Norm

I’m pretty sure that some strains would make better pet Budgies, as in my young bird cage I have a couple of Cinnamon Grey Greens, who I think are brothers. Every time I walk in the door one is on top of my head & when I chase it away, because I’m worried what deposits it may be leaving up there & there’s not much there to disguise it, it is soon back & they sit on my shoulders & even when I go into the cage with my net to catch a bird one of them flies onto the net, usually most birds are scared of it. When I lean onto the cage wire to watch birds, often I have certain birds come up & chat with me or nibble my arms. Nice chicks Kaz, I like the colour of that Cinnamon Spangle, I have never seen one with such nice strong Cinnamon in it’s wings, should look a nice bird.

Don't do it Libby I know nothing... ... & Why Blue do you think I’m miserable?…I like the HOT colours.

And what's wrong with loving Opalines…I certainly do. You certainly can mate Opaline to Opaline Deb; in fact I think breeders use Opalines to increase the size of other Mutations. It's okay to mate them, mostly the only Mutations they don't recommend breeding like to like is some of the Recessives & Albion or Lutinos. As in their case it's better to breed two splits together or a split to the Mutation you want. Of course you can breed even Opalines to Normal if you think they will be improved by that. The main thing would be to try not to breed two birds together that show the same fault if at all possible. Like you mention if you have a bird that has markings in the V area, try to mate it to a bird that is clear in that area. The same goes for excess head markings too, like flecks. What JoE, recommend sounds as good as any, as long as you know that the two Greys are not too closely related. All them apart from the Green Spangle have some pattern in their V & he may have that in his genetics, as this show fault seems to be very strong in lines of British Budgie, from what I can see. Of course if you haven't got birds with very clear V's or any other fault you have to just mate what you have & mostly you will have variation in the chicks & it's up to you to keep selecting birds that you later pair with the least amount of the undesired fault, that's part of the joy of breeding, using your talents to improve your strain…Good Luck Deb. Whatever you do your going to end up with a lot of Greys from those four birds, do you have any other Opalines Deb?

Cara I don’t think you need to worry about what colour, as Budgies will enjoy them all. Just keep to the safe types of trees & gums & bottlebrush are okay.

Welcome Stu, others have told you the reasons why he has lost his feathers, a good percentage of them grow there feathers back in a few weeks, others take longer, some never, but in my experience most recover. Don’t worry about the trying to fly thing, birds just by nature want to fly & as you suggest he wonders why he can’t as all the others can. Don’t worry they never seem to hurt themselves, I have some & they always just “bomb” try to fly down to the ground & I have never had one injure itself yet.

DF stands for Double Factor, with a Spangle it's when you mate Spangle to Spangle, some young will be DF if they are Blue they will be white with an iris ring when mature & if Green series Yellow.

Great news Libby…good luck with them, I know it’s too early to really tell, but no3 looks more like an Albino to me, so your wish might come true. Nice parents chicks should be nice too.

I haven’t heard that Derek, but it could be on the cards, that bugs me about showing you need a different cage for just about every different type of bird & they then keep changing them, which can work out quite a bit of money. Even though mine are the same size they have changed the front wire & to have good presentation, I need to already buy new wires, I better wait & see, if I spent money on fixing them all up & then found they are useless I wouldn’t be too happy.

Some very strong healthy birds will have multiple batches with no ill effects, as seems the case with your birds. Others will breed themselves to death if not stopped. In most cases we recommend that they mostly be given two batches, then rested. It can often be difficult to stop some pairs as you have learnt. The simplest way is as soon as one batch is completed & the young leave the nest, is to remove either the nest box or move them to another cage. This will mean you will probably have to destroy some eggs, as often they have already at least a couple of eggs, before the last baby leaves the nest. Another method is to remove the hen when the young are almost leaving the nest before she lays & leave the cock bird to finish the job by himself, but you need to keep an eye on him, as some cocks are better than others in doing that. In nature they breed while good conditions are available & stop when these conditions stop, but in the aviary where we are feeding good food all the time, we need to control them to suite our situation.

In the wild the Budgerigar is a highly social bird especially in the none breeding season & gather in large flocks & there is plenty of inter action between birds. They feed, preen & even have social sex, but once they start to breed this often changes & there can be some very serious fights, especially between hens, that's why most of us on this forum recommend cabinet breeding instead of breeding in the colony system. When most cocks are paired up with a hen later this behaviour changes, but in a small number I have found some are useless for breeding & produce infertile eggs, no matter which hen you pair them with. Whether this is some social preference or whether its some physical problem with them is hard to say, but I have noticed that on return to the aviary some of these birds always have partnerships with other males & prefer inter action with them rather than hens.

I agree with Kaz, I would say the second one is a Grey wing; nice healthy looking birds Lozza.

Thanks guys, now I just hope nothing happens to any of them, before I can breed from them. Don’t worry Derek, I’m desperate for some good hens for my cocks too, it’s hard to get good hens & even to breed them, I seem to get so many more cocks, but this batch has more hens. I was hoping to show some of these in the young bird section of our local show in two weeks, but I just haven’t had the time to clean up & paint my show cages [old] or get time to train them. Maybe next year.

