way to get a good sample is to put wax paper down in place of the newspaper. When your bird goes, take the end of a toothpick and put the sample in a small section of aluminum foil. Fold it over to wrap it up and take it to the vet. Gram stains are used to determine how much yeast and bacteria (gram - and gram +) are in the system. Did you take your bird to an avian vet? Unfortunately, regular vets do not always know much about birds. A lot of sick birds do stress out after a vet visit, but they don't feel well anyway. Keeping your bird warm is a good idea. A budgies normal body temp is a lot higher than ours, and when they are sick they are not able to regulate their core temperature well. If you can keep his hospital cage at 80-85 degrees F, that would be good. Do you know when the blood test results are supposed to come back? Did you talk much to the vet about when he kept falling off the perch? I hope things are looking up, please keep us posted about Mr. Belvedere. How old is he?

I used to have 2 DF dominant pieds. One had a blue cere, the other pink. The one with the pink cere did get a mottled look when he was very hormonal and wanted to breed.

Chocolate and avocado are poisonous to parrots. So is raw onion. Feeding lettuce won't give a bird the 'runs', it just increases the output of urine since lettuce is mostly water. The formed part of the stool should still look normal. If you want to offer your bird lettuce, go ahead. Mine absolutely love red-leaf lettuce.

Not all pieds will have white tails. The only ones that do are clearflight pieds. Without the clearflight gene a pied's tail will be of normal coloration. Look closely at your bird's feathers. If the grey is at the very edge of the feather, then he is spangle. Spangles will also have the flight feathers edged in black. If the actual edge of the feathers are yellow or white on the wings, he is normal. The picture you posted looked normal to me, but there aren't many feathers there that are not neck barring so it is hard to tell. If the thin, dark stripe down the middle of one tail feather is on a new feather that hasn't grown out all the way yet, you are seeing the blood supply to the feather.

Many times it is difficult to determine whether your bird is greywing, dilute, clearflight, or clearwing (whitewing). In the dilute, dilution of color can be anywhere from 5%-95%. All the feathers on the bird will have the same level of dilution. The bird will look 'washed out' all over. It can be difficult to tell a dilute from a greywing for this reason, as the more dilution that occurs, the "greyer" the flights get. Since greywings are of 50% intensity to normal, if the bird has very light grey wings as well as a very light body color, most likely the bird is dilute and not greywing. The clearwing/whitewing is a bird of normal intensity except the wing feathers (all of them, not just the flights) are white. Light grey is permissible, as the pure white is difficult to achieve. Hence, the opportunity for confusion with greywing unless you know the characteristics. The body color is sometimes slightly diluted, but not more than 10% of normal. The spots and stripes are very light grey. The tail is not white, but rather is somewhat neutral suffused with the body color. Clearwing and whitewing can be interchangeable terms. With the greywing, the flight feathers are diluted at about 50% intensity from normal, and the body of the bird is diluted at the same percentage. The flight feathers will have a light edging of the face color. The tail is grey with a bluish tinge. A full-bodied greywing will have the 50% dilution of the wings, flights, spots, and barring but will have as close to normal intensity of body color as possible. I think Blossom here is a good example of a full-bodied greywing. Notice the strip of blue on her flights is also diluted from the normal, and you can make out the light edging around her flights. Her tail is greyish-blue, with the grey being more at the center of the feather and the blue suffusion extends out and down. Her spots are also diluted at the same percentage as her wings. However her body color is close to normal. You can compare the color of the wings and tail with Skittles in the second picture to get an idea of what 50% looks like. ***She also has a few other mutations besides being full-bodied greywing. Does anyone want to guess what they are?*** When breeding for a specific trait, you need to know that there are 4 factors that could reside that the same place on the chromosome that are responsible for these mutations. Greywing, Clearwing and Dilute factors are all recessive to the normal gene. Meaning if mated with a normal, the resulting babies will be split. The Greywing factor is semi-dominant over the Clearwing factor and is dominant over the Dilute factor. The Clearwing factor is dominant over the Dilute factor. Dilutes cannot be split for Clearwing or Greywing. Sometimes people get the terms clearflight and clearwing confused. The clearflight (also known as continental clearflight or Dutch Dominant Pied) is a pied, and the flights and tail will be white. If the tail is not white, the bird is not a clearflight. Body color everywhere else will be of normal intensity, unless there is a dilute gene present also. As the gene for piedness resides in a different place than the gene for dilute, you can have a dilute pied. Blossom the greywing was the product of two pieds - Skittles the variegated pied (above in the second picture) and an opaline clearflight dilute pied. What does that tell you about Blossom's parents? Or about Blossom?

Kali, is the shelter east or west of you?

I agree with Eterri and Feathers. When you initially seperated your birds, Tommy kept the main cage. Now he sees it as his, and does not want to share. What are the dimensions of the cage? If you want to continue to try to cage them together, I would suggest a larger cage that both are introduced to at the same time. Meanwhile, seperate them, because if Beaky is getting forcibly removed from the perch, you are probably not far away from some bloodshed. Tommy is really ticked off. Normally I would say if Beaky is losing feathers from the front, he is plucking them himself. He still might be, but since Tommy is physically fighting with Beaky too, he may be plucking them from Beaky as he tries to remove him from the cage. If Beaky is losing feathers around the throat, I would certainly split those two up NOW. The throat is not a good place to be attacked.

