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Your birds are real little cuties, yep I like the one that looks a halfsider too.

Yes Norm has got very expensive, but lest hope with this rain that it might come down after the next crop. I buy the 25kg bag Of Golden Cob Budgie breeders mix, before the drought I was paying 32.00 a bag. The last time I bought it it $56.00 for the same thing and that was 3 months ago, so it could be any price now. I will need to buy some more soon. I bought 3 bags then plus a bag of canary seed which was a really good price. But the canary seed came from a different place I bought a 20kg bag at a $1.80 kg which is the price before the drought and he had to order it for me so it was good stuff. I always add a bit more canary seed for my breeding birds. Anyway lets hope the drought will break soon. Cheers Julie

Hi Dave, Last year I had a hen that laid every three days on her first round then the second round was normal every other day. But I have had hens lay like you said every other then a 4 day difference, don't know why either but they all hatched.Yes I do have some hens that when they lay some eggs are bigger than other and they all seem to hatch. But at the moment I have this one hen who is a bit on the buff side and all her eggs are huge but this year she had one egg really an odd shape so I took note of it for my records but the egg was no good any way because it had a little hole in it. I think she knew it was a bad egg and what ever and put a hole in it. It looked like it got stuck half way coming out of her, that's how badly it was distorted. Any way I hope this helps, Yes she could also lay more eggs yet. Cheers Julie

I have been giving my birds soft food in the morning which is Daz's Recipe and it is really good the birds just guts it down in know time at all. I never have much left to give the birds in the flight. The Recipe is 1/4 cup hulled oats 1/4 " wheat Both soaked over night in water with aviclean ( Vetafarm) then strained and rinsed well in the morning 3 tablespoons of budgie starter (Passwell) 11/2 tablespoons of budgie crumble " Fairly level spoon not heaped for both 1 crated carrot. This recipe is enough to feed 14 breeding cages. Add 1 egg & shell vitamized twice a week. and at night I am trying the recipe from AAE Budgie posted in the food part. Called AWESOME SOFT FOOD. well i love the recipe it is easy and cheap and you can buy everything from the supermarket except for the egg and biscuit. Any way point is the birds are eating the first recipe because they are use to it but the second one they are hardly touching it but if I keep offering it to them they will take to it, you need to be patient and not t worry if they waste it or not. I do not give my birds honey at all.

I Have a young first time down she is 15 months old, she laid 6 eggs and her partner died a couple of weeks ago, so the poor little thing is left to raise the young, well the oldest is nearly 2 weeks old down to 3 days old. She is doing a good concidering. The oldest 2 are in their full grandparents nest that left her with 4. but she is feeding the remaining oldest 3 perfectly but not the youngest and I have know where else to put it so I went and purchased a crop needle and baby hand rearing food and looked on the faqs or forum and couldn't finmd anything about how to do. So I went googling found some info but I wanted pictures, i found a couple really good sites and I did what they said and show Hey Presto everything looks good with bubie now, it is still under it' mother, but I am feeding it 3 times a day. I have spoon fed before but they have been at least a week old and Greg made me a spoon to use it resembles the mothers beek. I believe you can pay a fair bit for them when mine is a teaspoon from the kitchen altered so I can feed them. If you like I can take a photo of it tomorrow and add it this. Because it is pretty handy and cost nothing but a bit of elbow grease. I found some info on the net you might find it interesting. BUT I can not work ouit how to put the links here. One was in Bird Health and the other which had good pictures was a finch one. I will try the links http://www.birdhealth.com.au/bird/er/erformula.html http://www.vetafarm.com.au/show_product.as...tem_number=0176 I don't know if these will work but there was a better site with heaps of pictues but I can't find it. Gee I'm always loosing things. COOL IT WORKED, I will see if I can find the better link tomorrow.

I use 5ml of cod liver oil to my breeding birds because like feathers said it is a Vit D plus A few breeders have told me that while using cod liver oil you will rarely get a bird egg bound. The egg bound thing is my main reason for using it. When my son had his horse while living in Bendigo I would also give the horse cod liver oil for the Vitamins plus I think it helped his coat nice and shiny the horse always looked very healthy as do my birds.

Hi Neat I have had eggs ice cold and they still hatched took a bit longer than normal but it was still good. If the hen keeps kicking them out just keep putting them back unless they're broken or chipped. Have you got another hen that can sit on those eggs. Or what I do when I get a hen like that, If she kicks or destroys all her eggs, I close the nest box off for a few days to make sure she mates and not just sits in the nest box all day, then I open it again to let her have access to it and if she keeps kicking them out or destroying them, I will put the eggs under a foster mum. But the last year I had this Albino that I really wanted young out of, well she laid 5 eggs and just before they were due to hatch she destroyed the whole nest, the eggs were fertile too. i don't know why she did. I put her back in the flight for a month or so and then let her lay again but put the eggs under foster parents and got 5 little babies. Anyway after that she went down again and layed 6 eggs and raised them by herself, so the moral to my story is that I think she was ready to go down the fisrt time. Sopmaybe your hen is not ready yet and that is why she is chucking her eggs out. Room for thought.

I made this recipe for my birds today and am going to give it to them tonight for their night feed, I made up half of the volume with a couple of changes, I used 1 egg instead of 3 but next time I will do 2 because they had egg in their breakfast this morning plus my partner won't let me give them too much egg as he reckons it's is not good for their liver or what ever ( I wish I new the truth as most people give them egg). and I used marie biscuit made fine in the food processor mainly because I do not have any egg & biscuit and I live in a small town and I can't buy any till I go to Shepparton. That's the problem about living in a small town I am using Daz's soft food recipe which is great but I have to keep my supplies up and I was giving my birds what Daz gives his at night which was mung bean & snow bean sprouts and the birds loved them but I can not buy here or Kyabram it has to be a big supermarket for them to stock it. I drove to Kyabram on Monday which is 38 km from here and they have a big Safeway supermarket and they do not stock them because they reckon the store is not big enough. Anyway my point is that your recipe you can by the ingredients almost any where and really quite cheap so thanks very much for posting it. I will let you know if they like it but I am very sure they will.

