Dave_McMinn

Well, the big moult is drawing to a close. Those of you who have followed other thread on here know that is has been a season of gains and losses. New births, some sad deaths, some strange deaths and of course some rehomings, with more to come next month. The struggle and Death of my TCB Norm and the injury to Kim's toes can be viewed here http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/index....=19249&st=0 The very strange death of Kim and Princess can be viewed here http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/index....showtopic=19477 and the breeding success and failures can be viewed here http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/index....c=17861&hl= I thought I would try to keep a regular thread that showed my birds and some possible future pairings, so here goes. Some pics to start with Humprhey, my green bird is actually my first bird, and the one that started all of this. He bred with Milly earlier this year, but unfortunately all their young died. I thought i might try him again later. Here he is with a new potential partner in Athena Pegasis once damaged her leg, and now her right foot cannot bend. It is still used to balance and support weight, just the tendon was severed so the foot cannot grasp things. She is a big budgie. (sorry, the flash bounced off the plastic walls that prevent drafts) Oscar is definitely part of my breeding plans. He is a beautiful grey, and the bird he might end up with is this beautiful YF blue, who carried the violet gene. Sebby and Cheese were great parents, but they have caused havoc in the aviary lately. They will remain a pair it seems. If Sebby does not have a red face from attacking other birds, it is green from spinach. You know when you watch your birds, and they seem to shake out all the feathers, before they sit flat again? Ever imagine what it would look like if you got a photo in that middle stage? I would imagine something like this More shots to come in the future.

Time to take this back to where it all started - the birds. All the remaining young ones (Gwenevieve, Maika, Gabrielle, Mozzarella, Geography, Heimdall, Sif and Balder), along with Hugo and Nibbler have all been moved to the small aviary. This gives them a chance to fly and interact with other birds, whilst still having the protection of the smaller aviary. Some pics. Fathers Nibbler close up with Hugo in the background Hugo with Gabrielle Hugo with Sif, then Sif on her own Gabrielle Baldr with Hugo then on his own Geo watches Heimdall Gwenevieve with Mozzarella and also with Heimdall Mozzarealla, Heimdall, Maika and Geo They will spend a few weeks in here, then they progress to the large aviary

congrats, and as always looking forward to seeing pics. How are the 4 little ones going? What are they named again? Laverne and Shirley and Abbot and Costello? By the way, why r u up so early? LOL

What a cruel few weeks it has been. Losing Thor was tough, losing Norm was a killer, and having Kim get bitten and losing a toe was not good. One thing I did not mention however was who bit off Kim's toe - her mother Sebby. Seems that Sebby is real Biatch. If you remember I dropped off some birds at Deb's, and there I saw what I thought was a great idea. PVC piping, drilled holes, tied to the side of the aviary, capped, water in the bottom, grevilleas inserted. Grevilleas kept fresh whilst the birds ate them over a few days. Everything seemed fine. Went out to the avairy yesterday when i got home and saw that Sebby had blood on her. I thought she must have been in a fight. I looked around and could see no other birds with blood. She was going to be fine and I thought she must have been the loser of the fight. Then this morning, when i was looking in the avary again for a bloodied winner/loser of Sebby's fight, I saw something terrible. There was a PVC pipe, with a tail sticking up. I went in and removed the pipe, and all the other ones. I looked around the aviary and worked out who i thought it was, dead in the pipe. I saw where the blood was from, Sebby had bitten him. It was Romeo Jr, her own son who was squashed in the pipe. I went over to a bin and removed him. Not pretty. Then I saw something even worse, he had followed someone else in. There was another dead bird in there. Princess, a sky blue cinammon wing was in there. Hi sister. All I can think is that she had been looking for somewhere to nest. She had removed all the branches in the piping, and had crawled in there. Then her partner had followed her in, where hey both had got stuck and died. The blood on Sebby had occurred after they had died, in my opinion. My birds seem to be culling themsleves, or maybe Sebby is culling them. It is quite sad. The only birds who could fit in these pipes were the pet type birds. I have since removed all the pipes. I still think they are a good idea, however to stop the birds getting in I am actually going to put some wire over the top. The branches can go into thru the wire, and the birds will not be able to. That is the plan. So I have lost Romeo Jr and Princess, Sebby has proven herself to be an utter little biatch, and unfortunately I have learnt a tough lesson. Hopefully others can learn from this as well.

