Karthik

Thanks Liv and Elly. I read in some article that salt is NOT good for budgies health and so only we have to clean cuttlebone before feeding to budgies. Any comments on this?

Thanks for responses. Yes any colour doesn't matter for birds, but just myself wanted to better understand this. Good and I never thought in this angle, I do feel agreed with you. :hap:

Thanks Elly for the links. Thanks Norm and really happy to know that you have been to india. Then hope you can understand better than others how the situations are here :hap:. Even it is rare to find some knowledgable breeder here nor many people having budgies as there pets. So only I wanted to make sure that whatever situations I have come across so far in the past or in doubt, just wated to double confirm from all of you members who are well knowledgable in this and if necessary I can take necessary prevention steps now itself than to feel sorry afterwards.

Elly, before I post some thing here as you have said I would always first check by googling.....but the issue is that in google I have come across soooooooooo many varieties of millets and also I never found some thing very closely matching with the one I have posted. So thought of checking with you all and know the exact name of this seed variety. Since in every part of the world it can be called with different names. Also in india this is the major regular base seed served to Budgies.

Could some one help me in identifying the variety of the millet in the below picture. I was thinking it as French white millet, but not sure. Sorry for the poor quality picture .

Here in india we get mostly of natural cuttlebone as it just comes outoff from the cuttle fish (uncleaned and untrimmed) and everyone here feed there birds as it is without any prior cleaning and no one so far had any problems. But recently I read in some article that we have to clean it before giving to birds, but personally not sure on this and so thought to take all of your opinions and advices on this. Please help me with the following questions: 1. Whether this is true and if so how do we clean natural cuttlebones? 2. Is cuttlebone hard back is not good for birds and if so how do we remove it? 3. Also once in few days whether we need to clean the cuttlebones which are placed in the cages, some sort of recycling is needed? 4. I was under impression that full cuttlebone is better to birds compared to cuttlebone powder, since it will help to keep the beak in good shape and prevents overgrowth in addition to calcium supplement. So what is right way to feed birds - full or powedered or both. Thanks

My father regularly mixes very little onion to the veggie feed along with some times ginger and garlic . So far no problems were observed. Even I have noticed ONION in the unsafe food list and I was actually planning to start a new topic on this to get confirmed on this . Anyways hope we will have to wait for other responses .

Already my birds are fed with plane millet (Bajra). I will have to try with broken wheat (Dalia). Actually I was looking for a healthy balanced seed diet for birds which consists of various variety of seeds and at the same time it should be easily available in the local stores. Daz has already given some good seed mix, but the problem is that here local store persons are not aware of few mentioned seed variety with these names. So I am trying to find out the corresponding local names.

In the past I had a situtation that during everyday evening and night, the surrounding area where the birds cage is located used to be fully surrounded with mosquitos and also few of them sitting on the birds. There is no garden/lawn near the cage, but fully covered with cement concrete. I have noticed couple of times birds rubbing its body with its beak, looks to me like some sort of itching caused by mosquito bites. But all my worry was about whether this is some sort of symptom related to some new disease/sickness caused by mosquito bite. It will be very helpful if some one can provide me with as much as information possible on this . Also I have following questions related to this topic: 1) By any chance Budgies get affected by mosquitos in any means, 2) Does Budgies get infected with any of the diseases through mosquitos?, 3) How do we know which birds are affected/infected, 4) How to treat these already affected/infected birds, and 5) All available options to further prevent this from happening in future, one option which already I know is to cover the cage with mosquito net. If any one else know some other better option, please let me know. Thanks for your time and help .

Is there any specific preferred colour for the cage is recommended/best, which influences the birds to get settled faster at the new location/environment or cage colour doesn't have any impact on the birds and only the surrounding of new location is the only key factor. I have noticed birds in the Black colour cage seems to take some time long to get settled/used to the new place compared to light Green colour cage. It will be great if some one can help me to understand with this .

Thanks to everyone

Hi Una, I am new member and joined this forum around a month back....I was going through couple of old posts and at one point of time I was thinking where all of these active old members have gone, since I haven't seen any of your posts recently. Good to see you back here and hope you will not disappear once again Looks like you have a very sweet family with full of pets and I really miss you all. Hope I need to fly down to meet you all :budgiedance: at Australia. Once again welcome back and waiting to see you back active.

Hi and welcome to the forums :budgiedance:

Thanks Deb. Still waiting to see all of your opinions on which type of sunflower seed (black or striped) is better for birds.

