Norm

My first pair of TCB’s have so far had two Dark Green Opaline cocks split for either Lutino or TCB, I will have to mate to know which…I’m hoping TCB. The Opalines look good type so will mate each with Opaline hens next year to hopefully get some TCB, but if not they at least look like they will help improve my Opaline line. I also got a Lutino hen, looks big. One of the cocks is big also the other a little smaller, but nice strong colours. The pair is set to go down again, as I have removed the chicks to the aviary; I’m hoping for more luck this next batch, with hopefully a TCB hen or two.

Things are going well…I found the hens forth chick had hatched & even though there were two large chicks from another bird, in the nest, the small new chick had been fed, hopefully on her next batch all will be well, but I still removed it to the foster Mum who has now four chicks that are going well from my bought show type bird. I will just leave her with the two larger chicks, so that she will finish this round quicker & then I’m thinking of putting a better cock with her now that I have found out she can produce fertile eggs. There’s still one egg to go, but maybe it wont hatch, at least I got four, hopefully improved type birds. I’m getting some nice young ones from my newer purchases, I’m looking forward to next breeding season, when I have lots of improved type birds to choose from, instead of only the few I have been able to buy, especially I have very few hens, I have more cocks, but little I can mate them with at this time. No luck still with the other pairs bought at the sale, but at least this one went from a nest of infertile eggs to a batch of 7 fertile ones. Which gives me hope.

They are not my birds, wish some of them were, maybe some of the best birds in Oz.

Some nice pictures for your enjoyment & knowledge, you will have to guess where they were taken, as someone told me I might get into trouble putting them on the web. They were taken in my travels in the last week. Bird room set-up. Aviary. Two Double Factor Spangle cocks. Normal Violet cock. Yellow Faced Blue cock. Spangle cock with influence of Cinnamon, one of my favourites as I think the feather quality is much better, shorter & more colour.

I put a nice Grey Green cock with a smallish Lutino hen…[the one that had all the Spangle chicks] to get some better split cocks to mate back to Lutinos next year to improve size. First batch I only got one Grey Green cock, but when I caught it up yesterday to put it into the aviary I couldn’t believe how big it felt.

Yes Kaz, a friend of mine says he never tries to buy the prise winner bird, mostly they wont sell it anyway & if they did it would be expensive & also it’s often been said that in lots of cases the prize winning birds wont even breed or fill eggs. So your best idea is to ask if they have its brother, sister or close relative for sale & you have just as good a chance to breed a good bird from that.

Yeah, thanks guys, I’m not giving up with my “dregs” a breeder that was with me said after we left [they probably thought I was mad buying them] don’t breed with that bird with the wing fault, it will get through all your birds. I think I will breed it, I thought it could also be mechanical damage [from an accident] at least I think when it’s bred with some strong good bird, at least some will loose the fault & I will select from the good ones. Also with the BES’s his stock birds weren’t show beaters but some were a lot better than the ones I got, so I always think even the birds that don’t look that good still have the genetics of better birds behind them, it’s just a matter of good selection. Maybe I can’t buy expensive birds, but the enjoyment to me is in breeding & seeing my birds improve each year, to me that’s most of the pleasure, not in showing, as long as I’m happy with the birds I breed that’s the main thing to me. I have already picked out the best hen & am going to mate her with the male that is the most unrelated to her, the cock is small, but has better colour than the hen. The others I will mate to improved unrelated Normals & then pair the splits back to the best of the pure birds I breed from the straight BES pair. I need to introduce new blood anyway. When you are interested in Rares, that’s one of the problems, the gene pool you have to work with…he has lots of Rares that others don’t have, but with some lines he only had a couple of pairs himself, that’s why we need more breeding some of the Rare mutations otherwise they will be eventually lost.

Those birds look great Splat; I can understand your devastation at having to get rid of them. Those YF with the Yellow bleed are nice I think, I know the body colour is supposed to be as white as possible, but I have some that have the strong Yellow Pied marks & the Green doesn’t bleed through the Blue parts & I think it looks nice. Re your main problem, I hope things work out the best way for you. Sometimes in life when a problem comes up & seems devastating it can seems like the end of the world, but in most cases if you handle it right it can be the door to something even better & more fulfilling, best of luck with everything anyway.

Looks a nice chick Kaz.

Yeah looks a nice bird I wouldn't mind her in my breeding room.

