Cheeta

thanks guys. Daz, good lighting is the key to flight pictures. in the above case, it was flash as it was night time, but during daytime make sure they are plenty of light in. i've got so many flight pics. :ausb:

Hehe, yeah the poor little one. I can tell you though, she may look scared, she certainly isn't afraid of anything! the least of all, Lemon.. hehe I think it was having the camera infront of her or something.. hehe

Hope is out of Quarantine, and this is her first interaction with Lemon on the play area. This is a picture of Hope close up... Hope loves to tease Lemon when she gets a chance to... but there's only so much teasing a girl can handle!! :hap:

Cool. I was only thinking about adding another five or so, so that shouldn't be a problem than. Thank you both for your help. :hap: Cheers.

hi, I have an outdoor aviary which is 1.5m L x 1m D x 2m H... I was wondering how many budgies can I comfortably fit into the aviary that size? I'm thinking of adding some more birdies in there, but I don't want to crowd them. Oh, and currently I have 9 budgies in there that seems quite content. Thanks in Advance. Cheers Cheeta

I just love those 'pastely' colour on them!! So pretty!!

okay, here goes... we do require the trace mineral zinc to some extent, but too much of it can cause toxicity. This can be fatal in birds. There are lots of articles on the internet that you can find on zinc toxicity in birds... I think the major key word that you need to use is parrots instead of budgie or parakeet. I have a cockatoo, his health is my major priority when it comes to looking after him. I've search the net high and low for information regarding parrots and cockatoos. Here are a couple of links to some zinc metal articles. This site is quite a well known parrot site. http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww14eiii.htm If you like, I can try to search out some more articles for ya. Cheers Cheeta The following site is an article found in an avian and exotic animal vet site. http://www.birdvet.com.au/frame.htm

hehe, yeah, my lot goes bezerk when they see me waving a bottlebrush branch around before I get into the aviary!! then they'll hop all over it to get the best position on the branch to get the new leaves coming through!!!

Hi Lin, I guess more variety doesn't hurt. May be I can try out some vegies. My cockatoo gets vegs as he steals the one off my plate, but the budgies don't. I might just give it a try... :dbb1: Thanks.

Wow, now what a palace for the lucky budgies!! and just look at all those toys hanging there (with more on order?!?!) what lucky flock!!!

I'll just add my little two cents in here... if that's okay... What I feed my budgies. The indoor and outdoor ones gets good quality seeds, a fresh branch of bottlebrush or eucalyptus leaves/flowers, sprouted seeds, a little bit of pellets, plus the usual minerals and calcium bells thing. They don't get daily veggie, but I do give them greens, just in other forms other than veggies. What I've always done is to actually sprout the seeds that I get, and give those just sprouted, and also more likely grown like wheatgrass in a large kitty litter tray, or one of those take away containers. my budgies would kill for those. I put a fresh tray in every two to three days as this is usually how long it will take them to demolish the greenery. And I always have them growing in the backyard, so I don't have to worry about a short supply. :dbb1: Now, before someone go off for not feeding my birds veggies, I believe that in the wild, they don't get the veggies that we eat, and they do eat the grass and weeds or whatever they find, afterall, they are grass parakeets. So anyway, with that, I believe that they need greens, but not in a form of veggies, though veggies do give good nutritional values.....

hmmmm okay... i stand corrected. Thanks for that article eterri. It is very interesting.

Hey Ausmoz, don't despair... with the MDFs, I'm sure what you've read is right. I think now that it's done, you shouldn't fret about it too much. It is really only recently that people are finding out about MDFs and stuff... and really, like you said, it's been used before without too much trouble. I guess what my main concern is if your birds would start chewing at it and stuff.. just keep an eye out on that may be?? I was more worried about the fine particles and also if your budgies may swallow it if it started chewing on it. As with the mesh, just give it a good scrub with water and vinegar solution using thouse metal scrubs thing. It should take most of the zinc off. Good luck with it... and by the way, it does look like a good cage.

I have found out when I First got my new aviary delivered that all new aviary needs to get a good scrub with water and vinegar so that the zinc are taken off first before letting birds in there. I don't think it is completely coated with zinc, but it does have zinc on it or something or rather... know that I'm not expert, only was told by the expert to do so with any mesh use for aviary, even ones that are sold by the bird shops. And also something I remembered about the MDF is that, if the budgies or any birds start gnawing on it, it could be carcinogenic because of the fine particles. Cheers.

