splat

Good luck with it Dave, I am the same here, have 2 hens that should of laid ages ago and just wasting my top cocks, so I am doing the same as you.

There are some really nice birds there GB, I really like most of them. I don't have many 2012 because I kept ringing with the 2011 rings until about the 1st week in September and now I am kicking my self because some of the ones which should of had the 2012 are really good like that sky. I think my plan was to have something to show next year. oh well. back to your birds yes I am very impressed with them. love that yellow face.

Sorry to about your bad season, I feel for you and know how you feel. What does this mean....( not a patch on Splats babies..... The chicks look good Kaz even though you only have a few. Hopefully next season once you get your new birdroom built and up and running things should improve. I really don't know what it is but I have heard of a lot of breeders having a bad time.

Yes Dave pluck there bums , cocks more so than hens, makes a difference. do the side feathers too. Normally a hen won't raise one chick good enough, they seem to do better with around 3 for some reason so you were lucky Dave.

Dave a lost a lot of chicks with a stiff backs and out stretched legs, and I was chatting to Gb and she was saying she had they same problem and and when she said that they were gasping for air, I thought boy a couple of mine looked like they were doing that but I thought they were just twirping or what ever. Anyway GB said she treated her whole breeding stock on 3 days of turbosole. So I looked up in Rob Marshall's medicine book and yes for sure the stiff back and out stretched leg is a sign of canker so I treated the birds like GB and every thing has being good since, I treated all nest because I had transferred chicks everywhere. After the breeding has finished I will do the whole flock with Doxy and turbosole. because I never want to go through this again. Update.......5 healthy little chicks now.

Thanks Renee, I would be lost without my sink now, I use it all the time. I have use the steel wool before and the little so and so's pulled it out. But I will give it another go, when I used it last time it was in gaps where the steel meets the cement. Maybe it is harder for them to pull it out on the roof. But that is where they are getting because the neigbours land has a rotten tree that is right next to my birdroom and the mice run up that and on the roof, well that is what I think anyway. The problem is mainly that the whole length of the ole bird room is built up against Gregs garage and nothing is attached to the Garage itself and I am not allowed to put one nail hole in his precious garage. Anyway the whole structure has moved and now there is at least and inch or more gap. The sparrows even get in that way and get out that way again unbelievable. Today when patching a few bits and pieces looking around I just can't believe how dodgy the whole thing is, gaps and wholes everywhere. I am going to replace the the wire on the baby aviary with mouse proof wire and the new ones will be mouse proof wire too. I am also pulling down a bit of the wall where the dodgie door is and fix all that.

Oh that is so sad.

I thought I would up date what I am up to with my birdroom Kitchen etc. At this stage I can't do much more to the new birdroom but the veranda But I have decided to try and mouse proof my old birdroom and baby aviary. I am keen to put my babies in there but I really want to make sure I can stop the mice from getting in. Not get any mice lately anyway but just incase. Today I patched a few bits and pieces but the main problem is the roof. there is at least a half inch gap that i have to try and fill. I have decided to make the old birdroom which is 6ft wide and 11 ft long into 2 aviaries for my show teams plus a little area for muck around breeding with troubled birds or for separating new birds when needed. My plan is to make 2 4ft wide 6 ft long aviaries. So that will give me 3 aviaries out there which will be classed as indoor aviaries. after the aviaries I will have 3 feet left to put some breeding or holding cages, something like a bank of 6 cages, (3 rows of double cages). Anyway I will update as I progress.

