melbournebudgies

Well she can definately hide out in my aviary :rofl: :rofl:

I have one doing the same thing at themoment and looking fine,it's driving me insane :rofl: I will be interested to the response

So what was your final spend? Need to know howuch I should be thinking of saving before I go and visit Kaz :reading:

He isn't opaline, the clear feathers on the back of his neck are just due to the pied, if he had colour there the barring would go right through.

Are you sure Skipper is a recessive pied? With the strong banding like that looks more dom pied but I could be wrong, do you have a better picture?

Don't worry JB, once they see those sexy boys we picked out for them they'll be falling all over themselves to get into those nestboxes :budgiedance:

At any rate we shall see how close they look at the end of their time inside with me and then we shall see whether they come in when they go into the cages.

No no, sorry I explained badly, their body condition is excellent but they are out of breeding condition, one has the white/blue cere going on the other is just slightly brown (maybe just coming in?)

Wasn't trying to rush them just wondering whether it was something that would naturally happen when they were put in with the cocks that all. All my hens are in condition so I haven't had the task of actually trying to bring a hen into condition. They can hear the other birds from where they are on quarantine and have been talking a little will that help or is it purely a physical thing rather than a mental thing bringing them into condition?

The girls are here!!! They have quarantine for a few weeks yet and then they will get to meet the new men in their lives. Any tips for getting them in breeding condition? Both of them are very out of condition, should they naturally come in when they meet the boys?

Instead of taking him out of his cage if it is the sort with a plastic base thenpress the sides in and simply take the top off and sit it somewhere else with him still on his perch :question:

I hope not JB, it'ssomething I'm tryong to work away from while still maintaning size

I agree with Neville, they've really lost that nice tight feather that we aspire to

When I go and see the bloke in my club to buy my chrissy birds I'll let you know JB I think the trick is to get into a club and show all the older members that you're really keen but really poor, you tend to get a better deal that way :laughter:

Oh my gosh, I had just assumed it was a trick of the camera!!!! I wonder if it's a half sider :laughter:

Atleast it will all be finished by the time your girla move in, I started today and it just seems to have got messier not better :laughter:

I have installed a double four foot flouro on the ceiling of the large flight which will house all my budgies (including the breeding cages). One of those flouros will just be a standard tube and one will be a sunlight tube to provide UV rays. At the moment it's a little chaotic in there as I'm clearing out the rest of the room(which is actuallymy double garage) and the breeding cages are in the aviary. Despite the chaos of me drilling and sweeping and lugging things around them there seems to be a lot of budgie flirting going on and I'm hoping to go and get the timber for the divider tomorrow and start getting the divider installed so that the ony flirting going on is inside the breeding cages and not with the free flight birds as well :laughter: When I get it finished in the next week or so I promise I'll post a picture

At the moment it is manual as I still have to make a guard for it so I only have it on while I'm out there. It will go on a timer though as soon as I have that done :laughter: I also have a divider to build for the aviary so I can have my breeding cages partitioned in there. I think it is going to make a HUGE difference. Shall we test it out on those birds of yours JB

Well I can't believe the difference that extra light has made in my breeding room. I added the extra light batton only yesterday and I can already see a massive difference in the behaviour of the birds. Ozzie, who until yesterday had been sitting like a shag on a rock not doing anything (for those that don't know a shag is another name for a cormorant, a sea bird who sits still and waits for fish in the water), now he's chasing his hen around the breeding cage wanting a shag :laughter: I candled the three eggs they had and they're all clear so I've removed them and hopefully she will lay again and we'll get some eggs filled this time. For anyone thinking they might not bother with exra lighting I say go for it, if I can see a difference in just 24 hours I can only imagine what progress I'll make now!

97. When your back room 'storage room' is a total pigsty but you spend the day reorganising the bird room and getting rid of stuff you had stored in there... 98. When you are saving to buy a house in the country just so you have space for more aviaries

It's a good thing mine love it, it's their job to consume the massive amounts I prune off our bottlebrush hedge :laughter:

Does your tonic seed have a list of ingredients Jess? I know a few companies like Jen's sell it prepackaged but it seems to have lots of funny little manufactured bits in it (they look like 100sand 1000s), the one I am now trying has seeds like coriander and all sorts of other stuff, it looks really good. My budgies would never touch the manufactured bits...

Do you have some glucogen or lectade? Otherwise you could melt somehoney in hot water and give them a drop to the beak for energy

Awesome

I have a feeling that may be the case so if that happens we;'ll just use the uncodeds