Great recipe there, is the oats rolled oats like we make porridge :excl:

He is fine, flying around the flight like he owns it. Thanks Elly for your concern, he is such a lovely bird. I got such a shock when I seen like that the other day, I guess I frieked out if I had I stayed carm I would of worked out what had happen but I was so sure he was attacked because they were fighting (doing the pecking order) the day before because I put 2 birdss from the breeding room back in the flight.

Daz was right it was a blood feather being my best favorite bird and I do not like the sight of blood I panicked. He is good as gold now happily flying around the flight, but his head is still a little stained from the blood. My first thoughts were that he was attacked as they are all ready for breeding but I don't want to put him down for a couple of months yet but as I said they are all very cocky and getting very aggressive towards each other . ***** little devils. :devil:

(Laughing out loud) I ended up with 9 babies that started off with "lack of a nesting box"! My hen wanted to lay in the cushions of my sofa...and we know THAT would not have been a good idea at all! Just to say it is possible but not probable. Are your birds indoors in a cage or outdoors in an aviary? **lovely picture splat!** Turned out good ha, I just cropped one of my yellow face hen photos that I put in the members yellow face birds. But it is quite good (Laughing out loud) proud of myself, ha! ha!

Hi this hen is ready for breeding, I agree with rainbow, your hen looks like breeding condition not scaly face. I hope this helps

Well, the light being above their heads doesnt matter as much and they do sleep in there so thats okay. It doesnt matter what design it is as long as it works I agree with you Kas and I think your cage is a better design than mine as it has more space and I wish I had the wire on the front of mine for more options.

Kas your dad's hospital cage is great I might try to make one like that next but the only thing that worries me is that the birds are in constant bright light 24 hours a day, that is why I went for the design I made because the light was hidden under the floor. But if I was going to make my design again I would make it deeper depth and put a wire front on it plus the glass.

He looks like he will be okay. I took him out of the hopital cage and put him in a old show cage untill his feathers dried, he is now in the flight and looks fine. Was worried.

He still has pin feathers. I did clean him up a bit with antiseptic and warm water but wasn't game enough go to far but I just did it again and you could be right Daz, there is a small hole under all the blood but it looks the size of a small grain seed. Once his head dries I will put him back in the flight. When I was looking for the culprit the only blood I found was on the side where the perches are so his head could of been itchy and he has rubbed it and one of the blood feathers came out. :excl:

I am so devastated, my best cock bird that i have bred so far has been injured, he was fine an hour ago, It looks like another bird attacked him but no one has blood on them, I have put him in the hospital cage for a bit of warmth and watch him closely. He took out first, this year for young bird in his spangle class plus his mother died while sitting on the eggs. Yesterday his full brother had a bad eye, i found a seed in it and it was very swollen and ***** and closed over but it is a little better today. These 2 birds are the ones on my signature. I relly hope he makes it.

These are some of my Yellow Face birds as you see mine are nearly all grey birds, this year so far I have got my first skyblue baby. Grey Yellow face Opaline Hen Grey Yellow Face Hen Grey Face Hen On the Buff side Grey Yellow Cock, the 2 above are from the same nest Sky Blue baby 5 1/2 weeks old, The yellow isn't showing up in the photo. This one is a full sibling to the 3 above.

Very nice birds Norm and really good price for them.

Hi Daz last night Greg and I had a good chat and we are going to put the spangle cock with the spangle hen and then with the cobalt hen. The cobalt which in the photo looks sky blue but her colour is really a cobalt violet colour but Ian the breeder said she was cobalt. Thanks I really appreciate your advice. The result should be good as I have a couple pair down at the moment and they are spangle to spangle, the markings are good on some of them but some are washed out so next pairing will be spangle to normal. Good luck. is are RW Ron Wilson or Ray Wilson and is KP Ken Pullen, These rings are IF1

Yes I am putting him with a normal because I have done reserch and spangle to normal is how you get better markings and spangle to normal out of a spangle is even better. When you put spangle to spangle you start to loose the markings but you will get double factor but if you do spangle to spangle the next generatio you should put the spangle back to normal to improve. I hope that sounds right. Yes Kas he is totaly WOW gorgous, when Greg bought him home and I saw him for the first time my mouth dropped open and my tougue nearly hit the floor I was so amazed.

Yes Daz I know the temp should be higher, about 30 degc 32 degc but everyone on here were saying that I would cook the birds so I thought I would try 25 deg which should be good for a bird no so sick but with the 40deg sits around the right temp and is what I will use if I have a real sick bird. I got the instructions off the net, if you look at my first topic Hospital cage made all by myself I think Elly posted the site there somewhere. good luck if you make one let me know how you go. I think this is the link Building a Hospital Cage but it doesn't work but have a look where Elly posted it because that one works. Yes Feathers I was going to copy yours but I thought the birds might want to sit at the back and a lot of heat comes from the opening, but the good thing is that I can make a couple of different floors and change them around as I feel when needed. So I might make a floor like yours and have it as a spare.

Yes Feathers tthat is what the breeder said, so I am realy excited now that I have some realy good quality birds to breed with mine. Actually most of my birds are from the one breeder.

Thanks Shawna, Yes I have only been to 2 shows as there are not many in my area, i can't for some shows now because I have improved on my birds heaps and I hope to do well at the showing. :budgiedance: