Norm

What a shame I was hoping it was daytime. I have 3 boys at Judo on Tuesday nights from 7.00-8.30pm.Hi,I couldn't help but to notice that you mentioned a breeding club meeting in Geelong. I am looking to get my aviary up and running by january '08 {have just put the concrete slab down}, I live on the Bellarine Peninsula, so Geelong would be a suitable meeting spot. I am interested in purchasing quality birds for my breeding program {blues, yellows, whites, no plain greens} and also finding out how to breed so that I don't end up with a cage full of green birds. For example, someone once told me that a pied male bred with an Albino female, both non-green birds, will ensure that the gene pool doesn't regress back to green, is this correct? Also, please let me know about meeting times in the Geelong area.-Kind Regards,Colmo Green is the wild type colour & is Dominant…if you don’t have Green birds it can’t be carried, but Yellow is Green series so if you had Yellows & bred them with Blues you can get Green. I know some pet shops don’t want Green birds, but some Green birds are beautiful…often the natural colour in birds are the most beautiful combination, but humans being what they are seem to want what’s not natural.

Nice birds Bea & great photos, wish my camera took such clear shots. Bee’s spots are the best Spangle “Bull’s eye” spots that I have seen. I’m going to try to Breed a Grey Spangle soon, [Genie] as I don’t have one yet.

Budgies are a walk in the park…compared with Canaries Paul. I think the problem is that over time breeders have fostered & hand reared so many that the problem is that you get parents that just sit there & let them starve. Often they are so much work & still you have failure, Budgies are much more rewarding. I hope breeders don't make the same mistake with them. My thoughts are its better to loose a few young than raise birds that are not capable of raising their own young. It may be sad for the few birds, but a whole lot better for the fancy. I agree with you Missy, not only do their birds eat better than mine, they eat better than me even…Nice pics Kaz, you have some Red Factor Canaries also do you?

It could be her first batch apart from the first infertile batch, as she is an 06 rung bird. My other bird from that sale, who I said was getting close to hatching, I found on the floor with something wrong with her leg, so I have removed her eggs to two other nests. This bird is 5 years old so I am loosing hope of getting young from her. In this batch one egg is very large, I have another bird I suspect that is old also that laid one like that too, I think they may be getting close to their last eggs when things like that start to happen [either larger or smaller than usual eggs].

Yes I realise that's what you would have to do Kaz & if the bird is superior to the others it can still win.

Come on...what's the big secret...?

If the Parents & Grandparents are Blue birds & haven’t shown any YF’s then he mustn’t be YF, but if any Parents or Grandparents are Green birds, as Sailorwolf says, it could be masked for generations. I used to have birds like this when I was young & thought it was just a normal variation, but since YF’s have become so common, I have just put it down to Green birds carrying it.

Welcome to the forum, sound like your doing well, also sounds like he is pretty young so you shouldn’t have much trouble in training him. If he’s by himself he will look out for your company. I’m saying him, because he looks like a he to me, but we can always be wrong at that early stage.

Still having problems with my new "improved" show type birds. The birds I bought at the bird sale in June. All three hens paired with birds from the same stud had clear eggs on their first round. So I have paired up the three hens with other cocks & let all but one of the cocks fly in the aviary for a while. The other cock is paired up with one of my hens, but two other hens, her sisters paired up at the same time, have eggs & one already has chicks hatching. Do hens know if cocks are duds? She is on her first batch, but she had laid an egg in the aviary, so was more advanced than the others, but I haven't even seen her go into the nest, even though she is paired up with him. The first of the three hens hatched her first chick a couple of days ago, straight away I thought something is wrong with that chick it looked so small, within a few hours it was dead. I had decided to remove the next chick that hatched to another bird that is hatching & feeding well, just in case it was that the hen didn't feed. Yesterday I saw one egg piping & I checked it this morning, it hadn't hatched & is dead in shell. Not going well, other chicks are hatching without trouble so don't think its humidity. She has more eggs to hatch, but getting worried & the second one has eggs that will hatch soon, the third hen even though she had eggs before isn't going down with the new cock.

I agree with Macka, at 6 weeks they should be able to feed themselves, if the parents are attacking them, the first thing is to remove them to another cage & if they look stressed keeping them warm would help. At that age most of my chicks would already be in the aviary with other young birds, they are often quite for a few days, but soon feed slowly, but if they are begging their parents to feed & they wont that is only wasted energy. I find that if with other birds that wont feed them, but let them see others feeding they will soon follow.