Well we had our aviary tour day, eventually we only went to the one place, as for some reason the other two lined up, cancelled a day or so before. Gary has a very nice set-up, small but compact. He was very pleasant & showed us lots of his family lines; his breeding is based on these families. His main lines seemed to be Spangles & especially DF spangles [mostly Yellow]. His advice to get rid of Green suffusion in the DF was Cinnamon Opalines. You can see he has done lots of good work to get him where he is today & he is good at his trade. But… you can say maybe I'm getting old & can't accept new ideas, as the birds that are considered tops today, are so different to what was in when I bred Budgie before more than forty years ago. I have a lot of trouble getting my head around liking them. In my opinion there is "too" much feather, I know that's what it's all about these days, but even some of the other guys that are showing & like that type of bird, thought the feathers were too long even for them. Most of his birds have massive masks & the feather length around the legs is really long. I have posted sometimes on here saying I wonder about the health & vigour of some of today's show birds & I have been told by others that I have it wrong, that the present day show bird is fantastically health. Well he is considered one of the top studs in Australia & he advised us if you can keep your mortality down to 25% [that's 1 in 4] you are doing well. I have bred something like 300 birds this year & all up lost less than 10 birds. A couple of chicks died on hatching & I lost one almost fully feathered chick in my first nest of French Moult. Then I lost about 5 young at weaning out of two families. And a couple of adult birds died. And that's using basically no medication; just of late I have been adding Apple Cider vinegar to my water. He showed us his water medication…he uses two mixtures, one I think three days a week & the other the other days. One had a least three chemicals in it. Plus there is the sprays that he & others I know use, that are supposed to kill every virus & bacteria…sadly that's not my idea of livestock breeding, my idea is to select birds that can live in the natural environment. You can't eliminate diseases, viruses or bacteria, especially bacteria…some are important for life itself & if you use a spray to kill them it kills the good as well as the bad. Even though I know we keep birds in a pretty unnatural environment, I still believe that we need to breed birds that can survive in this environment & in my opinion most of these chemicals etc are what I call expensive. Anyway that's my ideas everyone is entitled to their own opinion I guess. Then there's my new additions, my rare breeds, I eventually got 15 birds, I was a bit disappointed in them also, the breeder admitted that I was getting his dregs [at least he was honest] most of them are not good on type [or leave a lot to be desired]. This is what I got…the worst are the Darkwing Cock & Cinnamon Darkwing Cock [the Darkwing was free, but both have a pretty bad wing faults, but it was them or nothing I'm afraid…a Cinnamon Darkwing hen very young just out of the nest, small, but at least no wing fault & may develop more. Two split Saddleback Cocks, one isn't too bad looking…a Saddleback hen, which since getting her home holds her head a bit strange & trembles. Two Cocks & two Hens Black Eyed Cinnamon Self's. He said most of the BES in Australia have Cinnamon in them, as they look better. All a bit small, but good colour & look healthy. Two young Green series Fallows, maybe Cocks but he wasn't sure yet. And probably the best two birds I got, two Olive Dusk birds. Karen sent me an article on them from the guy in Newcastle that first bred them, the pictures with the article didn't impress me, but on seeing the birds I liked them much better. The guy that first bred them said they could be Slates, but I just read that Slates are sex linked & he said these are Dominant. Originally they were bred out of a Lutino bird & mine have a lot of Lutino in their pedigree, he said they are good for getting a real dark colour in your Lutinos. Well that's what I got hopefully I can breed them up to some good-looking birds; it will take a couple of years. I got some pictures, I need a couple of days to get them sorted, I may post some of my new birds but as I said they are not flash…My BES's aren't as good looking as yours Aly. PS. Oh & yeah I didn't get any Gazzard birds apparently he has a long waiting list & it's at least $500 more in lots of cases. But my Rares have "apparently" Gazzard birds in their pedigrees...but it's like chalk & cheese...(Laughing out loud)...got em on the cheap...

True Macka...time will tell. :budgiedance:

She hatched another chick this morning & I removed it to the other nest just to be sure, both fostered chicks are going well & the mother is feeding the larger chick from the other pair well, but I just didn’t want to take the chance & leave it with her. She has three more eggs that could hatch yet.

Good things happen to good people Norm....and you just never know :angel1: Thanks Kaz, yeah you never know, I could have a lucky day... He might have a pensioner deal...(Laughing out loud).

