Norm

Really ruffled now… Ps. Lots of people have plenty of spare time…not that it take that much time to write three words…thought I better have a look what’s going on here sorry I did now

and if you buy rose tintied glasses or glasses with red lenses...its even easier :sad: Kaz, that's cheating...get with the program.

Good one Libby, was just thinking about how it was going? Yes I'm the same Kaz, I like the Canaries, but the Budgies seem different, maybe just got used to the Canaries. I was trying to breed Clear coloured Canaries with Dark mop tops, I did breed some, but now both my remaining Cresteds aren't hatching chicks so it seems the end of the line will have to get some more.

Congratulations Libby, I will watch with interest to see how they turn out. That reminded me that I had a chick with some feathers like that on it’s head in the nest, but forgot about it so don’t know what happened to it. Even though I’m into rares, for some reason I’m not that attracted to Crests.

Nice looking pair Throwback...look nice & healthy...nothing is always possible, but good luck for a lot more than that.

If saving eggs they should be turned every day, or if you place them with the small end down it doesn’t have to be done so often, if not the germ in the egg may stick to the side & die. I don’t think it’s a necessary thing with Budgies, as at present they seem to be quite capable in raising all their babies even with a great size difference in them. This has been done with Canaries for centuries & now if all the eggs are not kept till the batch is complete, if they are now left in the normal way, they mostly seem only able to rear one or two young, the first two hatched, in most cases. I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t have been the case in their normal habitat.

As Libby has told you, that are the only two ways a sex linked Mutation can be produced [Opaline]. So to answer your question, your birds mother must have been an Opaline hen & the father either another Opaline or a cock split for Opaline [carrying this gene].

Like others have stated quarantine isn't the be all & end all. Most diseases will live well beyond the normal quarantine period that most give. Some like Megabacteria [avian yeast] are basically endemic I haven't read all of Daz's post on quarantine as yet, but if you tested all that it seems to suggest the price would be prohibitive. Also all these thing might be right & proper for introductions into a country, by quarantine authorities, but for the normal bird breeder I think it's crazy. The so-called experts often advise what I think are crazy regimes for keeping livestock. I have throughout my life kept lots of different species, as I seem to have a desire to keep many animals & birds. They suggest that you only keep one species in a given area & if not should wear different clothing, wash hands, shoes etc when moving from one to another. I believe you have to use common sense when keeping livestock, but some of these ideas would take all the pleasure out of keeping anything, in my opinion. I have always kept chooks & often hundreds of pigeons, which are species that have a very high immunity to many of the common diseases, so are thought to be a hazard to other not so rugged stock. With some of the advise that we are given of keeping stock completely isolated from infection, I'm pretty sure if you were able to succeed in meeting their criteria, when stock was taken out into the wide world they would almost drop dead instantly, because of their lack of exposure to the normal world. I'm afraid in my experience often our society seems to install into us fear, fear of all things, of course if you fear enough money can be made from this fear. Just look at some of the adds on TV, where they suggest that you spray this or that to remove even all the bacteria from your life. The majority of bacteria are beneficial to life, some even essential, some bacteria are extremely toxic, but these are a minority. It is now suspected that some of the immune problems experienced today that weren't experienced in the past, may be because people weren't exposed to "bad things" early enough in their life, asthma being one. My thoughts are that all livestock have to be exposed to the real world & bred in that environment & selection made from stock that can survive with the least amount of input possible. No matter how much care you take, birds can't be protected from things borne on the air from maybe wild birds or rats & mice. Our seed stores constantly attract these pets, which man has been fighting since the beginning of time without success, still they are present. These things [the rats & mice] are an example of something that has been exposed to the real world & man has even thrown everything possible at them & still they are winning, which is a triumph of genes over adversity. I think the only real cure for anything is like nature does it, through breeding. Natural things have lived through time unimaginable without help from humans, doctors or vets. I believe this is the only solution to the problem. If you want to live under the regime of fear, if taken to it's ultimate extreme, you better not take your next breath, as it could be the one that holds your ultimate demise. As with every breath you take you take risks…life is risk. As the Buddha said "Life is suffering" Well that's my bit I hope it's not too heavy for you guys.