Elly this is excellent thread and you believe it or not just very recently I was thinking whether we have a place in BBC forum where we can find the profile of each member . Do we have any plans to pin this thread or it will be good if we can pin this, if we haven't done it yet . ------ Name: Karthik Pets: At the moment 7 budgies Favorite Color: Nothing in specific Astrological Sign: Virgo Age: 29 Weakness: forgetting time when with animals and being idealistic person Strength: Determination, openness and straightforward Favorite Animal: Dogs, budgies and rabbits Live: India How long have been a BBC member: Since Feb 2008

Just out of curiosity wanted to know, how many days old was this double yolk egg when you have taken these candled pictures. Thanks for the wonderful photo showing egg size differences. As far as I read double yolk eggs are very rare, but I am very much surprised seeing your post to know that you already had 7....would you like to share here the secret behind these many double yolk eggs .

Elly I tried but couldn't able to find whatever you were mentioning, can you please help me in finding this :fear. Please Daz it will be very nice of you if you can post clear closeup picture of each of these items, when you can....problem here is that first I need to correctly figure out what is the equivalent local name for these items and so it will be of great help if pictures are available :hap:.

Thanks to everyone replies. Even though both full black and grey/white striped are available here, I just didn't know if there was a difference nutritionally. I heard the following in one of the love bird mailing list: Striped Sunflower Seed - Higher in fat and protein contents Black Sunflower Seed - Higher in oil and lower in fat contents. But personally I am not sure, so only I have initiated this thread in order to make sure before I start giving some thing new to birds and so would like to hear all of your opinions on which one will be better. Deb can we visually differentiate budgies with cysts? If so I would like to see a picture.

Good to hear and I will also have to try with new variety of veggies. I will do one for you Dave I would also like to see some pictures of this Kaz, when you time.

Recently I have read about twins and I couldn't able to believe this with budgies, thought of opening a new thread. Really it is very nice to see the picture of double yolk candled egg, though I couldn't able to make out two yolks as some members. Good luck and soon hope to see the pictures of these beautiful twins. I would love to see the closeup picture of single and double yolk eggs placed side by side for comparing the sizes of the both.

Can we give sunflower seeds to our budgies? If so by any chance do we have to limit the quantity per day to each bird or can we mix it in our regular base seed mix and feed. I have seen sunflower seeds of type - full black colour or full brown colour or black/grey striped or brown striped. Not sure what is the difference between them and it will be great if anyone can tell me the same. Also which one is better for feeding birds? Thanks, Karthik

Hi All, Here in my place most of them give only millet seed as the base seed diet along with some veggies. After going through few forum posts here, I feel that a good base seed diet should contain a variety of seeds/cereals mix. So I would like to know how I can make my own regular great healthy seed mix for my birds. Could anyone please share here, what all are the variety of seeds/cereals which can be mixed together to make a healthy regular seed diet and also on what proportions we need to mix. Also along with close clear picture of each seed/cereal used would be most beneficial especially for the members from different regions to identify it easily, since each seed/cereal might be well known with different local language names. Thanks, Karthik

Thanks Elly for explaining this and now I feel some thing has gone into my head. But to better understand this budgie genetics, I should keep reading more genetics articles from very basics of genetics until I understand this completely. Hopefully I will start it from this weekend.

I was already in half confused state Kaz and after seeing your reply, now I am totally confused :yellowhead: ...since may be my lack of knowledge on genetics. Until I saw your reply, I was under impression that all green series budgies are yellowface type, so just pairing a green with blue we will able to get YF offspring. Okay how do we know whether a green budgie is carrying a YF gene or not, we will come to know only when we breed it out or is there any way visually we can identify this. But if I am correct, initially we had only green and blue mutation budgies and from which we have got all these other mutations right? Also I have tried to understand how these genetics is working, but so far failed....could some one please guide me in right direction to make me understand this, it will be really greatful. Thanks, Karthik

Thanks to everyone responses. Here all the breeders (only very few are available near to my place) are mostly having only normal green, normal blue, pieds, recessive pied, opaline... mutations. So I need to work out on my own to get this one. I am not yet good at genetics, read couple of times and still not clear to me...so below is my understanding on this: Step 1 - pairing normal blue and normal green (parent mutations of both are not known) Step 2 - pair green split to blue (offspring from step1) with normal blue or opaline blue So from step2 I can expect some YF blue offspring right, please correct me if my understanding is wrong.