Norm

Yes I think you have been lucky, looks like a boy to me, he is an Opaline Sky Blue & he looks quite a good-looking bird at that.

From what you say about her still scraping & making noise in the nest, it doesn’t sound like she has finished her “cleaning the nest stage”...Usually after the first egg is laid, this ceases, but with this being her first batch, maybe she is still trying to clean the nest & accidentally breaks the egg, then proceeds to eat it, to clean things up. I hope she settles down, but like Kaz says, some birds are just failures, in nature they wouldn’t succeed in raising young & die out. I would give her a bit more time & if it fails then rest her & try again later. If it happens again, just forget about breeding with her.

Congratulations Michelle, the first one is always special? I agree they are ugly but cute…something sort of primitive about them, till they get their nice covering of feathers, then they really do look cute. Don’t worry I know you don’t want to be over run by budgies, but budgie parents are usually really good parents & can raise a big batch without much trouble, if they have plenty & varied foods available.

Re coccidiosis, I can’t see how there would be a need to treat birds for that after going to show, as you say some do Feathers. Coccidiosis is a single celled organism, that would have to be picked up from the ground or contaminated food & as birds stay in their own cages at shows, the chance of contamination would be minimal, I would think. But I think it would be a good idea, when buying birds in as you say. Maybe that sick bird I bought could have a problem with it, update on him is that he must have had a problem with air sac mites that was making him wheeze as, as soon as I dosed him with Ivermectin he stopped wheezing. I think they can damage the lungs, so it still may take a few days for him to improve more. Re my new birds, that Cinnamon Green Opaline hen was already in the nest the morning after I gave them the nest. I will start off a separate journal when they start to breed. I was worrying because of their size that my nest entrance hole maybe too small for them, but it was no problem for her & she’s one of the largest. The breeder I bought my birds off seemed a bit casual about disease & problems, as I saw him purchasing a pair of parrots off some guy, so I said to him when you get them home, I would treat them before mixing them with other birds, as some of that guys birds, have really bad scaly mites [on their legs] he just said to me “I’m buying them for a mate, that’s his problem”.

Wooo! Them's some high tech boxes…wouldn’t find any Budgie dislodging one of them, once you anchored them with those bolts & they even have a step down…but would bankrupt me if I bought one for every pair. Plus the birds would be such snobs they probably wouldn’t talk to me again. :excl:

Mine especially seem to like the bark & like others have said, it really gives them some extra interests, as Budgie love to be doing something almost all the time.

I’ve never had coccidiosis with Budgies, only with chickens. My aviaries are completely covered in a bird room & the only water is their drinker. If the aviary got wet at times, maybe it could be trouble. Are there any articles on here on Cocci…I did a search, but it didn’t come up with anything.

Since I bought those new birds last Sunday I have been busy building four new breeding cabinets, to keep them separate from my other birds. I already finished them all yesterday & paired them up & already put in nest boxes. I changed my mind & paired the Grey Opaline cock with the Sky Blue Opaline hen. The Grey Green cock with the Cinnamon Opaline hen. Aly said she like her, I have decided she looks about the best now, that I have had time to see them properly. [she has been looking in the nest today already & the cocks keen. Then I paired up the Light Green Opaline cock to the Cinnamon Opaline Grey hen. The other two cocks are by themselves. The bird that wasn’t well is still in the house, looked bad at some times, but now seems to be improving, with the warmth of the fire, some antibiotics & dosed with Ivermectin. All have had the Ivermectin treatment. Most of them are flying madly around their cages, so all look good. The not well one was trembling & with noisy breathing & very quite, not a word not calling out to other birds, which it can hear. But I’m hopeful as it’s been a week & it looks better than it was. The noisy breathing may be air sac mites, I have had canaries like that, but never had a Budgie bad with them.

Nice birds & they look real healthy, which is important.

Yes sad news, but it happens to everything, including us one day…12 years that a really great achievement…I think there was nothing you could have done, better than what you have. I’m pretty sure at that age, hitting the wall was a part of the problem in the first place, as you said he never did it before. I think he hit the wall because something was wrong. It didn’t help I’m sure, but I don’t think it caused his problems.

Thanks for your input guys, looks like we are all paying high prices. As someone said, since the drought the price has been going up & the quality going down. I have noticed, as things got worse; that the amount of canary seed has gone down, as it’s the most expensive. In the eastern states, I think Golden Cob is the most expensive, I think the quality is high & they also have additives, which the seed I buy doesn’t. At our bird sale last weekend, we had a grower selling seed & it was the same price, I was buying locally at, but it had a lot more canary seed in the mix, I’m thinking of getting in touch with him & talking to other guys in the bird club, to see how much we would have to buy to get him to deliver to our area. It would be good to help the grower & cut out the middleman, who usually is the one that makes the most profit. At least you guys are lucky in the west, as because of the Nullarbor, you’re in a position where you can quarantine & save yourself from getting some of the bugs & pests we have in the east. I know it can make things difficult in one way, but at least in another way, you can be free of some of the problems we have.

Don’t worry Michelle…it’s normal for a laying hen to pull some feathers out of her chest, you will most likely find them in the nest. They do it either to give the eggs more contact with their body heat or to get the nest ready. Shouldn’t be too many days now before your first chicks if all goes well.