So all we have to do now is change our perception & wulla!!! A Red Budgie!!! It's all in the mind, so guys start thinking RED BUDGIES. Nothing is impossible. First off you have to convince your mind then the rest is easy.

I totally agree with DrNat’s comments. Luckily our local pets shops are I think run quite well. I’m older than most of you guys, I have seen how things have changed since I was young & believe me all controls brought in haven’t been for the best, I think. Ultimately each individual has to carry responsibility for his or her own actions. With blanket controls we all loose a little of our own freedom.

As Kaz says if they aren't used to eating softfood as part of their diet, you wont get the full benefit from it as always when you introduce new foods it takes some time before they are eating it enough to do good. Also it builds up the parents system making them better parents.

Obviously that was supposed to be Canker…not the big C cancer, in my previous post, didn't notice till now. They are a bit similar in how they grow. It’s true that it’s not as simple as all pet birds are tougher than show birds, it’s an individual thing, but as a general rule it seems that on the whole pet types are the more vigorous. As you say Elly it's all in their genes.

My one & only Creamino was a total surprise. I paired up an Opaline Light Green cock with a Dominant Pied Grey Green hen. From this result I learnt that the cock was split Blue & Lutino & the hen was masking Yellow Face & split for BLue. I got two Lutinos & the Creamino apart from the normal expectations.

Maybe Norm the TCB had the cancer already growing when you bought him Dave. In young pigeons it grows pretty fast, but maybe in an older bird with it growing in or near his crop, may have taken some time to get large enough to cause problems. Some birds seem to get it after an injury; I guess they have to have the bug in their system first.

Canker is very prevalent in pigeons, but I have never seen it in Budgie, whether some that have died had it or not I do not know. I lost one bird that I bought of late with a large growth that appeared on his back, but I thought that was a cist. In pigeons it's most prevalent in young in the nest they get a cheesy looking growth in their throat. Which sort of chokes them & is very easy to see so you wouldn't miss it. As to why pet birds don't get so many problems versus show types, well this is my theory. Lots of pet birds are bred by people that don't go into such detail about their birds, don't feed drugs & if a bird gets sick it dies. This is a form of natural selection only the strong survive. Whereas show breeders are selecting for certain criteria, the perfect show Budgie, it's very hard to succeeded with selection of birds if you are trying for lots of different things at once. So if something happens to a bird & it's the breeder's special bird, he tries everything to keep it alive, especially if he has just bought the bird for quite a large sum. So if you feed drugs, get vets to fix the "sick" birds after some time you are breeding a stud of "sick" birds, as like breeds like. The natural selection part of the equation is removed. I agree that it's hard loosing birds, but if birds get sick it's for some reason [mostly because the bird has less ability to keep disease at bay] even though it's sad to loose birds especially if they are your special bird [which is often the case] it is doing something for you removing the weakest birds, which you have no way of knowing, just by visual selection. If you breed from birds that have had the weakest removed by death from various reasons, it stands to reason that your birds are going to be stronger, whereas if every sick bird is saved wherever possible, the stud will be weaker. What I do is if I have bought in a new bird, I will help the first generation as some where I have to get stock to start off with, I hope if I have a problem with a bird that I have bought in that after the first mating because it was mated probably with an unrelated bird, problems that it had may be removed by the new blood, but if in the next generation the problem still persists, they wont be assisted or that bird will be culled from my breeding. As an example I bought a nice large Cinnamon Sky Blue hen, on her first batch I noticed that even though all the eggs were fertile, after the second chick hatched, she just wouldn't feed any more chicks that hatched, I lost some before I realised what was happening. After that I fostered all her chicks after the second one & raised quite a lot of nice looking birds, but so far none of her hen chicks have started breeding yet, even though they have been in cabinets for some time. So I don't know what future this line has. I have had other lines that had lots of sick birds & even the ones that survived when bred the second generation still this line is getting more sick birds than others, I have other families that have never lost one bird. So even though us humans think that being tough on your birds [to a certain extent] is cruel, saving too many sick birds is only buying you problems for the future. Hopefully by loosing some sick birds your breeding will produce healthier birds that then require less "help" to survive & also less death making in the long run breeding birds a much more rewarding pastime. What you do to save your one & only pet bird, which will never be bred from, is totally different to what you do with a breeding stud to produce birds for the future.

