Neville

One mating can fertilize a whole clutch because the hen can store the sperm but usually more frequent mating is more successful

I think he ugly. He doesn't even look like a budgie This is an example of breeders going too far to develop show points I agree with Dave - I want to breed budgies, not upside down peacocks

The chicks look like dilutes to me. Violet & grey will combine on the same bird

Hi Flip-trainer Welcome to the forum

I have found that crossing lacewing cocks or split lacewing cocks back to dark cinnamon hens will darken the wing markings. Some breeders recommend crossing to normals but I have not noticed any improvement when I've used a normal. There is always variation in the wing markings in every nest so selecting the best to breed from will probably give the best results I don't see any reason why a yellow lacewing would be improved by pairing it with a cobalt, after all it's the wing markings we want to improve, not add colour to the body

Yellow face opaline dilute

It is a female. She's a dominant pied

It sounds like one of the parents is plucking the chicks.

The blue cere shows that he is a double factor spangle. Lutino males and dark eyed clear males have pink ceres

This is not quite correct. You won't get double factor spangles unless both parents are spangle. Also Sky blue mated to cobalt will produce about 50% of each shade

I think it is a cock. How old is it?

The first one is a cock The second one looks like a cock to me but I wouldn't be certain. The ceres of many male recessive pieds look like this bird The third one is a hen

It sounds like a case of feather plucking. This could be done by either the cock or the hen. Even though the hen produced fully feathered chick in the past she could still be the culprit As the chick still has flight and tail feathers it is very unlikely to be french moult This is one of the many reasons why nests should be checked regularly. If this problem had been discovered earlier the effect would not be nearly as severe.

It sounds very typical of french moult to me too

This result proves 3 things: 1/ Both birds are split for recessive pied. To get visual recessive pieds the gene must come from both parents 2/ The male is split for ino. There will be no visual inos unless the cock bird has the gene (the inos could be either sex) 3/ The albino has 2 dark factors (mauve). Sky blue has no dark factor, cobalt has 1 dark factor, mauve has 2 dark factors. If a bird with no dark factor is mated to a bird with 2 dark factors all the chicks will have 1 dark factor

The faded opaline hen is very nice and I particularly like the cinnamon darkwing cock. Will you keep breeding the darkwings in cinnamon or will you mate them to normals & produce splits to produce non-cinnamon darkwings?

The cheek patches are not very clear in the picture. I was going by the statement in the first post

If the spangle pied had purple cheek patches he can't be grey green because a grey green would have blue or grey cheek patches. The white that is showing in the cheek patches is from the spangle mutation

The hen is not opaline so only the female chicks will be opaline

Spangle pied olive male Greywing sky blue female

Fallows have red eyes and this bird appears to have black eyes. I think it is a very pale opaline cinnamon sky blue

Kaz has already told you the sex The bird in the first picture is a spangle recessive pied. Because of the recessive pied mutation his cere will stay pink all his life

There is a lot or disagreement about grit because an American study found that grit could cause impaction problems and they maintained that hook bill birds do not need grit because they hull the seed. This study was done with gravel based grit not with shell grit, which is the grit that is used in most countries. Shell grit is fully soluble in the gut so it cannot cause problems also it is one of the best sources of calcium available for our birds. Most breeders in this country use shell grit regularly

This is an excellent series of articles. Thank you KAZ for posting them. I was particularly interested to read the last 3 paragraphs in this article because I have often wondered if some of the modern show type birds would be able to fly or if they would be able to see where they were going if they did fly. "Athleticism" is a good word