Exactly Kaz, I don't think I'll be coming home with a Gazzard bird, but then one never knows.

You certainly have a lot of colours in that batch Cindy & they are looking real well.

I use the cattle one & just spot it on, it works okay, but it's expensive if you only have a few birds, the smallest size I could get was about $80. It's not registered in Oz for birds, but an avian vet should be able to supply it.

I think it might be Wallsend but not sure. I don't know if any have birds for sale but taking some money with me just in case. Not sure I could afford Gazzards birds though.

Come on...what's the big secret...? No I can`t Norm,Big Brother might be watching& I will get Feathers in trouble again. MMMMMMMMMMM!!!! Snot fare...

Getting excited as I’m going this Sunday on an aviary tour with the Taree Budgerigar Club, which I joined last month. We are going to Garry Gazzards stud at Newcastle & two other I don’t know the name of, so hopefully I should see some good birds. Don’t know if we are allowed to take photos, but will try. Also going to a breeder on the way home to get some Saddlebacks, Yellow Darkwings, Cinnamon Yellow Darkwings, Black Eyed Self’s & maybe some Faded’s if I like the look of them, as never seen one yet. Let you know how it goes next week & probably will have some “new bird” picys…

The hen hatched her third chick, yesterday it seemed very active, squeaking loudly for food, as I transferred it to another bird that had young of a similar age & was feeding well. But looking in this birds nest I found that her last chick to have hatched was also dead, which worried me a little, anyway I left the new chick with her & removed her largest chick [just a few days old] & as advised by many on this forum, placed it with the hen from which I took the young chick. I checked them both late yesterday & the larger chick had been fed real well by the first hen & the fostered chick had a very small amount of food in it’s crop, so things are looking good [cross fingers]. When I buy birds & spend my money I’m really happy even if I can only raise one bird from them to get the genetics & hopefully the chick will turn out better than their problem parents. If the purchase is a complete failure it’s very disappointing. Mostly if you buy a bird, especially if it looks good [why would you sell such a good bird] I suspect problems either it’s old if not banded or the previous owner has had problems. If you can’t get at least one offspring to work with, it’s a total loss. I have one male I purchased from a pet shop & now that I have learnt more from other breeders I find it’s from a very successful show breeder, that wouldn’t sell me any birds when I asked. This bird looks good, but is a zombie & doesn’t help feed chicks, [he’s also getting on 5 years] but I have bred five chicks from it & with two different hens & they look active so I’m happy. He only cost me $15 too…(Laughing out loud).

That was interesting Kaz, I have been thinking that when I get some TCB’s that I have bred myself, I will try some different combinations, to see what the look like, mostly I have only seen the Normals & Opaline [i like the Opaline look] I know they are not bred in too many colours for showing, but I’m more interested in nice birds, so will try a few things. The guy I bought mine from only likes Opaline in the Yellow, but I am thinking of mating one to a Blue Opaline soon to get some split Blues to go into the Blue series. I will keep a look out for some birds from another bloodline as mine are all very closely related, but they’re not common here.

I have used the spot on type Ivermectin here in Australia. I have had a few cases of infertility, but I think they are just normal, I think that if birds were given a really large overdose it could occur. But I have had a few accidents of small overdoses, but couldn’t really connect it to any infertility. I have read of symptoms of overdose, but in the amounts in accidents I have experienced I saw no symptoms except annoyance, which normally occurs for a short time after dosing anyway. Just rubbing beak on perch etc. I dose on the bare patch under the beak. I accidentally introduced Scaly into my aviary with new birds, soon lots were getting symptoms, I treated once every bird, with the once spot on treatment, nothing else & treat every new bird now before introduction & have never had a reoccurrence. I have never heard before of the injection of it. Ivermectin is extracted from a Japanese fungus.

Not a problem, that's why we are all here...a pleasure to be of help.

The chicks are normal for the parents. I don’t think your male is an Opaline, I think he is a Normal Blue Spangle, as he doesn’t have the Opaline clear Triangle on his back, but he must be split for Opaline, as you have that Opaline chick. As Spangle is Dominant you could have expected some Spangles, but just not this batch, you should get some later. Then because the mother is Opaline & the father split, the Opaline chick has the chance of being of either sex, but Kaz is guessing all are females. I wont make any guesses, but any males will be split for Opaline & also Texas Clear Body.