Like others say he looks like an Opaline…Opalines loose their bars on their heads, but are you meaning that he has a clear Pied marking on his head that we can’t see? If he had a clear Yellow patch on his head he could also be a Dominant Pied.

I read where show people say you shouldn’t breed Cinnamon into Spangles, as I don’t think they have a class for Cinnamon Spangles. But I have just got my first Cinnamon Spangles & one has nice dark Cinnamon markings & the other has only a couple of Cinnamon feathers & the rest of the wing is clear. I was going to breed Cinnamon into some of my Spangles to see what it looked like, but it happened by surprise. I mated a nice Grey Green Cock split for Cinnamon to Lutino hen, bred from a Spangle Cock & Opaline hen. I wanted to get some better Normal split Lutino Cocks to mate with some smaller Lutino hens I had, well the surprise I got was the Lutino must be masking Spangle. I thought I would get some Split Lutino cocks, some normal hens & Cinnamon hens, but got so far one Normal Grey Green cock/Lutino, one Cinnamon Blue hen & two Cinnamon Spangles Green hens. I never thought she would be masking Spangle, but from her breeding I should have suspected.

It depends on what you want to do Dragonfly-Sky, if you just want to breed normal Oplaines, he would be a good cock, as he doesn’t have the same “fault” as her, the dark markings on her head. So you would have a better chance of loosing the dark marks on the head, but if you want to breed a bird with more or darker markings a birds with darker markings if you could find one would be better.

Like Elly says…Pure abuse & even forced to take drugs, what some poor Budgies have to put up with…it would need more than a sprig of Millet to get you back in my good books, if I was Kazumi.

Nice birds girls…happy little shoppers…I'm glad you got a split BES Aly, I hope to get some BES's this Sunday, from a breeder, he told me they are a little small but good colour, so I'm hoping I will be in the BES business soon too. It amuses me Kaz the way you keep pumping out those names, do all 180 + birds have names…they must have little stickers on their foreheads…(Laughing out loud)…my birds are sad, not one of them has a name.

I agree with Nerwen, if they were completely pure birds, but if the cocks are split for sex linked mutations you could get some Opalines, Cinnamons or Inos hens. If the Normal Grey is split for Opaline…Opalines of both sexes. And any Recessive characters they could be carrying.

The bird: In my opinion Pie, if you mated that Pied bird to a Blue series bird it would Produce Yellow Faces.

Macka right, there’s not much point in breeding anything unless in my opinion you are breeding to improve whether it’s show points or a healthier bird.

It varies with French moulters, I’m not sure if it depends on how early they get the virus or their immune system. Some never grow back their feathers others grow them back in a few weeks, other keep growing them only to have them fall out again. Looking at your latest pictures, I think you are going to be lucky, it looks like he has already grown most of his feathers back & they look pretty strong looking to me, better not trust him too much as he may start flying one day. He looks quite young, at the most I would think he’s been out of the nest one month.

Unless you wanted something new...a Black headed Budgie...

A RED FACED BUDGIE that should have made her more expensive, not cheaper...(Laughing out loud)...can't wait to see the pics...I can't complain but, I bought a couple of new birds some weeks ago, one had scaley mite, a Lutino hen & a quite old but nice Grey Green cock that's quite old but is so active, but still you haven't seen any pics.

Good idea. It might be a good idea to cover in two of the sides completely & face them to the worse weather side.

That's true...she may be Cinnamon, but if you know for sure that the cock she's mated to has no Cinnamon in him, she can't produce a Cinnamon chick.

If your hen Opaline Spangle Greygreen produced a Cinnamon son, she must be Genetically Cinnamon…a hen can only Produce Cinnamon sons if she is in fact Cinnamon & mated to a Cinnamon or split Cinnamon cock. I think the Spangle must be masking her Cinnamon status. If she is Opaline & Spangle the Cinnamon lines in the wing could be very fine & maybe missed. Her DF Spangle father must have been at least split for Cinnamon.

Just to confirm, from my monitor Bunny looks like a Yellow Face 1 Opaline Cinnamon Grey…Nice bird. Welcome to the forum.