Norm

Nice birds Aly, I’m going to say that that third bird looks like a Grey Green to me & is it an Opaline? It’s cheek patches look Bluish Grey & tail Black not Blue, to me. Shame on you stealing birds, or was it a bird Rescue? I bet you just opened the door for that DF Spangle & let it out, I wouldn’t be game to put my hand in there…(Laughing out loud).

Just watch the young bird Dave, sometimes I have removed them quite early & I have had no trouble, but usually I put them in with other birds, seeing them eat may help them. They often look very quite, but soon start to eat, very slowly at first, but usually in a few days they are eating well. Just watch the others, they may get attacked also, after they leave the nest, I had one cock that was like that. If you don’t want to breed this pair again straight away, you could remove the cock & leave the hen to finish the job. I did that with the pair that the cock was attacking the young, after they left the nest, I put them in an aviary with him, but he made no attempt to feed them, but they went okay. Sometimes when the hen has laid eggs again, I have removed the young straight from the nest, without ever seeing them outside the nest & put them in an aviary with other birds & they went well, but each case is different. Some young I have separated couldn’t fly for more than one week after, so if your chick is flying I think it will be mature enough, as I feel that maturity is the important thing, once they reach a certain age, instinct tell them to eat.

I agree with Nerwen, if the Lacewing was a Yellow Lacewing.

Some of those lighter coloured babies might be Spangles, isn’t Pistachio, some kind of YellowFaced2 Blue Opaline, Spangle & maybe Clearwing & Cinnamon. Welcome Allison & those chicks look nice & healthy.

Just an update on my problem. Things went pretty well, last week the oldest chick fell out of the nest, so I placed the two remaining chicks on the floor & removed the hen, who was better, but not cured [she’s no longer with us] the chicks weren’t being fed that good & were pretty hungry. Well once again I wasn’t that lucky, as instead of feeding the chicks as I hoped, the cock just went crazy over the loss of his hen & continually flew from one end of the aviary to the other calling out. I was worried as the chicks looked hungry & the weather was cold, but all was not lost, Budgie as sometimes [or mostly] are very tough. Maybe the cock fed them some times, it’s hard to know, but they started feeding themselves & improved in health so much in a couple of days. They are doing well now & up on the perches, only one of the chicks looks like from the show type birds, the other must be the parents own chick, the show type looks great, really buffy looking head, real show material, but you show guys don’t need to panic, as of course I didn’t have any rings & it’s unrung. ..(Laughing out loud)…I am still feeding psittavet in the water, but no other birds came down with it, so all look good, I don’t think all birds are so susceptible to Psittacosis as we often think, anyway fingers crossed.

Thanks Tal, for letting us know how it turned out, it's good for others to know also.

Don’t worry so much Michelle, Budgie have been bred for so long now by people, that the ones that would desert their nests are long gone. Some hens wont leave the nest after you tap the nest, they are all different, I like the ones that leave the nest as it’s less hassle, but some just wont, it’s just their different natures. Don’t worry about them seeing you handle the chicks it won’t worry them so much. If you take the nest down from the cage, after getting the hen to leave the nest, just block the hole so they wont go through it. Then play or train your chicks & replace the nest, they will go back in as if nothing has happened.

Michelle, some Budgies, I think especially hens, when they are in real good condition & feeling great they will stand on the perch with their wings out & sort of shaking & fly from perch to perch, it’s because they are so happy & full of life. Usually they wont do it when they are in the middle of breeding with chicks, but maybe that’s what’s happening with your hen.

Kaz, you wouldn’t see it in the movies, as I have seen what you say many times & it would be “TWO HOT” & it would get banned …(Laughing out loud)… When I was young & had Budgies I used to keep the sexes separated, that was the current idea. Well when I put them together within seconds they would be mated, soon after, the nest would be inspected & in 10 days eggs in the nest. The other day I had an experience like that…with a difference…not much fidelity among some Budgies at least. I had this Fallow male with a Violet Opaline hen…I had given them all the chances in the book, as I wanted some split Fallows & was desperate to breed some violets, something I haven’t achieved as yet. Well this pair had been madly in love for months, she laid eggs in the aviary, so I put them in a cabinet, apparently she didn’t like the nest, so laid eggs on the floor, but wouldn’t go in the nest. So after some weeks I put them in another cabinet, she went in the nest for weeks, never another egg. Well back in the aviary they went still madly in love together. Then some weeks ago I put them back in another cabinet, she went straight into the nest & stayed there, but weeks passed still no eggs, so at last my patience was finished. I caught her & returned her to the aviary & picked out a nice young Light Green Normal for him. Well what you described happens straight away, as if he had been kept in isolation for months. No sign of any regrets of loosing his long lost mate…maybe he was like me fed up with her.

You could get one of those plastic sprayers & with luke warm water give the nest a puff now & then & if you had some material in the boxes like I said in the other post that would retain moisture better. I can see the dent in that egg also. maybe a dab of nail polish on the break would work, but wait till it's dry before putting back, just a small dab & it dries quick so don't think the chemical would do any harm.

Thanks Daz.

Kaz I have an Opaline Spangle that is similar to yours & has the wing markings Green like him, but he has the Green triangle too. I think there’s some variation in lots of colours [not like the norm] like Green marking when usually they are black & maybe no triangle of green when there should be…it soon will be solved anyway, if he is Opaline he will get Opaline daughters. Some of those new Opaline show type birds I bought the other week have lots of Black marking in the triangle area, which is a fault, whereas some of my others have very little markings there. Did You breed Luigi yourself Kaz? You know he is split Blue do you know anything else?

