Hills

Yeah, rats are fantastic pets!! My wife has forbidden us from getting another rat but me and the boys are working on her! :yes: Great pictures, which beach did you go to?

I am sure I can split the holidays between two adopted families Woohoo!! We'd get higher Family Tax Benefit with three kids!! :yes: When my boys ask if Santa exists, I tell them he does, I just don't tell them he's me.

Do they require more maintenance than tropical or cold? I've always wanted to have sea horses! :yes:

That looks fantastic!! Have you ever done a marine aquarium?

If they don't believe they don't receive :laughter: My boys will believe in Santa until they're 30! I suspect the oldest has an idea now, but still wants to believe.

Here's ours. It looks better in person. :laughter: I couldn't get one without the flash and with the lights on as I can't drive the camera as well as Michele does

Thankyou Kaz, yes I saw you said he had a bald spot I was just wondering why he had one. Can that happen after a moult?

Yep Ernie's cere, in Liv's picture above, is perfect now. You wouldn't know he ever hurt it.

What happened to no.9 above his cere?

Wow, what a great prize!! If you have more males than you need, wasn't lullabybudgies looking for a male? EDIT: Oops sorry I meant to put that second line in AV's thread as she got 3. Still its a great prize to get a show budgie, well done.!!

Thanks AV, unfortunately it would be a bit hard to make one and guarentee it would fit without having the cage here. I had to fit it onto the cage before assembly to make sure I got the width and height correct. But as you can see its a very simple design, all you'd need to make your own is a saw, glue & nails

Great Job!! I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product! How many budgies are you thinking of getting?

Excellent!! Make sure you share any ideas you come up with as I'm starting to run out. No, no nasty surprises, just a face full of flapping wings!

Ruby Tuesday

If you wanted the aviary to last I expect you'd need to use a hard wood or permapine. Permapine would be poisonous if the budgies chewed the wood and steel is probably cheaper than hardwood. Thats just my guess anyway!

Haha, thanks! :ohmygod: I'm sure all of Liv's budgies have gone to good homes! I wish I could have photographed this!! When Ernie is up on the picture, his favourite perch, and I put my finger up to get him down, he usually jumps onto my finger from a few inches away. Just then, in his excitment, he misjudged where my finger was and landed on my face!

Thanks!! I made it from the left over plywood from the travel cage I made him. I also made him this perch but he doesn't like it and prefers to land on the pictures instead Hopefully he'll get used to it over time and start to use it.

:ohmygod: Yeah that's the way!! Most garden centres will have it, just make sure you say dolimite sand as dolomite rubble is the grey gravel you use in driveways.

C'mon, the stomping is the most fun part! :ohmygod: Yeah I mixed the dolomite and cement together in the wheel barrow. Sand might be different to dolomite sand as you can really pack dolomite sand down into a firm base. Sand might just settle that way on its own as its finer. I think if you left dolomite sand uncompressed you'd find it would crack really easily later on or when you water it, it would settle into an uneven surface. I'm sure what you've done will do a great job!

Sometime Ernie likes to sit in his cage, other times he like to fly around the house. And then there's times when he's happy to sit on the front porch and watch the world go by. :ohmygod: We leave his door open in the mornings, so I built this "porch" for him to get in out. Quite often he'll sit in his cage and then when we walk past, he'll hop out onto his porch to say hello. This little fellow is so entertaining!! Sorry if I'm sounding like a proud new budgie owner - but I am!

We have 2 boys 7 & 10. We got them a laptop each, but gave them to them early and will just get them a small gift on xmas. We told them the laptops we half for xmas and half for school, hence why they will get another small gift.

THis is how I did the floor of our rabbit cage. Spread a mix of dolomite sand and cement a couple of cm thick on the floor of the cage and tread it down. I used about a bag of cement per wheel barrow load of dolomite sand. Get 2 pieces of wood that are about the length of the cage and place them parallel with the side walls but about 6 inches in from the walls. Use a level to make sure they are perfectly level with each other but slope very slightly in one direction to allow drainage. Spend a bit of time getting this right as its the most important part. See picture below if this is confusing. Fill around these piece of wood with the mix of dolomite sand and cement mix. Then get a third piece of wood that is about 6 inches shorter than the width of the cage and use it to slide along the other 2 pices of wood to smooth out the dolomite mix. Then stomp on every bit of dolomite to pack it down as much as possible and then refill the area with the mix and repeat the smoothing process with the 3rd piece of wood. Then stomp again and smooth again. The more times you do this the less dolomite mix you will need to level it up to the same height as the pieces of wood. Once it is really firm and you can walk on it without leaving foorprints, take out the 2 pieces of wood and fill in the holes they leave and pack that down. Once you've got it looking really smooth, spray it with a really fine mist so that the water doesn't disturb any of the dolomite. Leave it for a while to soak in then spray again.

Looks good! Dolomite sand is coarser than sand depending on how fine they crush it. Unfortunately ours is covered with straw so I can't post a picture, but it just looks like rough cemet. This is the stuff: We're just about to head out, but I'll post up some tips on how to make it look more cement like tomorrow morning

Yes that's right. The dolomite sand I used is grey anyway, so it just looked like dolomite but rock hard.

AAAAAARGH!!! Attack of the killa budgies!!