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Yipeeeeeee! :happy-dancing: Concreters cancelled and rescheduled for next Wednesday Damn tradies :glare: ..... thank goodness I have my handy hubby!

What can I say? They are STUNNING!

Yipeeeeeee!

Yes, I'm going to photo them before I put them into the Long Aviary .... promise! :hurryup: Rain is forecast for tomorrow evening and then on and off for days .... so we will work to a deadline : Roof on and finished by 4pm. :hurryup: Then on Saturday we plan to do the perches .... we have some ideas so it should be fun. :hurryup: My aim is to have this aviary done from go to woh in 7 days. But I'm still hesitant about putting my chickies in, yes I'm a sook, I worry it'll be a bit chilly for them .... after all last night the temperature dropped to 5C. I am going to look at the long term forecast on Monday and if the temps stay about the 10C mark, I'll chance it. Last year I put my babies out and they got all sooky lala on me and I had to return them to the kindie cage 4 days later - something I am NOT keen on repeating this time around if I can help it. I have another idea and that is to put a couple of adults in with them to show them the way ...

Well today we put the pieces together ... it wasn't exactly smooth sailing as the first section that we put together was out by 1cmH .... and then several more down at the bottom :hurryup: .... but we fixed it! :hurryup: Then we primed the roof, maybe that is a bit overkill but we do live quite near the ocean and we decided to be safe than sorry in a few years time. We have bought some reflective paint that purports to lower the temperature by 5C.

Well I think that is just fantastic! Congratulations on having such a nice set up for your birds!

Sorry to hear about your hen Dave. How about you try giving Calcium in the soft food daily and then in the water 2-3 times a week?

Although I am in favour of the new ring date, not that it benefits me really, but because I like it that the birds are more mature and I especially like the idea that you can breed with them before they go to Nationals.

I've had a couple of maiden hens that just wouldn't feed their chicks (at the beginning of this year's breeding season). It was gut wrenching. The way I got round it partially was to remove the newly hatched chick asap and pop it under a 'good' mum and transfer a 1-2 day old chick to the non-feeder. More often than not a slightly older and well fed chick will peep louder and prompt the new mum into action. I would repeat this with every new born chick, as soon as they were 2 days old they went back to their mum. But you need to monitor closely .... if she doesn't feed the transferred chick within 5 hours, pop it back into its original nest and try with a slightly older chick, say 3-4 days.

A tad cynical perhaps but so true

Would any of those be the ones you sold to me?

Thank you for the encouragement! Yes I am excited about my Red ringers, they are all consistently bigger than any of my previously bred chickies .... my guys seems to develop their heads around the 2nd moult so I am looking forward to just letting them mature

I have heard that Henry George only breeds Clearwing to Clearwing ..... but I wonder if he's always done that

okay so if Normal splits give you crappy wing markings, how do you increase size and keep the wings clear (she asks after having just bred 4 Normal splits ....)???

No Floor Plan It's all in my head I have been dreaming about this extension for the past 10 days and I have a Vision! The Safety Door will work fine as you will enter the original aviary and then turn LEFT. We are going to remove the wire and middle beam from the end of the exisiting aviary, which you can see in the photo above (next to the bucket).

In previous years I've basically been able to pick the lesser birds and ship them off to the pet shop but NOT this year. This year however, I am in the fortunate position in that I am very happy with the chicks I have bred so far, so happy in fact that I don't want to be forced to get rid of them too early before gauging their real potential ~ which we all know is at about the 8 months stage. But my current "Young Birds Aviary" only comfortably houses 40 birds and doesn't have too much length (2.2m) so they really don't develop those muscles well enough until I pop them into the main aviary we built some time back. Here is the current Aviary: On the week end we sold the other hexagonal aviary to make way for the extension and cleared the space where we will put the extension: The last aviary we built took over a month to put together and cost an arm and a leg .... this time around we are more experienced and the current extension is to date costing a fraction of what we spent last time. I just want to make clear that we do NOT have a work shop, work bench or anything fancy like that! In fact the sum of our tools are an electric drill, a jig saw (recent addition to cut the wood) and a measuring tape. So here is a step by step guide for the uninitiated:- First we cut the wood to size and painted and then pre-drilled, this is what we need for one side of the extension which will be 3mL x 2mH x 1.2mW (personally I would have preferred something wider but we want it to join up nicely with the pre-existing aviary): Then we completed the drilling of screws and put it together: And we messed up with the first side which is out by 1cmH ..... it was at this point that I got my hubby a useful early birthday pressie ~ the Jigsaw! From then on the wood cutting was much easier - and more exact! Then we put the wire on: (A trick for beginners: line the wire up and tack on the bottom edge then get someone to stand on the roll the other end to eliminate bowing in the wire) okay that's where we are now ... 2 sides built and wired plus roof trusses prepared. Next update will be when we attach it to the original aviary ..... fun, fun, fun!

Oh well done~He is gorgeous!

After seeing 2 cock birds go at it like no tomorrow NOTHING surprises me any more!

Wow! Thanks for that ~ very informative

Have you considered getting him a girlfriend?

You know this is why many budgie breeders have to think long and hard before planning their holidays ..... I'm sorry you lost some birds M6B, it's always gut wrenching to come home to losses. The last time I went on holidays 2 of my best birds died the day before I was due to return ....

OOOooooh. Well I have been adding the Breeding Aid to my soft food mix for the past month or so .... and all my birds get it. No side effects to date. I mix it into the hulled oats that get used for soft food, so yes I add it separately.

Nope, 5 cock birds: a DF Yellow Spangle (Fran Mcloughlin), an Opaline Light Green (Norm Wheatley), a Normal Violet(Cec Gearing), a Normal Cobalt (Jeff Lloyd) and an Opaline Sky Blue (Carl Alder). They are all still young birds, the Opaline LG is the eldest at 4 years and he was one of the first birds I bought at a MBC auction, I think.

Well done! They look lovely! :emoticon112:

yep, im saving up, selling birds i dont need noprobs :emoticon112: Good for you! Check out the birds I'm selling - they are my foundation cock birds from WA's top breeders and are super garanteed egg fillers and more to the point, they shouldn't go too expensive :rofl: