Norm

Do you think that Cloudy is a Spangle? I was wondering if those White ones were Lacewing, but they may be Cinnamon Spangle & then they have so much Pied also, which makes it hard.

We are thinking that the Mum is a Lutino, but seeing she is a Lutino she could be masking Cinnamon, so as you rightly say, if that was the case it could be of either sex...I told her that the chick would be hen, but that was thinking that the hen wasn't Cinnamon, if the chick turned out a cock, that would prove that she [the mother] was a Cinnamon.

Yes I agree congratulations Kaz.

Thanks Birdluv... Thanks Pie...yes it was a bit slow at first but I should have a few ready to breed next year now...what with the 7 TCB's & the splits.

Good luck with your new friend. Like Kaz has told you, I’m sorry to say that your method of choice was just the opposite of what you should choose & you’re not the only one that has picked the sadess & quietest bird in the cage. But sadly that kind action can be filled with bad results. You should always look for the most active & healthy type bird, even then you can end up with problems. Seeing that your bird had been plucked, it may just be in shock & with a bit of kindness & time it may become healthy. If you want to feed it wet bread I would choose wholemeal & only provide a small amount, as things like that can go bad quickly & make your bird sick.

Also do you have a current picture of your birds that might help us. From that picture of them when they were young, I know it's hard to tell but there is a chance that both are males, are you sure of their sex? I looked at some of your other posts, so it sounds like you know their sex, anyway a current picture would be good. Some birds just don't breed easy I have quite a few pairs that have been together for months & seem in condition & have the noise of many other Budgies around but still nothing happens & it's hard to know why.

Yes your Cinnamon baby must be a hen; her Dad must be split for Cinnamon. She is not a Creamino, as that is a Yellow Faced Albino [ino]. As to whether she is Dominant or Recessive, I think she looks like Dominant, so that would mean that Mum is masking Dominant Pied with her Lutino. You can’t tell without breeding what Albino or Lutinos are masking. [Their true genetical colour]. If she is Recessive that would mean that both are carrying the Recessive gene. So I think she is Cinnamon winged, Dominant Pied, Yellow Face Blue. I think Cobalt even though you can’t see much Blue. See what others think about the D or R Pied.

Isaac, I checked up on Dominant Pieds…apparently there is Single Factor & Double Factor…yours must be SF as in that case they can get 25% Normals…like you say genetics is complicated…I have copied all that info from Nyos, as it’s pretty complicated & hard to take in, in one sitting…

Thanks Kaz, I have always liked Opalines & birds with Yellow colouring with dark wing markings, so I'm petty keen on the TCB.

Looks good Zebra, I'm glad you got it finished.

Don't worry, if you use the spot on Ivermectin, you only have to treat the birds, no need to clean or spray the aviary. This mite lives only on the birds, there may be eggs, but the Ivermectin is active for at least 21 days & I have found no reason to reapply. When applied in the correct dose, only one drop, it only causes mild irratation for a short time. I wouldn't apply to any hens sitting on eggs, but if on larger chicks it should be okay. I would only treat one of each pair at a time if they have young.

I think that there can be two types of Green, but visually we still just call them Green, because without test mating & seeing the results there is no way [that I know] that we can tell if a Green bird is carrying the YF factor, when it’s mated to a Blue bird. I mated a Cinnamon Greygreen Pied hen with an Opaline Light Green cock this year, [both of which I bought, so didn’t know the breeding] & they produced quite a few YF Blues, proving that both were split for Blue & I think it’s the hen that’s carrying the YF factor. I think the bird in question here is a YF2 Cobalt Spangle.

Just a few pictures of some of my young TCB's, this is the youngest of the batch that got feather plucked. One from the same batch a little older & still showing signs of being feather plucked. I wanted to take some pictures of the TCB to TCB pair's young as they seem to be a beautiful Yellow colour, probably the desired colour...but I ran out of time...pictures soon.

They always look cute at that stage looking out through the entrance. They must be getting spoilt by Mum & Dad 5 weeks & still at home.

It’s hard to say seeing I wasn’t there, but it seems to me that from the symptoms you have stated, that like I said the bird may have eaten something that poisoned her. If the beak was normal until just before she died & she was vomiting, it sounds like she was in acute pain.

I don’t like to let them have to raise more than 6 if I can, but if you don’t have any smaller batches, you don’t have much choice. Good feeders will raise 7 or 8, but like you say maybe it would be good to rest them after that. Wait & see what happens if the other batch doesn’t end up hatching all it’s eggs you can transfer some of the youngest ones from the first batch. Some times like you say it’s hard to stop them & some lay while they have chicks still in the nest, often they will get kicked around & dirtied that much they wouldn’t hatch anyway. All you can do it remove them after all the chicks have fledged.

Yes that could be true, but I was told that they can only be Recessive or Dominant not a combination, but I’m not positive on that.

Do you know how to reduce your pictures to 450 on the maximum side? I think it would be better for people on dial up [like me] as it takes so long to download such big pictures. If you reduce your picture to the desired size then select under the picture at photobucket where it says “direct link” & copy & paste it where it says “insert image” above where you insert your message [two icons right of the smiley face]. Then you would get the picture you want in your message, without taking us to your whole file…I couldn’t tell from you pictures yet anyway what colour your chicks are, maybe a few more days & you could tell.

“once she was dry & groomed” Did you wash the mother as well as clean the nest? If that is true no wonder it took her hours to be game to go back…that would have been a little too much all at once, I have never washed a Budgie but if you did, one thing at a time would have been better. Anyway sounds like it turned out okay in the end…we learn by our experiences.

Maybe you just put more than usual, if he has gone in I wouldn't worry too much, just keep an eye on them. Best of luck, I'm glad he has been better with the rest.

You say pine bedding, what do you mean, wood shavings or pine needles from pine trees. It sounds like your birds are just scared because you have changed their conditions too much. They will probably get over it, after a few hours. I wouldn’t be thinking of hand feeding at this stage, you could remove the material that has made them scared.

It worked out successfully; both the hen & cock have looked after their separate chicks.

You all will think I’m hard, but that’s where I differ with most, I hate seeing or having birds that die, but I think that nature has more wisdom than us & can know things that we can’t know. So I believe in respecting that, sad as it is & us humans don’t seem to like to accept it, I let nature take it’s course in cased like that. I believe that if you save birds that would have died, it causes problems for the future & the bird fancy in general & is often why we have so many problems with birds that later fail to breed properly. If when a bird was saved in this fashion it was strictly just kept as a pet…okay…but in most cases later on, it will get into the breeding population.

Sex-linked just follows the sex-linked rules, if you mate a sex-linked male it will throw it’s sex-linked colour to its daughters & its males will be split for it. If you mate a sex-linked hen with a non sex-linked colour only her males will be split for it & the females wont carry it, at all. As the name applies it’s a mutation that’s carried on the sex chromosome & seeing a hen has only one she can only be visual for a sex-linked colour & can’t carry it. There’s no Dominant or Co-dominant about it.

It’s quite common for Pieds to have one eye with an iris ring & another without; I think it just depends where the Pied markings occur. The same can occur with the cheek patches also. Re having the Pied patches quite Yellow, but it hasn’t bled into the Blue, I have some birds like that too & have especially kept them because of that variation, always with mutations you get variation. I’m thinking of pairing them together to see if I can fix it, as I think it looks quite good, to have the strong Blue & Yellow together.