Norm

Looks a real nature shot Kaz...not like mine nesting in old Tuna tins...LOL... Yeah he's filling all the eggs that's gotta be a big plus...that's the first thing I look for when getting new birds at least you know you can get somewhere with them.

Sometimes you just can’t win Kaz…that’s bad luck…never had anything like that happen. Got my first Canary on eggs.

Looks really good Deb…great job. Don’t worry about not having money to buy new birds, put down a few pairs & you will soon fill it. I know you might want some improve types, but then you can sell some of the young & get the more expensive ones later. You don’t really need the tin if the wire is the proper mouse proof stuff. Only problem the buggers can climb anywhere, so make sure there are no holes even up near the roof. The thing is with tin at least some way up the front is it’s also good to stop rain blowing in, in wet weather, as moisture is the enemy of healthy birds.

Nice Spangles Sunnie.

Too early to tell if dad is pure as all the chicks could be male. If there are females in the clutch then he is not split. I can already see the males in this clutch...I also have the dads pedigree somewhere ( Ken has messed with my paperwork and I need to search for it ) and in the pedigree it will say about cinnamon or not. you are so clever at seeing the genders of the really young chicks!! If you have normal females then the male cant be split can he. If a cock is a sex-linked mutation, he will only have daughters of that mutation. But if he is only split he can have Normal hens as well as sex-linked ones.

A Concrete base is good in that as others have said it stops vermin, but also it’s good as it minimises the amount of moisture, as with dirt with sand over top it will allow moisture to filter up through it & keeping it as dry as possible is the way to minimise disease. I think some guys at our club meeting were saying that some of the wire sold at B******s is very low quality so I would check out quality first before buying from anywhere, low price isn’t always a good indication of what you are getting.

Yes I agree, I love scootica too, nice hen...good luck with chicks.

Sorry Kaz retirement wont help I'm retired & still haven't got time for everything. Guess we need to want less. It would save time if you moved in with the birds, it looks good enough for that anyway. I hope things keep moving on smoothly.

They will love it. Not a problem.

Sorry to hear about the losses Kaz of the hen & some chicks, seems more prevalent with the show stock.

Hi & welcome to the forum, I hope you enjoy it here. I like the pictures of your previous birds & agree with Libby, that the unusual one is called a Fallow.

CONGRATULATIONS Grandma...didn't know you were a Budgie...yeah don't stress out AV lots of things could have happened with that egg, it may have hatched & the chick died, something might have been wrong with it & Mum ate it up so many things can go wrong, just be patient & enjoy the successes.

Deb you can put clean sand in the base of your aviary, no worries, but maybe you need something around the sides to keep it from spilling out, I don't know what your aviary looks like at ground level. Something like this to absorb the wet dropping as they hit I think is a good idea & surely it will help you when cleaning. Like you say the most important thing is to keep it from getting wet. If rain blows in when you have rain this could be a problem as if it has sand it will take longer to dry out. I use a washed river sand in my aviaries, but I can't see that beach sand would be a problem. The birds will probably eat some of the sand especially when you first put it in, but despite what I have read about it not being good for them, I don't believe that, it has never caused my birds any problems. Any seed eating bird needs some type of grit in their gizzard, as this is their teeth, whether they shell the seed or not.

They look great Matt, some really nice birds, thanks for sharing them with us.

Looks great Renee...don't worry about using a deep litter method, that's what I use & I think my birds do pretty well, it's all a matter of different ideas.

A bird called a Clear Flight, is a Dominant type Pied, a good show specimen will have Clear flight feathers in the wing & as Neat said the tail flights also. Poorly marked ones can have other Pied markings, in other places.

I'm only calling it one because it looked so Yellow to me, I'm not positive that it is one…the other chick definitely is, as it came from a BES & a Split BES. You could be right.

Thanks Kaz, especially the one from the Dusk seems larger, which is a surprise as other chicks from them haven’t been on the large size. This is with a new hen…pity there weren’t a few more in the nest.

Unless your hen is one of those really erratic hens that run in circles in the nest box, I don’t think normal inspections will cause addling. Mainly I have trouble with it when you have a large clutch of chicks that are getting quite large & they roll the remaining eggs around, so much that they addle. If I can in those cases I remove the eggs to another nest if I have one, or remove some of the larger chicks to a foster.

Another picture of the two BES’s I thought it might show a bit more, the one on the left is the Spangle from the Dusk, note it’s colour seems stronger than the other one, maybe because it has Dusk in it. The pictures might not be so great, but at least you can’t say that I don’t go through lots to get a good pick. I think it might be a hen.

Thanks for that Liv...

Here are some pictures I promised, sadly they are not of good quality, I tried in natural light, but they were worse so went back to flash, but the detail of feathers isn't good. I would share lots more pictures of my birds, but it takes so long to get good pictures that I really haven't got the time, as nothing else gets done. Also I was trying to get into photobucket last night & this morning, but it wouldn't recognise my password, so eventually I had to change it to a new one & then finally I got access. The young chick that was a surprise, that I think is a BES Spangle. The colour pattern in its wing is Dark Green & it has suffusion in the breast, which might mean that it also has Dusk in it. Another BES fostered to the same batch, it came from a Cinnamon Opaline hen that must be split for BES & a BES Yellow cock. That was another surprise. I was out crossing the BES cock to get splits to improve the quality of my BES's. I got one BES in their first batch. A picture of my first Blue series Texas Clear Body.Its breast feathers look almost White. A picture of the bird that I was talking about with Elly the other morning. It came in a batch of Spangles, it's Blue was so faded to all the others, It's a Spangle, but I just wonder if also it's some kind of Dilute, but not like the BES where most of the colour is gone on their breast. Sorry that also was the best picture I could get, the wings are washed out, but there is little wing pattern.Like Elly said maybe it's a Clearwing…Maybe Clearwing Spangle…but compared to its nest mates its Blue was about 50% less than a Sky Blue…any ideas? Well finally I got that post finished, even when I got into photobucket I had lots of problems, it kept ceasing up during upload. Someone else mentioned the other days they were having troubles too, I wonder if the site is getting overloaded. That took me two hours to do that whole post then I edited it to change a couple of words & now it's a total mess I haven't a clue what happened…If it's totally stuffed remove it & I'll try again later as my computer time has gone this morning. ****FIXED it for you Norm ****

The chook pen is 3 metres from the aviary, how would i know if the chooks have mites, their beaks look fine.You have a good memory Norm to remember i have chooks, there are so many members here i am not keep trait of what other pets besides budgies people have. That's pretty close, I have chooks but they are a lot further away than that, other diseases that chooks are immune to could spread to the birds as well. The mite will show up on chooks legs, with rough looking scales, in bad cases they are crippled, but some breeds don't show it that much. As Macka says you can treat them with Ivermectin too, but you would probably need a couple of drops on them. I didn't remember you had chooks Deb, you said you cleaned the chooks out too.

If you use Ivermectin to treat your birds for scaly mite you don’t need to do anything else. As this mite lives on the birds, but if you have a cage without birds that has had the mite, it can live for something like a year without a host, as I think most mites can do that. But if birds are present, but treated with Ivermectin they will feed on them & die. Also this mite can infest poultry too ..how far away from your Budgies are they?