krosp

I think she's definitely a girl, and am pretty sure you're right on the other one being a boy.

Agh! It's times like this that I wish it was more socially acceptable to correct total strangers

If your only reason for suspecting she is eggbound is just that she should have laid today and didn't, I'm sure it's fine. If you see other signs such as swelling around the vent, fluffing, panting, and her looking generally unwell, then that is much more of an indication that she may be eggbound

Thanks! You certainly contribute a lot to these forums yourself. I like how this forum isn't snarky like some other forums can be. People who have a lot of experience are generally very patient when giving the same advice over and over again to new people, and are patient when people come in and admit to having made some very common mistakes. And people asking for advice are generally open to suggestions and willing to learn. And everybody is happy to both ask and answer questions. I know there are times when there are exceptions to this but in general compared to other forums this one has a really great atmosphere.

Definitely.... Cosmo does that sometimes too. He did it a lot more at the beginning. I think he was trynig to find a way to escape. But then he grew to love his cage, so you might see less of it after a while (unless Bella finds it extremely fun and likes to do it for entertainment)

Norton slowed down my computer so badly... it has never been better since I purged it of all Norton. But my dad has sworn by it for nearly 20 years now so I suppose it's at least been good for him. I use AVG too and haven't had a problem, but I'm still really wary and paranoid-- maybe the only reason it doesn't pick up much is because it's missing them??

Haha that's a hilarious picture- definitely a budgie of the month candidate She's a very pretty bird with lovely wings

So many beautiful budgies! I had missed this thread at first and wondered why you had talked about breeding so much if you only had the one bush pair. You need to update your thing below your name that says "Budgies kept: 3"

I don't know what's so special about that hen of yours, but I had the same thing with one of mine, when we used to breed years ago. If I let them have a choice they would have all gone for this hen rather than the others, and she was top of the pecking order with the other hens too. She is a beautiful green spangle, quite solid for a pet type, and is quite playful. She's still alive right now, and she'll be turning 12 this year... and she seemed to be the best mum I had out of the three or four hens we bred with. So I guess they knew what they wanted lol.

Cosmo did it for the first week or two that we had him and we figured he was trying to find a way to escape from the cage. But Cosmo was too old for it to be a baby snuggling thing. He is gorgeous

Blue cere doesn't automatically mean boy. A pale blue cere, a pastel blue cere, a whitish blue cere = girl. Boys are a very deep vivid dark blue, or purple, or sometimes pink, but it is usually a deep and even colour all over. Girls' ceres are much paler, but often blue too. I agree Lemon seems to be a girl although I am not all that experienced with sexing pieds.

Well the one we had with the splayed leg really only had one very splayed leg, so she got around okay. She could climb around with her good leg and her beak, and she tended to stand on a perch so that her sticking out leg could hold onto the side of the cage. I think it would be very hard if both legs had been as badly splayed, and yours still look like functional legs anyway, and there's a good chance that it's just baby chubbiness that makes it look a bit splayed in the pics. Best of luck with them and I am looking forward to seeing them with feathers!

Oh no! That sounds very painful for Levi, what are they doing to treat it? Sorry to hear about your hen

What is the coffin for? Is it for the egg? I may have missed something somewhere. I am not sure about splayed legs -- the only one I ever had with a splayed leg was a lot worse than yours. But if anything, that photo makes the first one's legs look worse than the second?? I hope someone can tell you whether it's enough to worry about or not, I know it's definitely not as bad as the one I had, and we even tried splinting her legs and stuff and hers was worse than yours even after that, so yours is probably nothing.

Bummer... I'm kind of over being a Capricorn lol... it was pretty accurate!

Haha that is so funny! We should start a budgies on computers thread..I'm sure we all spend more than enough time on the computer. I tried to get a photo of Cosmo looking at the screen when I was looking at budgie photos on this forum, but unfortunately the lighting was bad and he turned out like a silhouette.

I got some funny photos of Cosmo doing things with screens. The first series is when he was really intently watching my cursor move across the screen, and then he started climbing down and reaching for my cursor. The next one is him watching a video of himself on my digital camera (excuse the ungraceful foot) And here's a nice oil gland shot

CaspersRose-- Cosmo used to do that exact same thing with his swing before my mum gave him the new toy Thanks everyone for your advice. I think what I will do then is just leave everything as it is until we get back from Melbourne, give him a few days or a week to settle back home, and then rearrange the cage, which will involve either moving or swapping the toys.

Cosmo has a couple of other toys which he occasionally plays with, but is pretty obsessed with this bell. But right now he is sitting on my husband's shoulder while he plays the piano... and the piano is right next to the cage, so it's not like he's so obsessed that he's even trying to get back to his bell. He's just singing along to the piano.

maybe I need to make a poll about it? Go the bell vs throw the bell. At the moment I'm thinking, because we're going to Melbourne next week but only for a few days, he'll be with my parents again... it might be nice to let him keep his favourite toy while he's away from us, and then take it off him once he's settled back home again. But if it's a real hazard I would get rid of it sooner.

As some of you know, we went away for two weeks at the start of December and left Cosmo with my parents. Well, my mum with her grandmotherly tendencies decided to give Cosmo a toy She put in one of those toys with all the plastic rings that interlock and hang down in the cage, with a bell at the bottom. Anyway, he has befriended the bell. He spends a lot of time with one foot on the rings, leaning down and talking to the bell. My husband was getting concerned that Cosmo is too obsessed with the bell and we should take it out. Normally I would agree, but when I thought about it, I realised that I'm not sure we really need to. He is very attached to it, and if we take it out of the cage he follows it and clings to the nearest side of the cage... but otherwise, he's not aggressive - he doesn't bite us when we go near it, he's happy to come out of the cage and spend hours away from it. So considering it's not causing any problems, I am thinking maybe it's fine for him to have it in there as something to play with when he is in the cage? Is there anything wrong with letting a budgie have an inanimate girlfriend, if they're not getting aggressive?

Yep I do get it now (although only on this basic level- I do not get YF1 and YF2 genetics yet at all!) Thanks for your patience in explaining it

Ooh exciting! Two of each! Is egg 5 going to hatch do you think?

I can't easily tell which ones are which from your pics because some double up and I can't tell, and others are a bit too bright... but from the ones I can see: 1- boy 2- girl 3 - girl 4 - can't see it's cere? 5 - seems like girl but the flash was way too bright to tell 6 - boy 7 - boy 8 - boy I'm only confident on numbers 1-3 because that first photo showed it up well, but some of the others are too bright.

Not your little bush baby???