melbournebudgies

You can make your own but you can just buy egg and biscuit frm the pet shop, also I give my breeding birds soaked chicken crumble instead of egg and biscuit. (The stuff you feed to baby chooks), you can get it in small bags from larger pet shops and stock feed places and even some supermarkets.

Looks like a YF to me

Just wondering generally speaking how old your babies are before the hen lays a second clutch? My current pair only have the two babies and I plan to let them go for one more round but I'd like to try and time a second pair to breed at the same time.

Liv you need to breed a dynasty of those and send one to every BBC member

Just wondering how fastidious other peoples hens are at cleaning the box when the chicks start to get bigger? I have a hen with two chicks at the moment and the area where the hollow is in the box floor is kept spotless. She waits for poops to harden just a little and then she scoops them into the corner of the box. She also won't let me put any nesting material in there at all. There is this funny little pile of dry poops piled up in th back corner which I just have to tip inot the bin every now and then

Kaz, why does the baby have to be a hen? If the dad is a lacewing I would have thought the chick could be either.

Really?, I have a one legged bird that still climbs on the aviary wire.

If you get onto it quickly so it doesn't get any worse they should be fine. I had special set ups for the one in my aviary until I realised she wasn't using them anyway, she gets around just as well as the non splayed birds. I also have a lovebird with one foot that perches perfectly now, they are surprisingly adaptable

Just to clarify too, if it was akestrel it may be wounds from being grabbed in the kestrels foot not from the beak. If the budgie was climbing on the front wire it is unlikely he would have seen a bird of prey coming as they are very quick and pet birds aren't really 'aware' of them like wild birds are.

Thought I would add a couple of photos now that my oldest is over a week old. They are both getting darker points so no df spangles here 4 days old..Willing his little brother to hatch... sadly this egg was DIS Here's the big guy just opening his eyes Arggghhh! A two headed budgie

Mine will eat the lot, they especially like all the new leaf growth that is out at the moment.

I would say the same way my lorikeet got injured, a kestrel through the aviary wire. It grabbed her on each side of her head as she went to say hello(stoopid lorikeet) she was also very lucky to escape with her life.

I used to have a mastiffX, a cat, a lorikeet(who's still with us) and a bearded dragon that would play together! They just grew up not knowing life any other way...

I was basically planning on using that recip but replacing the CaCO3 with the eggshells.

Well we use a reasonable number of eggs here and I have had great success with putting them in my blender and turning them into dust. I have tried mixing the dust with a little water and making blocks out of them, they keep their shape but are pretty fragile. I was thinking or mixing them with a tiny bit of plaster just to help them hold together. The block would be about 75% crushed shell and 25% plaster, do you think this would be a good calcium block?

check this one out

Maesie, when I was renting at my old place we had square concrete pavers as the floor, very easy to keep clean. I also used to chuck a bucket of sand down everytime I cleaned the cage as it made it easir to sweep out at the next clean.

Wow this site must censor some mighty obscure awear words cause I've got no idea what it must have been before hand :hap:

Hey Maesie, it sounds amazing! What was the name of the beach where the sunset photo was taken, the system has censored it :hap: You might need to put spaces between the letters.

Can anyone tell me if crushed eggshells are better than a calcium block and why?

For those that are interesting in either growing native plants for birds or atleast knowing what plants they can use I have a great book which I refer to frequently. It is called 'Creating a native garden for birds' by Frances Hutchison. It talks about suitable plants for different garden areas (shade, full sun, etc) and also discusses some exotic plants as well. My original purchase price was $17 a few years ago so it is a pretty reasonably priced little book. For those trying to get a hold of it the ISBN is 0-7318-0133-4

They are all essentially lettuce varieties aren't they? They should be fine but don't feed too much lettuce as it can make them poopy, mine love celery tops, it's their favorite

He is probably 'freezing' so you can't see him just like a wild bird would. If you walk into an aviary full of birds they will all stop and go quiet for a minute or two. Once he is more used to you he should still play even with you there.

I breed out of a general interest in genetics and I guess I'm also kind of using my budgies as practise for when I start looking at other species that are more difficult to keep and breed. I like to experiment on them with different food types and discover their likes and dislikes. I only breed a few birds at any one time and all babies are either kept or put into carefully chosen private homes, no pet shops.

After looking at all the options presented I am fairly sure she is a violet dom pied(dutch) spangle fallow. She has violet across her chest and the head spot just showing. The violet on her chest is very pale(almost not there) and darker on her rump. She has the red eyes of the fallow.