Norm

ELLY sign off before it’s too late….don’t let them corrupt you.

I have accidentally overdosed birds Neat & so far it has never effected them, even when you give a normal dose the bird can seem irritated for a short while, but soon gets over it. Those feathers are damaged by feather mites, I’m not sure that the Ivermectin will kill them, as it works by the mite eating the birds blood & that type of mite only eats the feathers. Also the feathers don’t look good quality, which could be partly from the mite damage, or a genetic or even the birds diet. You may need a spray or dust to remove them mites, or you could buy a low irritant fly spray & place the bird in a small cage like a show cage, have a cover ready then spray in the cage for a few seconds, then cover the cage for about 10 minutes & then later remove it, that should treat the mites, I have used that for treating canaries without any ill effects. After that I would let the bird have some peace, as you don’t want to kill it with kindness, remember stress is very bad for birds, especially in a new situation.

With infertile eggs it can be the fault of either male or female. If a hen is producing infertile eggs I always suspect the male first, but I have had females that produce batch after batch & even paired with proven males they fail, so eventually you often have to accept that they are no good for breeding. Especially if your hen has a longer than normal beak it could be her. Seeing that you have two other mature females if I were you I would be putting the male with one of them & see how he goes. Then you at least might find out if it's his fault. I would give her a break & do what I suggested with another hen. Separate her in a cage without a nest & give her a rest.

I hope all goes well Elly...good luck.

Congratulations on your anniversary Elly. I'm glad it turned out so nice for you.

Wonderful job Libby...they don't look like the same birds...they must have been going through ***.

Sorry guys I failed, I took some pictures but when i went to post them they turned out too bad. So fussy it wasn't worth posting them, you could see the Blue cheek patch & that was about all.

I'm glad to hear things are going better this time Sunnie...best of luck with them.

Hi I'm new to your forum. Some of you were talking about lacewings and I thought you might like to see a young lacewing cock I bred last year. Nice bird JEH.

l thought of Cucumber too SAME HERE... I know my name is Norm…Norm Normal…but I know I’m not Normal…LOL…Crazy yes …Normal…NO...what is Normal anyway....?

Glad things don’t seem so bad with your birds Maesie…looks like some big vet bills coming up…you will be checking out the pet shops for sick birds that you can take in for a diagnosis…LOL…good luck in both cases.

Oh!!! You guys are so impatient…will try my best today, now the pouring rain has stopped…I got worried since I first looked at it, as if the light isn’t that good you can’t see the colour, I hope it will come out with flash, seems like it needs good light, the first time I saw it was in strong sunlight, hasn’t been that much sun since. First I gotta go vote, as we have a bi election, as Mark Vale resigned from parliament…they think we have nothing else to do…I think next Saturday we have local council elections.

Nice Libby I agree with your sexing…now you just have to work on getting the markings a bit stronger. I’m still trying hard to increase my numbers of Lacewings, but none of my birds have been doing the right thing. I live in hope.

Yeah looks like a male to me also…I had the same trouble with a Fallow, I put a picture on here to see what others thought & not one person would make a comment, eventually after trying a few hens with him, he is now a Father so I got my proof.

THANKS for thinking of us NEAT.

CONGRATULATIONS NEAT...

French moult only effects baby Budgies just as they are leaving the nest, so your bird hasn't got it, so stop worrying, as others have told you it's probably just normal moulting.

Good to hear that its nothing drastic...chill out a bit like you say try to get a few early nights instead of being on BBC all night ...LOL...gingers lovely & honey too get some good stuff into you.

Sorry not yet been too busy, was out all day yesterday.

Don’t worry until you find out for sure it could be anything, we often don’t feel so well even when there’s nothing really obviously wrong with us. I have been keeping birds all my life & I think I’ve had them with Psittacosis at various times & nothing happened to me, but I guess that varies with different people. I hope you have better luck than me, I have what I think is a good Doctor, but when I mentioned that I keep birds & asked about Chlamydia, he told me don’t worry you can’t catch it from birds, so it’s a bit of a worry. I think that the symptoms of Chlamydia are flue like, but also I think you can have it without any symptoms. Get checked & worry after if you have it, could be anything simple. Not worth worrying about something you may not even have. Sounds like it's easy fixed with antibiotics anyway.

Best to get checked Neat at least then you can stop worrying, I hope all will be well.

I can see some Pied on the edge of her wing.

Yesterday when inspecting the young of a new batch of my Dusk Budgies I found something very interesting, that’s why I like rare & in this case new Mutations. I had paired one of my first young Dusks that I bred myself from one of the two Dusk male Budgies I bought. It is my first Blue series Dusk & the colour resembles Violet. I was interested to breed it with a Grey Budgie to see the effect on Grey. So I mated it to a Normal Grey hen…bred from a Normal Grey [show type] cock mated to an Opaline Sky Blue hen [pet type]. My bought Dusks have poor fertility as they are both getting quite old [5 years]. Which is making it slow, as I’m not getting too many chicks to see what effect the Dusk has. The breeder I bought them from told me they don’t know lots about the mutation yet, he thought it’s probably Dominant, but I checked Ravengypsy’s site this morning & she says it is Co-dominant. I’m not sure what they mean by Co-dominant, someone could explain it to me if they know thanks. My Dusk birds are shown on their pedigree as SF [single Factor] being Dominant there is the possibility of DF [double factor], I asked the breeder what effect doesn’t DF have on it, he said he didn’t know, I’m presently trying that out. The cock I bred, mated to this Grey hen was bred from a Dark Green Dusk mated to a Light Green Normal hen, both parents must be split for Blue, this hen was bred from a Dark Green Spangle mated to a Dark Green Opaline [all basically pet types]. Sorry about that long explanation, but thought you might be interested & so that you may see what they came from…back to what I found yesterday. They hatched 6 eggs out of six, but the last chick died, so they have five healthy chicks. Two look like Normal Greys, two like the father [look like Violets] with the Dusks you cant tell till they get their adult plumage their true colour, as the darking comes in then. Then there is this other chick, it’s an Opaline …it looks like Grey but a lighter looking Grey than the other two & the different thing is it has Bright Turquoise Blue cheek patches, whereas the other two Greys have the Normal Grey cheek patches. I don’t think there’s any chance that it’s Mauve, as the Grey is what I would explain as a Whitish Grey. I will take some pictures when it gets a little older. So a Grey with Turquoise cheek patches…what is that? There is supposed to be a Recessive Grey also, but they are not too common & I don't know it they are different than the Normal Dominant Grey as to their cheek patches.

That’s the idea Kaz, she needs a male so desperately that if that’s the way to get a Blue cere, she will try anything. :hap:

I use inverted medicine bottles, which I bought from the pharmacy. I glued some aluminium hooks on them with araldite or make a hook with wire. I drill a small hole in the plastic lid & a water droplet hangs from it. I used to use them for my Canaries before. You have to watch that they are learning to use them at first, but I have found that Budgies are brighter than Canaries in that respect & just about all learn soon how it works, of course the fact that a Budgie can go a lot longer than a Canary without water helps them. I had had trouble with Green algae growing on the inside of the bottle, which wasn’t a problem really as to water quality, but didn’t look too good & made it difficult to see when the water was getting low. I couldn’t find any bottle brushes small enough to clean them. But just the other day a thought came to me, what if I put a bit of sand in the bottle & a small amount of water & shook it. The other day I just put a small amount of earth from the ground to give it a try & it worked perfectly, so now my bottles are nice & clean.