melbournebudgies

Had seen that one Trish, it's just a pity it's up north :happy-dancing:

They are rung Splat but my records are a little all over the place for this lot as some were fostered out when they were tiny before they were rung and so I'm still not sure which chicks are which :happy-dancing: In a few months time it will be all irrelevent anyway as that one week won't make a zot of difference, now that I can see colours I know which chicks are from which clutch so that's the main thing. I shall just wait and see

Well hubby is away on a Ship at the moment and apparently thwy all have girls after being on the ships, the big radars apparently fry the boy swimmers :happy-dancing:

My one could be a little younger than three weeks actually, it's a little confusing trying to work out how old they are when you've got a bunch of clutches all mixed up together and only two out of a clutch of 5 that actually survived. I'll have to look at a few photos so I can try and pin down which chicks out of the five these are, I'm pretty sure the smaller one is the youngest but this one might be closer to two weeks old maybe. Some seemed to thrive more than others and were larger even when they came out of the egg and this was one f those so she was always bigger than her nest mates so maybe I got myself confused and thought she was the oldest. :bump:

What cuties :bump: Hope she looks like that when she grows a few more feathers. At the moment she is at the stage where her feathers on her wings are open and on her head are just open but still getting length and her body is mostly down with pin feathers sticking through so those are a little older, by about a week or two I would guess?

My card reader STILL isn't working *grrr* so despite having taken a photo of my oldest show chick I can't upload it to the computer. But with every day she grows I am getting more and more excited about her show prospects. Even at the age of three weeks she seems to be developing a nice deep mask and she gets her cute little 'blow' going too! I'm hoping someone out there might be able to share a photo of a chick that turned out to be a nice show bird at a similiar age so I can compare, having never raised a show chick before. Also please cross your fingers, pray or whatever you do personally that I can fix her little toes up over the next week as it would be a shame if she turns out nearly as good as her dad and can't be shown because of her wonky toes. See looks like she will be a skyblue normal and her sister looks to be cobalt(maybe violet) normal, her foster sister from the pied clutch has turned out cinnamon but is not showing any body colour yet and her foster sister from the crested clutch will be yellow. Yes, they are all hens :bump:

Are the wing marking black or are they more a shade of brown? If brown I would say cinnamon grey green. If black well, hmmm almost looks like a TCB but from those parents...?

I would have thought at that price for the check the slide would have been included. Having done them myself in microbiology at uni they are very simple and the price seems a little over the top given how much they charged you for the check up.

When did the egg bum become apparent?

The main things to realise is that even on a cool day the nest box will be very warm. My house is fairly cold due to poor insulation and even when I get up in the morning and the house is about 14 degrees I put my hand in the nest box on the cage in my family room and it's warm as toast in there. The amount of heat generated by just a few chicks is quite amazing. On a hot day it is very hard for this heat to dissipate. The best bet is to have a second nest box prepared with ventilation holes so that on a hot day you can swap the chicks into a more airy box.

Another one to add for Melbourne's Nth East. Hugh at Templestowe Vet Clinic on Manningham Rd will treat birds. I'm not sure if he has a specific bird qualification but he is EXTREMELY good and has a lot of experience with them. He treats all the birds for my wildlife supervisor and will even do quite delicate surgery. Most recently he put a shunt in the neck of an eclectus parrot for him who had problems with it's air sacs (I think that was the problem but not positive ) He also saw my rainbow with the broken wing and was extremely gentle and caring, he opted not to give antibiotics due to the delicacy of lories digestive systems, he definately knew what he was talking about.

Where does he practice now? It is sometimes hard to get the vet I want at our local practice as he is only there some days so he would be a good back up

Yep too hot. If your breeding cages are in a temp controlled environement such as indoors or in a cooled breeding room then no worries

That's great! I'm just waiting for that second last verse to arrive

He is very good

If it seems to be taking too long and you are worried a drop of Calcivet to the beak and many recommend a drop of olive oil on the vent.

I agree with BL also. To put it into perspective for you. I had five pairs down to breed at the start of my breeding season. I lost one hen to Canker and two cocks to accidents in the cage In the end I had four clutches layed, one was abandoned by the hen and went cold. Out of approximately twenty eggs I had 12 hatch and out of those twelve despite the best of care I only have four chicks still alive. I am about to splint one of the chicks due to a minor development abnormality(due to the poor care recieved by mum after the death of the dad). I am topping up all chicks once a day direct to the crop with a tube as they are being fostered to another pair after all the drama. Now that is just about worst case scenario, this season has been the worst ever as I have never lost a chick before this, but it is the sort of thing you must be prepared for.

If she looks healthy and isn't fluffed up then it is probably just a normal egg If she starts to show any signs of stress or discomfort vet straight away

Few more specific needed: How many budgies (male/female)? Size of aviary? What will you do with the babies? Are you prepared to spend quite a bit of money on supplements etc to try and avoid problems? Are you prepared top potentially spend hundreds at the vet if there is problems? Breeding is stressful, are you prepared for the reality that some of your budgies might die in the process?

She is seeing the food dish as a potential nest. The easiest way to fix this is to rearrange the cage and put her seed in a different dish

I does seem over priced to me. Maybe you could ask for a breakdown of fees. I'm a poor student so if someone suddenly sprung fees like that on me I would have had to argue the point there and then!

You know Deb, he really doesn't look very happy about it

The main thing to realise is that there isn't anything wrong with using those toys/millet, etc to bribe him during this trust building. The thing is that after a while of this bribery he will begin to associate you with good things rather than scary things and eventually you will be the good thing not just the bribe. The long and the short is stick with it

Actually Neat maybe it is one of those things that has a few different spellings because Niga was how it was spelt on the bulk seed I used to bag up where I worked Just checked: Niger, Also known as Nigra, Niga, and Inga http://www.bird-feed.co.uk/Niger%20Seeds.htm

I know what Buddy is saying, "Geez mum you took photos of them in focus, hrmmphhh!" The MM is gorgeous not at all like a frog Makes me wish my big'uns would get their butts into gear