Some pictures of a few of my young birds that were hatched early January & now going through their first moult. I thought they were starting to look quite good. They were bred from a Grey Green Normal hen bred by me & a Cobalt Normal cock I bought at the Hunter Valley show last year. Grey Normal Cock. Cobalt, Normal Hen… its colour is washed out a bit by the flash. One of the two Grey Green Normal Hens. The two Grey Green Hens & the Cobalt. There were five in the batch, but I lost one just after they went in the aviary. I have another younger batch similar to these.

A nice pair Sunnie, yes Fluro is a nice looking bird with wide forehead, if he’s split for Blue you should get some Blues & Greens if not only Greens & something like 50% Spangle, some Normals, Spangle Opaline & of course like you say maybe some surprises. Good luck.

I would stick to that basic recipe & then add your eggs to it as well, other wise it may not hold together as well. I want to make up a batch myself, but the plaster of Paris I got is sort of artificial not like in the old day, so I hope it’s safe I’m going to add a bit of clean river sand too, to try & stop my birds eating out the mortar in the bricks in my aviary base.

Don’t worry if he’s playing with it [they like a bath] he will also be drinking it. They say in the books that they can live for something like 30 days without water, so they don’t drink lots especially if they are getting Greens & other things with a high moisture content.

That is not true, if they are Brushtail possums, which are one of the most common, I have read where they can even eat poultry, but I have had them get in my hens house & they didn't do anything, they were only interested in the pellets. Probably they were just after the bird's grain, but I would do what Kaz says, put the cage in a protected.area where they can't get access to it. Once you get an aviary that birds can't get out of I doubt if possums could get access, but they could scare birds at night. Myself I wouldn't recommend feeding them, as they can have two young a year & even without feeding they are almost in plague proportions here & eat most edible things in the garden. I used to wish that I lived where I could feed possums, now I do, I found out it ain't that much fun.

It’s pretty normal for lots of hens to just move out of their box when you inspect them; in fact I like those ones, as it makes nest inspection easy. Those ones that stay stuck fast & can even get stuck into your hands make it difficult. I have never seen a Budgie leave its eggs through being inspected; I would think it was just some other reason. Once they have chicks they are more connected to their nest & seeing you are moving the whole cabinet, it’s like their world is still the same within reason, so you shouldn’t have much trouble, of course the least amount of disturbance is best. okay Neat, yes it could work, but I guess it depends on the temperament of the individual birds, if it’s one of those more flighty ones, when I disturb some of them they just run around in circles with eggs flying everywhere.

They would have to be Greys or Grey Green Spangles, maybe some Normals, they look pretty Dark. They look like Monks with their heads shaven.

Welcome to the forum I hope you enjoy it here & you can learn lots. If your birds haven’t been handled & tamed before it will take some time with birds that already 2 years old. To have hand tame birds it’s usually important to get them when they are very young & have just left their parents. Usually it is hens that bite the most, but this a very individual thing & different birds vary.

I use High Gloss Exterior acrylic on my cages & aviaries & the birds chew it & I have never noticed any bad effects from it.

Yes Cinnamon Opaline Dominant Pied, not sure about the Violet but, hard to get Violets true to colour in pictures looks lighter to me, maybe Sky Violet.

I just love them, it seems I love all natural things from the time I was born, my Mum said I was always catching things in bottles, ants etc & she said for some reason I never got bitten…that didn’t last…wish it were true sometimes…maybe I wanted to learn about the birds & bees, as I have kept birds from 7 & from 21 bees, all my life. I often have thought maybe I was a bird in a former life. The Native Americans believe every one has a power animal, I think Australian Aborigines have a similar idea. My Grandparents on my Fathers side gave me a Canary for my 7th birthday, I used to feed it, but Mum had to put the cage up on nail in the wall as I couldn’t reach it & one day a cat got it, the next year my Grandparents gave me four Budgies in a large wire cage, then it was off I bred my first Budgie a Normal Green in an old Kraft cheese box. I use to make my own breeding cabinets from wooden fruit cases I got from the local Green grocer, something that couldn’t be done these days as fruit comes in cardboard or foam boxes. I love breeding things as each new individual has the ability to be something new & special, same as our own kids. I also love genetics & it seemed to somehow have rubbed off, as my Eldest Daughter is now a Geneticist & works at a laboratory at RPA hospital. As well as enjoying different & rare mutations, I am always hoping to breed all the time better birds, not especially for showing, but just healthier better looking birds [at least to me] than before I got them. It’s more important to me, that they have high hatchability & can raise their own young without too much help & survive long & healthy lives.

If they all hatched at once & it's a bit like Lotto, how are you going to decided which one gets the first ring, second & third…get some numbered balls??? Seeing Nicknack isn’t around someone’s gotta try to make a few jokes to keep things going, sorry if there not as good as his, but no ones feeding me cake or donuts, so what can you expect. :hap:

You could just put a wash of cement & bricklayers sand over the top to seal the cracks, it still may crack again, but the cracks would be so thin then that they shouldn’t bother you & certainly cheaper than full cement floor.