You may have beautiful birds Kaz, but the definitely have poor taste in music.

I am sorry for your losses Daz. Hopefully the birds that survived will help you to once more grow your flock with even better and healthier birds in the future.

same thing happened to me last weekend with Thor. I was trying to get him to move him when he scurried out and flew away. I prayed he would be back, but I think not. I know how you feel

okay, so we know that a YF type 2 sky blue looks green, like Ozzy in this picture. Does that mean that if I have a YF2 bird that i know has the violet markings around his neck, but instead of looking like a normal green he looks like a seafoam green, is this due to the violet gene?

thank you everyone who has offered their kind words and thoughts. Back is getting much better. Dad has pneumonia now and once that is better, they will consider him seriously for more heart surgery.

I am with Norm. i think he should remove the eggs, and the log. I have had situations where birds have wanted to have 2nd or 3rd clutches of eggs and I do not want them to. they have laid an egg and have started incubating it. I have noticed this egg has been layed, and not having anywhere to foster the egg, I have thrown i out and removed that birds nesting opportunities. I personally think that is the most responsible thing to do. By not acting, it can be more harmful sometimes than acting is. it may seem harsh, but so often in life, the hard decisions are.

I have one bird that only ever hatches 3, no matter how many she has laid. Must confuse the **** out of her when I add in a a fostered chick to her nest. might be why little gabrielle suffered so much growing up. Angel always like 3, Gabrielle was the 4th. Hmmmm

whenever anybody says "Hi everybody" I cannot help replying "Hi Doctor Nick". Sorry, simpsons has screwed me up. Welcome. Loooking forward to pics

well, i knwo Kaz commented, so thank you. No sign of Thor, he is gone for good. My Dad is stable and my back is hanging in there.

Some people have dowel, I much prefer natural branches. I believe that I try to simulate a natural environment as much as possible, so there are native branches, cut grevillea and calistaman clippings are added regularly, I have seed bells, as well as hanging seed containers, hanging water containers, fresh fruit and veges, mainly veges are added to a few hanging trays at the moment, and there is plenty of room for the birds to fly around. You are right, the birds need room, but you need to entertain them as well. A few shots below The aviary Some inside shots Places to play and hide And to look outside One good idea I copied off a poster on here named deb is getting some PVC pipe, capping one end, drilling some holes high up on it to allow it to be attached to the aviary wire, then filling it with water and putting some cut clippings off native bushes in there. the water in the pipe keeps them all fresh whilst the birds consume the leaves and braches. I am finding that my birds actually like sleeping in there. Works very well. Pics to be taken later on this.

Daz, how much do you think it would cost to ship these to Sydney?

**** day and **** week. I constantly keep slipping the disk in my back out, so that is causing me no end of pain. My dad, the biological one is in Toowoomba hospital at the moment after having a heart attack. My stepfather has had corrective eye surgury this week. I had moved Mooza, Geo, Hugo, Maika, Gweni and Gabrille into my small aviary. I was in the process of moving Thor when he slipped out of the door of the cage and flew off. I am devastated. No pics, no happiness, no nothing.

Good point about the sick breeding the sick, I do agree with that. The vet told me that this is common in pigeons, but it can also affect budgies. I wonder how it occurred? Why did it just appear randomly now? I do agree with natural selection, to a degree. I do not want to mdeicate my birds out of their mind, but to not act now would be irresponsible.

Kaz lives in Perth, so you have to give her time to wake up. either that of we can all yell wake up. On 3 now, 1, 2, 3 WAKE UP KAZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for this Elly. I will see what I can find. You are right, it is not in vain. I wonder why some of the other "pet-type" birds survive anything but the "show-type" birds do not. Hmmmmm....?

Elly gets my vote for bing right.