AAAWWWWEEEEEE....what a puffy little girl! She is so cute! I think she is cobalt also.

I'm here to serve, Riebie...

Recessive pieds will not get an iris ring at all. I have heard of birds getting one eye with a ring and one without, and they have all been doublefactor dominant pieds instead. Luso, your bird is probably that instead.

That is disappointing. I would wait until the last egg is a week overdue to hatch. Then remove the log and eggs.

Even here in the US the instinct to breed in winter is strong. My birds began in November and I managed to put off the egg-laying until January, LOL. Even with 4 hens now, for the past two months they have been exhibiting breeding behaviors with each other that they normally do not. The only time I ever see them feed each other, head bob, warble, etc. is November through around March. When it is really cold over here! It is truly an instinctual behavior, and I think an indicator that even though they have been kept in captivity for almost 200 years, they are not domesticated animals.

Congratulations! They look stunning.

What a refreshing read! The color of the feathers is due to the structure of the feather. For instance, in a blue bird, the feather is actually brown due to melanin. The blue color is due to the reflection and refraction of light as it hits an air pocket surrounding the feather. These air pockets scatter light, particularly the blues. So the feather appears blue. This also explains why, when your blue bird is sopping wet, the feathers appear to be brown. That is because they are. The amount of melanin determines the feather color. Some birds feather structures make them look iridescent. This is the result of the scattering of light. Sort of like a soap bubble reflects light in all the colors of the rainbow. Physics stuff!!!! Yeah!

Shell, how old do you think she is? If she is close to a year and her cere is still pink, she is more than likely a he......

Pellets are very dry, so if she has been recently eating more of them she may be drinking more water. I would just monitor her for now. The color change is normal, it should change to a more brownish color with pellets. If her personality changes or her normal habits change in the next day or two along with the runny stools, then you need to re-evaluate whether she needs veterinary attention, or at least a phone call to them.

Welcome, rogue_phoenix. To start a new thread, look at the top right hand corner above the first post. You will see a box that says "New Topic". Just click it first, and you will be set. To answer your question, yes, at 4 weeks your bird should be trying new foods. This is a perfect opportunity for you to begin feeding veggies, some fruit, cooked grains, soaked and sprouted seed, and pellets. Right now your bird is a clean slate. How you feed him will greatly determine his overall health down the road. However I am sorry you were given a bird that was not fully weaned. That is generally a recipe for disaster, but I am heartened to hear he is trying to eat on his own. Be very very careful about the temperature of your handfeeding mix. Too hot will give him painful crop burn, too cool can cause slow crop, which is inviting bacterial infection. Either one will warrant an immediate trip to your avian veterinarian. (If you don't have one, please find one.) Make sure you weigh him daily for the next several weeks. What kind of syringes do you have for the feedings? If the breeder did not tell you what temperature to measure the handfeeding mix to, I have a book around I will look for to give you the correct temperature. Let me know. If you can post a picture of your new bird, we will try to tell you what sex you have gotten. If it is a female, don't worry. :bluebudgie: They are very sweet too.

A male doublefactor dominant pied will usually have a pink cere. Most of them do not change to blue. The other bird looks violet, and is not a spangle. At least, I do not see any characteristics of being one.

I have noticed that too - about the larger show budgie being a more laid-back personality. I have both read about and been around "English" budgies and they do seem to take a more laid back approach to what goes on around them. My (American budgie) birds are really tame and I have to say they are more skittish than any "English" budgie I have been around. Your birds are lovely as usual!

You are doing the right thing by monitoring her droppings. A lot of things can cause a looser-than-normal stool, and they aren't all bad things. Stress, a sudden fright, drinking more than the usual amount of water (not always bad, maybe she was thirsty after exercise?), more veggies or any food that has a high water content can cause loose stools. If they remain normal you know there was probably nothing amiss. How was she later in the day?

LOL, it's like they are on vacation. I'd let them come and go as they please in the cages, if it were me.

Believe it or not, I find this a tough question to answer. Part of the theory is that if you take them out, not only are you reinforcing the step-up command (which may come in handy later) but you are reinforcing in your budgie's mind that stepping up on your finger is the precursor to FUN! Which is coming out of the cage. It helps the bond. That being said, I will be the first to tell you that I don't get my birds out on my finger. The top of their cage opens, and I just open it and open the front door. If they want to come out they can. For the most part my birds come and go as they please. BUT (and this is a big BUT) I have had my birds anywhere from 3-5 years. 3 of them were born in my living room. They are used to me, and I am used to them. They will step up on command outside of the cage. They are fully flighted, so they could give me a hassle about it if they wanted to, LOL. I can have them in the cage in a few seconds. At any moment. I do not doubt that should I need to catch them for any reason at any time I will be able to do so in a few seconds. Usually I just tell them it is time to go in and they put themselves up. They are such sweeties. Allowing them their freedom works for us. It's what we are all used to. I can suggest that you look at how comfortable you are with the level of control you have over your birds. If you wish it were better or more consistent, then insist upon getting them out on your finger until you are more certain of their step-up compliance. If you are happy where they are, and it works for everyone, then do whatever is most comfortable for you. You can always change your mind later.

Hath is away for a bit, so I think you will have better luck if you e-mail him instead.