No if that's true about the parents, I don't think it could be Grey, as like Elly says I don't think it can be masked. Dave the Dark Normal baby can’t have Grey from its Dad as if it had the Grey gene it would be a Grey Green, which it isn’t. The Grey must be coming from Mum the Albion, as all you can tell about an Albion is that it’s a Blue series birds [not Green] & Grey is in the Blue series, the only way you could tell for sure was to later mate it with a White faced Blue, then the Grey would show up, as long as the mate wasn’t Grey of course. If the young are Mauve as some have suggested, that could come from both Mum & Dad as Dad must even though you don’t think so from looking, be genetically a Yellow Faced bird, [blue] as to me all the young look like YF. I looked at my Grey birds & Grey Green [at least ones I think are Grey ...(Laughing out loud)] after all this & they have Grey cheek patches, but the grey is a Bluey sort of Grey. We can only wait till they moult out later & that might help or someone else that’s good on genetics comes along & gives their opinion. You don’t want to take any further batches from them at the moment do you? If that’s the case you will have to take the eggs away.

Yes some male young could be split for both Cinnamon & Opaline, but apart from breeding them it will be impossible to tell which ones. All your chicks are blue so that has come from both parents, the hen can only be masking some recessive traits, but we haven’t seen any evidence of that this batch & if she has any, the cock will have to have the same mutations otherwise it wont come out, but some chicks will carry any traits that are recessive, that either could have. Yes all chicks will be split for Fallow.

Like Elly says, the Opaline & Cinnamon probably both came from the father being split for Opaline & Cinnamon, they are both sex linked mutations. The father is the only one that can be split for sex linked mutations. If this is true they will both be females. Like I said I’m not totally sure the colour of your fallow, but I think she probably isn’t Cinnamon, so she would have no effect on the cinnamon chicks colour. I think different colours of the down, [fluff] depends on the colour of the mutation, mostly the lighter down, being lighter coloured birds. There could be different colour downs for each mutation, but I haven’t looked into it that much.

Kaz are you sure that Luigi is an Opaline Spangle? He doesn’t seem to have the green triangle between the shoulders, I know he has green in the wings.

I thought at first that all the feathers looked strange, but then I realised that you put Vaseline on them, which makes it hard, as maybe that’s all that’s making the body feathers look like something is wrong with them. I had some FM young & with them the feathers just fell out from the roots & some of the feathers were distorted & discoloured [not normal] they didn’t have retained sheath like yours. They look similar to a problem I had with pigeons, which I thought was something similar to FM, but that was only my thoughts, not any scientific opinion. In them the feather sheaths remained on the feathers & also there was blood still in the pins & later the feathers snapped off, but the root end stayed in the wings, unlike FM where they drop out completely. I haven’t had a lot of experience with buff, but some of the buff type birds that I have bred, look to me like the feather quality isn’t the same as on other birds. Maybe it could be related to this & may just delay the shedding of the sheath, I think it’s best to wash the oil off & give us some new picture, but maybe you will just have to wait for further developments.

Yeah Great Aly, in two weeks you wont know them.

Thanks for those facts Elly, I didn’t think down to such details like the colour of the cheek patches, we are all learning here [i hope]…After that I checked with the WBO colour standards & in fact Grey Green & Grey do have Grey cheek patches & black tails. And Mauves have Blue cheek patches & dark Blue tails. I copied Kaz’s adult bird & zoomed into it & it’s hard to say, but it’s cheek patches do look Grey more than Blue, but her baby picture of the same bird, looks sort of bluey grey, so hard to be sure. They were the only pictures showing the cheek patches clear enough to check. Look at your birds Dave & Kaz & see if the patches are blue or grey that seems to be the defining clue.

I think your right about the Opaline Cinnamon Sky Blue; in fact both Cinnamons will be hens. I think the youngest is also Cinnamon. The only complicating thing is Sebby, being a Fallow. I just read back through some of the previous stuff we have said about her, as I said before I have a cock Fallow, that looks exactly the same colour as her & as I’m not familiar with the dilution effect on colours with Fallows, I have never been sure if he was a Mauve or Cobalt. Also I think the browning of the wing markings is just because your bird & mine are both normals. But what I’m not sure of is, if they were Cinnamon Fallows, what would the wings look like. So that’s what I’m saying, if both our birds were Cinnamon Fallows, your young chicks could be both sexes, but I’m pretty sure she is just a Normal Fallow.

My understanding is that you have a higher chance of Feather Dusters, if you pair Buff birds together, if I had a bird that had produced one, I would pair it with a bird that didn’t seem to have so much feather [length] & I think Non Buffs have more intense colours. Also I would make sure that the birds were as unrelated as possible.

Real good pictures Bea & they all look so nice & healthy.

Don’t worry too much yet, I have a pair that’s been mating for weeks, but still no eggs & the chicks are leaving the nest, so just because they are mating doesn’t mean eggs will come for awhile. That said it’s often very hard to stop the next batch of eggs, as often hens will start to lay before the chicks have left. If she lays too soon, the chicks will probably dirty & knock the eggs around anyway & be damaged. But if you don’t want to breed again, you will just have to remove the eggs.

there was a link to photobucket, but now it's gone...pretty hard for us to help you with this sort of question without a picture.

Nash86...I'm sorry your picture doesn't seem to be working...hard to say anything without it.