I thought I would give an update to where I am Things have been going much better of late, after talking to Gb and she was talking about loosing chicks too and then I checked in the Rob Marshall book. I does the breeding birds on 3 days of turbosole. I have been complaining about the chicks with stiff backs and out stretched leg which is a sign of giardia which is a form of canker and does happen to break out in the breeding room. The last 2 chicks that died on the same day were about 10 days old with full crops and looked healthy as but just dead this was before I dosed them. Happy to say I have not lost a chick since. I have 3 news chicks in 2 different nest at the moment and they look healthy as. To date I have about 40 live chicks that have survived my ordeal. But in these 40 chick there are some really nice birds, so I am very happy with the results. In my pied nest I have 3 violet pieds and 1 sky violet pied which I am very happy with considering dad is a sky violet opaline spangle and and mum a violet green pied. Not one chick turned out spangle pied. this is a pied with foster chicks in the nest i got a couple of nice chicks from the violet cocks nest, violets nest with other chicks in there too Heaps of nice dark green chicks from the violet greens nest. I have pieds in 4 different nest

Very nice Matt

Thank you Kocky. I think about 35-40 if that. Need to have another count but a few have died again. But nothing has died for 2 weeks now, since I treated them for 3 days with turbosole. so fingers crossed. I have 3 new little chicks to add to though. And they are going great.

That is one ugly little bug.

The chicks were almost 6 weeks so i took them out yesterday and it's amazing his keel bone I could hardly feel today. He must of still being feeding those lazy chicks. Anyway looks like he will be okay thank god.

Things seem to be going much better , haven't lost chick for a few weeks now, and i have 2 new chicks and all is well. I am a bit worried though my shield winner the violet cock has lost a bit of weight, probably from feeding , he still has body weight but I caught him today and his keel was quite sharp, he is normally a solid bird. I can't loose him because he is my main bird on the normal side. Oh he doesn't look sick or anything just the keel bone is a bit sharp. Scared.

Thanks Dan I think it is a cock the other day I thought hen but today the cere looked more cock. Anyway I think he will be a stunner, but going by the bars he might be flecked, I hope not. He has nice rise. he is only around 5 weeks no older. He is a cross of both my lines. I have 2 more coming on that I think will be the same. I put 2 sister from the violet line to 2 brothers from the spangle line and this is what I got. I only saved the one chick which was disappointing. And I save 2 chicks from the other pair. So after all these years it looks like things are improving , well I hope anyway.

Hello and Welcome to the Forum, you little birds are lovely.

Hi all, a couple more baby photos cobalt , actually I think sky violet dom pied because the other 4 chicks are violet pieds. cobalt opaline spangle slumped over perch sky just 41/2 weeks white Df spangle slumped over perch I think this is the other one there are 2 they look the same and rats they both have grey suffusion and I use a cinnamon spangle too. Maybe they will moult it out, my yellow hens did a couple of years back. grey slumped over perch again but not 5 weeks yet

That's an excellent point Daryl and in my view spot on. And you know how they say in a nest with say a spangle and say a Dom pied which I have just done and they say 50% chance of spangle and 50% chance of pied and of course some can be spangle pied and some can be normal is this right. Anyhow these percentages are over a few nest not just that one nest. Some new breeders expect to get dom pieds because they have a dom pied down but that does not all ways happen. I find a dom pied cock you get less pieds than if you used a dom pied hen. I have down a spangle cock and a dom pied hen and they had 5 fertile eggs and I got 5 dom pied. No spangle and no normals and no spangle pieds, I was actually happy with the result. I am not good at genetics.

Daz I have to be the exception lol, no truley though I have never tried to bred the best of any variety, from when I first started I have always tried to breed the bird and worry about variety later. I don't even care about colour, just the bird first and everything else falls into place later. I was told when I first got into it to breed the bird first and worry about the variety later and I still get told that. Great advice I think. My birds are going from strength to strength.

Good point Daz and when you breed your own you know 9 times out of 10 that they will breed for you and you know what is behind them too.

Geoff had a hen like that and it was one he paid a lot of money for at auction. He said it was a tumor, cancer his bird did't loose weight ever. I think more a tumor.

Well said Daz..

LOL that works too Phill, by the time you put the cock in the hen was desperate. lol

I don't believe they are all like that, I find the shops around here are very good, they do not over crowd their cages at all and one shop in particular mainly sells show culls. They actually care for the birds welfare, they no the difference between a sick bird etc and will not take a bird that can not fly etc.

There seems to be a lot of old post popping up lately.