Yeah sounds like it..she will probably want to breed soon with all that input...things like mites aren't such a problem as long as you don't let them get out of control. Red mites are spread by equipment mostly, from other breeders, as the red mite isn't mostly on birds when you buy them. They were harder to control before Ivermectin, as you would have to spray the whole place, probably a few times, but Ivermectin lasts long enough to get all the adults & later eggs that hatch. Red mites can come from wild birds building their nests in your roof & things like that.

Something I have meant to ask on this forum for some time. It isn’t only the petrol companies that rip us off. What prices are you guys paying for your seed at this time? I had been buying my seed from one produce merchant, I keep checking at various places over time, as the price slowly increased “because of the Drought”…I had, still stuck with this one place, as I couldn’t find anyone cheaper or getting the same brand as I was. Then a few months ago, the seed company changed the bag size from 40 kilos to 20, as is the new law. When this happened I noticed that everything had a large change in price upward, not only bird seed. Each time I went to buy this seed I was buying, after the bag size changed, it went up something like $5 a week, so I bought as much as I could store & afford before it went up even more. Soon I was paying the same price for 20 kilos that I was paying for 40…it kept rising until the last time I bought it cost me over $49 for a bag. Then lucky for me I asked at a shop that was selling small amounts of seed, I didn’t even think they were buying in larger amounts. I found out they were getting in the same brand seed as the other place & were still selling it for $25, needless to say I wont be going back to the other place.

Lucky you haven’t got red mites, they can be a pest, but with Ivermectin, one drop on a birds skin protects them for about 21 days, so that clears up any blood sucking pest, worms, mites, but probably not feather mites, as they eat the feather not the blood, but it still might work I’m not sure. With that hen you think is being pumped up by the cock feeding…cocks are pretty keen sometimes, as long as you think the bird looks healthy & not sick in any way, as there’s a disease called sour crop, which birds can die of. Their crop gets greatly extended…just be sure it’s not something like that. Red mites problems are mostly in the summer & hotter weather & if you breed when you touch the babies in the nest they will get all over you. At other times they can be very hard to detect as they hide in the day.

If you only have two males, all you can do is pair them with another female either yellow or green would be best. Then you could pair some of the splits from each cock with the splits from the other family. Which would give you the chance of 25% young as Kaz has told you. Or pair one female of the young splits from one cock, back to the other suffuse [dilute] cock giving you a 50% chance. Do you know if your two cocks are related?

Thanks for posting your pictures, your birds look nice, I like Sky [the pied]… the hen in the last picture [right hand side] looks like a “half sider” but is probably only a Yellow faced Blue 2 moulting out.

How true Aly, I started back with Budgies after not having them for years, after I got rid of most of my other birds to go over seas & I’m so happy I did, they make me feel so good watching how happy they are flying in their aviary & the surprises you get from breeding, lots of pleasure & it’s nice now that I have found this site, with a lot of crazy people like myself so that we can share our fun. I read once that if your the only person that believes in something, your considered insane, but if you can get enough people to believe in the same thing, it's a religion & if you get even more people on board, it's a community or society...(Laughing out loud).

Yes I guess your right, it’s about 5 weeks before they leave & another week to make sure they are eating okay. I think I was thinking that the 7 weeks was from the time they left the nest…I don’t have pets, just birds in the aviary, so I don’t watch the iris that close, especially now I’m getting on & the eyes ain’t what they used to be & I don’t have my glasses on all the time. PS. You don't seem to sleep that much Elly...(Laughing out loud)...you seem to be on lots when I am.

Yes he says it’s 7 weeks old, a little bit old I would think to tame, younger would have been better. Maybe the ones with lots of baring mature early. There’s always genetic variation too.

How True Elly, I thought exactly the same thing, that I should tell you...that was a good example.

I’m a beekeeper & have often thought I should add honey to my softfood to encourage them to eat more. I haven’t read anything that recommended honey or didn’t recommend it, so I can’t really say…but I can’t believe that amount of “good Natural honey” could be bad. Better than sugar & my softfood contains sugar in arrowroot biscuits, which is recommended by lots of bird breeders, arrowroot, as it’s gentle on the stomach.

No this bird that got sick was a bird I bred myself. There was no problem with the young from the bought birds, which I transferred the eggs from. I have had no problems from birds I have bought from the pet shops in my town, as I said they are quite good. I have bought more than 30 without problems. In fact one of the birds that I bought from the breeder at last weekends sale is unwell, I wouldn’t have bought it as I didn’t think it looked good, but just took it with the last lot he offered me at discount price, thinking that if it died it wasn’t such a loss. I have it in the house near the fire & it seems to be responding, I think I got the last of his culls for the year & I suspect that they had done the rounds of sales in the last few weeks & had been stressed out, so I’m letting them settle in, even before treating them with Ivermectin, as I think even catching them for that is too stressful. Kaz I agree with your thoughts that it’s a problem with Psittacosis, which I have had problems with before & I think it’s impossible to protect from, as I think the source is from mice that enter the aviary, even after all attempts to stop them fail, not from introduced birds. Even before I went back into Budgies about 2 year ago, I had cases of it, even after breeding birds for 10 years with almost no new birds. The hen that got sick is from the same family, in fact a sister of the bird that had some runners, this family & another are the only two families of birds that I bred last year, that I have lost birds from. This is a problem that I have found once you start up again, using birds from others, soon through culling I hope to remove this problem.

Look good...so their eating it okay now?

Yes, especially the first chic in that second site, but I have even seen more stronger bars than that, they look quite nice birds & look at least better than pet birds, I guess it varies, depending on the families of birds, even some of the more show types, may possess stronger bars than others.