I have read in quite a few places where people are feeding their birds an annual feed of antibiotics to clear their birds of psittacosis, whether they have symptoms or not, from my understanding this seems a very dangerous thing to do, in regards to résistance to antibiotics. It’s a bit like us as Budgie breeders each year choosing which birds we breed together to produce the best birds or show winners. Bacteria don’t breed sexually like our birds, but breed by division [cell division] so you don’t get variability like you do in sexual breeding, but still simple life forms mutate & are not exactly alike. So when you feed antibiotics the antibiotic is like the stud breeder, it selects who lives or dies & the thing with simple cell life forms is that whereas with sexual breeding if only one survived the species will die out, but with bacteria even if only one cell survived it will continue it’s division unchecked till there could be millions like itself. The more times you feed antibiotics the more chances you have of selecting bacteria immune to it. The bacteria causing Psittacosis must be a pretty resilient strain, as when using the correct does which is Doxycline Hydrochloride 40mg/g they recommend using it for 7 to 10 days for most bacterial infections, but for psittacosis they recommend 45 days, a few years ago it was for 30 days, which suggests to me that either the bacteria is already getting immune to the disease & takes longer to knock or that they have found out it takes longer than they thought. Also in my opinion this antibiotic is quite expensive & feeding it annually seems an expensive exercise when you are not even sure that Psittacosis is present & especially if not fed for the full term as this will certainly aid in the bacterium becoming immune to the antibiotic & making it useless in treating it later. Also some are feeding a cheaper type of antibotic similar or a weaker strength, which also seem dangerous as if weaker or different in some way it's effects will be less, but will still start the selection process with bacteria to becoming immune.

Looking good here also Deb, but I hope it lasts more than a couple of days this time. After the years of drought, it’s always the way, now it wont stop. Moderation isn’t how Australia works but, I guess.

My suggestion would be that you would have to remove the birds & then lift the whole aviary up on some blocks, to give it clearance above the ground & then put the concrete or blocks down & lower the aviary onto it. Usually concrete would be at least 4 inches in old measurement. Also as suggested have a slight slope towards the front so that any water runs away. If you get water any deeper than the height you can make the floor you would need to do some drainage around it to direct water away. If the aviary was a bit higher like I suggest that would also help prevent rusting of the base metal of the aviary also.

Looking really nice chicks.

I don’t really know what we can do Dave, at least all my aviaries are well covered, but it’s just gone on for so long now, that everything is moist, they said it was going to clear today, but here it’s still been raining lots & I just got 4 leach on me feeding my birds, as they are even around the house now, as it’s so wet, all we can hope is that there is going to be a break, but I don’t like the look of things, as down south there’s a front coming up & in the west they is a lot of cloud coming in from the north west, which isn’t a good sign.

Sorry he didn’t make it Dave, I hope it wont be too long before you can get another TCB. If it hadn’t been a lump that he had, with the weather how it’s been of late I wouldn’t be surprised if any bird got sick at the moment.

Sadly Deb, that’s the trouble with an earth floor. It wouldn’t be my choice for keeping Budgies. Do you have anything dry? Like sand or sawdust that you could cover the wet area? Is it still raining there, it looks like it still is via the radar. You could get a bag of agriclutral lime & sprinkle over the floor that might help kill bugs & even dry it a little. Hopefully Liv, your in the winter rainfall area, so lets hope your dose is on it’s way soon.

If your aviary has been wet like that I would think the best thing would be to clean it out as best you can & just hope they are right about it finishing later today & will dry out as quick as possible. If you haven’t a large number of birds & you have some smaller cages that you can put them in without overcrowding, you could do that, but moving is always stressful to them.

Yes Deb, my aviaries are all completely closed, but the air is so wet that everything is moist. Yes the kids going back to school that’s our only hope …LOL…Mum’s in the east must have had a busy time.

Yes the quarantine facility in Victoria is shut down at the present time, due I think to the bird flu scare, but even when it’s open it’s a very expensive exercise.