renee

Renee I live in Perth, WA - South of the River. I breed Show Budgies- Normals, Opalines, Cinnamon wings, Albinos, Lutinos, Greywings, Yellowfaces.

70% of my budgies come from 2 breeders so I breed with the best birds from those "families". This year I was breeding cousin to cousin. I am going to breed based on visual features and compatibility but I will still breed related birds together.

51. When at the mere mention of an upcoming budgie auction your partner blanches and complains of chest pains 52. When your partner no longer lets you go alone to a budgie auction and doesn't let you out of his sight 53. When at said budgie auction he insists on keeping the money for 'safe keeping' 54. When he no longer argues about leaving the auction mid-way to withdraw more money for budgies 55. When he considers it a 'good' day if you have $20 left at the end of it all

I haven't noticed that inos are smaller, in fact I had a nest of really big-feeted, large lutino chicks ... I think it all depends on the parents. Big parents=big chicks (most of the time).

36. When Soft Food recipe and Watering Regime are pasted to your kitchen wall .... so your hubby has no excuses for when your away 37. When the first thing you ask your hubby when you are away is how the birds are doing, and then inquire about his wellfare

23. When nobody bothers asking what you want for Christmas or Birthdays 'cause they already know the answer is "budgie money" 24. When Club Meetings take precedence over the inlaws bar-b-ques 25. When all you 'new' news is budgie related 26. When all your sleepless nights are due to fretting over malnourished chicks and sick budgies

Awsome idea! Yes PLEASE!

YES, YES, YES! In fact you should try to meet your birds nutritional needs with vegies and balanced seed mix and only use supplements in times of breeding and moulting. KISS!

I had thought about that but it would mean installing gutters- however, the laserlite we used is not rigid enough to support that...

Well My - what a set of flattering photos, thanks for that Kaz! Actually we should have got a 'before' and 'afterwards' photo of the job we did today. Kaz, Ken, Tony and I started work at 10am. First job- clean out the aviary! We smashed old nesting boxes apart, stowed away discarded accessories and filled 2 rubbish bins with ****. That took us the best part of an hour and on the way Ken got a nasty electric shock from some live wiring :cake: . Next job- tear the timber poles frame from the sides of the aviary, remove the brush wall cladding and separate the aviary mesh from the aviary frame. Then Kaz got up on the roof and removed the colorbond and tin roofing while we continued to tear the aviary mesh down. Unfortunately she fell down and injured her knee and ankle. Finally the we pulled out the supporting posts. At this point (almost 2pm) we all agreed we were totally stuffed and feeling a bit like the walking wounded!!!

okay, so the glue has set and we did a test run this arvo. To my delight the water pressure is sufficient and the retic piping keeps its shape when the water is circulating!

While we're on the subject of Calcium supplements ..... A couple of months ago I tried Avian Science Liquid Calcium and was promoting it as an alternative to Calcivet. I take it all back! I had a spate of deformed chicks born under the influence of ASLC - 3 in fact with various bone defects. A coincidence? Maybe. But I immediately switched back to Calcivet and haven't had any issues since. To offset the sugar levels in Calcivet I now add a couple of drops of apple cider/litre as well as 4-6 drops of Aquaious Iodine/litre with the Calcivet and the water keeps well.

My name is Renee- can't get any more straightforward than that.

It's been very balmy lately so we haven't stressed about getting the retic system up and going earlier. Any way we went down to our local hardware and bought the following: Cheap hose, reticulation piping, timer, double hose attachment (we invested a bit and bought brass), , hose to pipe attachment, hole puncher, pipe stopper and reticulation sprayers. I wanted to run the timer at 3min/1/2 hour but unfortunately there isn't a timer available for those settings, so I had to settle for 10mins/1hr. It is a manual timer so on very hot days we need to turn it on in the morning and off in the evening. Here's a photo of the double hose attachment and timer- I bought really cheap hose and have run it straight from the tap to the aviary, luckily for me it's virtually in a straight line. I decided to go with a circular set up because it makes more sense to me to keep it simple. So we laid out the retic piping on the lawn in the shape we wanted and my hubby punched the holes and attached the sprayers. Here's a close up of the sprayers The tricky bit was getting it onto the roof, under the shade cloth in the same shape that it was on the lawn .... but after some huffing and puffing we got it done. Then I attached the piping to the hose- Now to keep the piping in place we have used a silicone glue. We need to give it 24hs to dry properly and then I'll give it a test run, photos to follow.

SUCH a timely post in light of our recent acquisitions! Thank you Kaz!

Yes, it was a lovely day! I also bought up on greywings, so now we are on rations till next pay day This was not a typical auction in that most of the birds came from the stud of a fellow member who sadly passed away recently. He specialised in the rarer varieties like Clearwings, Black Eyed Selfs and of course Greywings. All his birds had to be sold yesterday, hence the bargains!

No I wouldn't do that yet. Keep monitoring regularly and burping when necessary, it usually stops once the chicks reach the 14 day mark or are on to a more solid mix than just crop milk. If the mother hen is definitely rejecting the chick and not feeding it then I would consider fostering the chick. But because it's 2 weeks younger than the foster nest I would move this chick and perhaps the second eldest over to the foster nest so that the hen raises 2 younger chicks to fledgling - don't know if you're following me on this?

Good luck eliminating those horrible rats Kaz! :rofl:

No I don't think the mice do the eating. Rather they harass the birds to the point that they start acting out and doing strange things.

I'm so sorry you've had this distressing experience. Sometimes if the eggs are clear the hen will sit on them for a few weeks and when nothing happens (because no little chicks are growing inside) she will toss them out of the nest or smash them. If the eggs were fertile I would look around for mice and go about eliminating them from your breeding room (I know you said there aren't any signs but they are the usual culprits for this kind of behaviour). Another, less likely alternative, is that your breeding pairs are tired of raising babies and have gone on strike (although for it to happen simultaneously in several nests at a time is unusual). I'm sure you'll get some more advice from other members so be patient.

To turn on (someone): verb, attack To turn (someone) on: verb, excite Your brain is going to mush.

That's hysterical! I don't think Kaz's dogs would be so kind though!

On the contrary, I'm all for action not inane waffle. However, as has been mentioned earlier by others getting involved personally can backfire and reporting is usually a waste of time. And as for being positive - there's nothing positive about this post, that's my point. So I guess that's just lil ole me exercising my freedom of speech.

I'll say it from the start: Feel free to shoot me down BUT Can we please put an end to the pointless posts about how other people/pet stores/etc don't look after their pets the way we would like? Absolutely a waste of space and as I see it a gratuitous way of seeking attention/commiseration/sympathy. The world is certainly not perfect and whingeing about other people is quite frankly silly. You have a responsibility to your own pets, not everybody else's.

The soft food my darlings get daily is delicious! There's no doubt in my mind that my pets live a cherished life! In fact I go to work to keep them in the life of luxury they have become accustomed to ...