Hi that's a great looking cage you've got there. It's a great size for sure. With the mesh, give it a scrub and wash with water and vinegar (It may be a bit hard though now that you've got the board nailed to it), that should get rid of the zinc coating on those mesh. Also the craftboard that you used to make you cage, I'm not sure if you realised it, but it's made of very very fine wood particle compacted together. It contains some chemicals that do emit a small amount of fume. I think there's something going on right now to ban that kind of board, not sure what the status is with that though. I would recommend people not to use any product that is made with MDFs. I have seen many bird nesting boxes with them, I do realised that it has been use widely, but still...

Thanks.

Hi I'm just wondering, what's the oldest age can a budgie breeds? Meaning, at what age should I not breed a budgie anymore? Just wondering. Thanks. Cheers Cheeta

Quail's flying capacity is about the same as chickens from my experience with them a few years ago. They can sort of jump and flap their wings and get them a distance/height. But they can never fly like budgies or weeros though.

Hi, Cuttlebone basically don't have an expiry date on them. Simply because they are cartilageous skeletons of cuttlefish. They won't go off as such, but they do become more brittle over time and become a lot more powdery. I usually just go down to the beach every so often and scowl (spelling??) the beach for any washed up cuttlebone, and soak them in fresh water a couple of days (changing the water a few times), then sun dry the cuttlebones before sticking them in the cage. I've got a bag full at the moment sitting in my storeroom. They'll last for a long time to come. I've noticed that at most pet stores/bird stores, the cuttlebones they sell are fresh from the beach, so I guess it's okay to just give them that as well without the fresh water rinsing. Then again it might be harmful to the birdies because of the salt content. Cheeta

I'm sure that'll be okay. My two always chew on my gold rings. Someone else may tell you otherwise about the gold and silver though. It's just my opinion that it's okay for them. The copper sulfate deposit that I'm refering to are from the plumbing pipes and over time they just kinda accumulate where water comes out on places that we don't usually get to.

Thanks Adam for moving it. :bluebudgie: Much appreciated. It was 3am when I posted it!! (Laughing out loud). I'm more than happy to post it to make sure it doesn't happen to someone else who might not have realised. I don't let any of my birds near things that may have any sort of heavy metal deposits on it coz you'll never know what would happen.

Sorry, I'm not sure if I've posted in the right forum or not. If it isn't, please move it to where it belongs (so to speak). Anyway, I was reading a few posts regarding having budgie in a small room, and bathroom was a good place to be. It reminded me of a story that a dear older friend of mine had told me, so I thought I better share it here. I was talking to this dear older lady (who had a budgie for over ten years or so) about my budgies and the new one I'm about to get sometimes in the next couple of weeks. She was telling me how she loves budgies and she used to have this one budgie that she totally absolutely adored, and still haven't quite gotten over the lost of this bird and it's been more then twenty years and quite a few other budgies since (I can't believe how much they'd bonded)!! Well anyway, she proceeded to tell me how the budgie had died. She had Jamie ( I think that was his name if I remembered correctly) on her shoulder while she was walking around the house. She walked in the bathroom to get something, but something made Jamie flew off her shoulder. He landed on the shower head. Because the shower head was shinny, Jamie proceeded to chew the living daylight out of it. Once Barbara was done getting whatever she needed, she got Jamie off the shower head and went into the living room. Within 10 minutes or so, Jamie became limp, and within half an hour or so, he was dead. Barb was very broken hearted. She took Jamie to the vet, and they found out later that Jamie had copper poisoning (from chewing on the shower head). Apparently there were some copper sulfate deposits on the shower head, and it's things like that we don't usually think about. Just make sure that when we do let our little ones out, to always keep in mind what danger may lurks in our house that we don't realised are there. Cheeta Sorry it has gotten a bit longer than I thought I would.

Your budgie sounds just like ME!! !(Laughing out loud). Seriously, I have probably one of the weirdest sneezes. If I feel something tickling me nose, I'll go into the a sneezing fit. The longest fit I had was 15 sneezes in a row!! (Laughing out loud). All my friends think that I'm weird!! Both my budgies do that too. They'll sneeze a lot at one go, but I don't think there's anything wrong, then again I guess I'm like that so I don't think that it's that unusual!! I wouldn't worry about it too much coz all the budgies I've had had done that at some point of their life with me. I agree with what other people say, may be it's a husk stuck in there or something!! Good luck with it. Cheeta

I would agree with Hath on this one. get the wire mesh made specially for aviary. I wouldn't use anything to make a bird cage unless I know it's specifically made for bird aviary. Not sure what it's like in the UK, but here in Australia, you can usually get the aviary wire stuff from the same place that you can get chicken wire from (or at least in the bigger hardware store). I hope this help. Good luck with your construction project.

Mickey is very sweet and adorable! I would just love to have a blue budgie!! All your birds looks wonderful! Thanks for sharing the pics with us. Cheeta