I spoke to the vet who performed the autopsy on Norm to determine the cause of death. Turns out that Norm has a protozoal infection is his crop, that the vet called Ticatsis for short, but is also referred to as canker or Trichmoniasis. He recommends that I put the whole aviary on Ronivet. This is a supplemnt that goes in their water. Ronivet-S is the treatment of choice for birds ( budgies, pigeons and canaries ) suffering from canker ( trichomoniasis ) or other protozoal diseases eg. Cochlosoma in finches. Ronivet-S is a water soluble, water stable chemical that has extremely high safety margins. It can be used at any stage of the birds breeding cycle to combat protozoal infection. Ronivet-S does not make the male birds infertile. Canker is the most commonly encountered protozoal disease in aviculture. It can devastate pigeon and budgie breeding flocks and is a significant disease in exhibition canaries. The classic "cankers " ( large yellowish masses in the throats and crops of birds ) are the "tip of the iceberg " when it comes to the disease. Many other effects are seen from Trichomonads. Because protozoa are persistent organisms, treatments need to be part of an aviary/loft management plan. Preventative treatments are recommended to control the disease. New introductions and birds in quarantine should be routinely treated at recommended rates. I now I said that I was not big on drugging my birds, but this is a new introduction ot the birds that will come into play on Monday afternoon.

okay Deb, I gave this some thought and here are 2 options. 1) You want to build the aviary up so it sits a little higher than that rest of the lawn. That means that water will not flow into it. The best way to do this is to conrete it a little higher. To do this, you will need to temporarily move the aviary. The next thing you do is get some sleepers, nice thick ones, to set as your floor bounday. You place them around the aviary, making them at least 10cms higher than the lawn. Make sure they form up into a rectangle larger than the aviary. You conrete in the middle of these, ensuring that the floor/slab is higher than the grass. This will mean that when it rains, no water will flow into the aviary as it cannot flow up hill. 2) Another cheaper option might be to put a trench around the aviary. You dig a moat if you like around the sides of he aviary. In that trench you get some wire tubing. You can get material like a stocking to go over this tubing. The point of this material is to allow the water, but not the dirt go into the tubing. You run the tubing away from the aviary, on a slope, so the water flows away. So you don't have a big gaping trench there, you fill the trench in with pebbles. Now, if you are looking for ugly, you can cover the trench with basic blue metal (cheaper), but you can use white river stones that would look good, or maybe even some scoria. This will stop water getting in, but is still leaves you with a dirt/sand base in your aviary. personally I think that option number 1 is the way to go. It is of course possible to combine 1 and 2. After thinking about your backyard, I think that it would be best to combine 1 and 2. Stretch the trench all the way across this avairy and the new one you are constructing.

I am with you Norm, I go into my aviary and try to sweep the poo out, but because we are having so much rain, nothing is drying, not even the bird poo. If bird poo stays wet, it is a lot easier for illness to spread. Tomorrow is meant to see sunshine, but only at 23 degrees down here, then rain again for Sunday. I once went to Seattle, and a lady there told me that they once had 77 days of overcast skies and rain. 77 days? She said it made everyone depressed. I am praying for sunshine soon.

Yes, that is my concern in the aviary at the moment. I am concerned they are all goig to get colds. They were wormed over the last 2 days, but I fear that cold are going to break out left and right. i know I said i don't like to give meds to my birds, but they might get some extra vitamins in their water. Any thoughts? What about you Norm? Doing anything special with the uniques weather we are having at the moment? Just so everyone knows, we have had 13 days of rain now in sydney. We have not had that for 85 years.

The vet rung me today, Norm (RIP) did not make it. Seems that whatever the lump was got bigger and he died somewhere between 12 and 1 today. The vet asked if he could do an autopsy on Norm to seek to find the reason for the lump, I answered yes. Hopefully this was one small thing and not something that can affect the rest of my birds. Norm was my only Texas Clear Body and was named after the most knowledgable person I know in relation to TCB's, and that is the resident poster on here named Norm. Sad day for my aviary, as not only did I lose a bird, but I lost a mutation. One day more TCB's will adorn my aviary, but for now, Norm, you will be remembered.