Dean_NZ

I had a cocks cere turn brown but its now back to a bright blue, he filled his first round fine with a brown cere, flirting like crazy and mating constantly. He didnt fill the first 3 eggs of round 2 but has since filled the next SIX. So while a brown cere can indicate problems, im not 100% sure its always worth worrying about, just paying attention to.

It may also pay to treat her with ivermectin in case she has feather mites or other mites if you are worried about her plucking scratching/nibbling herself too much. It takes an egg about 2 days total from ovulation through the various layers developing till its laid.

Im with you on cock birds Nubbly. Stay out of the nest box and let the women do her thing until its time for you to feed the chicks. And even then get in, get out and dont touch anything while you're in there

Great advice Kaz. Not trying to be harsh or critical, but I don't get why so many people have nest boxes (for no apparent reason?) then freak out about eggs being laid or getting 'unexpected' clutches. This isnt directed specifically at you MLINZI, it's something we see on many forums. I still don't get why people give their birds nest boxes and say they arent trying to breed or freak out when the birds do! Take away the nest box, the hen should be fine even if she has to lay one or two eggs before stopping, she'll lay them off the perch, they'll break and she'll go on with life Just make sure to offer her good seed, vegetables, cuttle fish/mineral/iodine etc and all the other good stuff yada yada :rofl:

Poor little ino Stumped as to whats going on. If possible its really best to wait until the chicks are 7 days old or older before hand raising as your chances of success get infinitely smaller for every day younger they are than 7. The brooder needs to be at about 35-36 degrees for new borns, with about 40-50% humidity if i recall - dont forget humidity as the chicks lose moisture as well as heat quick quickly with so much exposed skin and dehydration is a huge risk when you are initiating hand feeding of young babies with small crops. Thats my 2 cents at least :rofl: Edit: You can reduce the brooder temp as they get older. I currently am having to hand raise two babies at about 4 weeks of age and its 31 degrees in the brooder and they're more than happy, actually snuggle up near the lamp sometimes.

Thats the good thing about having a sky blue, sf violet sky blue, cobalt and sf violet cobalts. If i have any trouble visually discerning violet, i can easily stand them next to a bird from each of those four colours and know where it stands. Standing them next to a KNOWN normal or violet bird is the easiest way of comparing and judging!

If i had to take a stab at it, looks to me like internal hemorrhaging. Vitamin K deficiency would be the cause of that as Vitamin K is essential in the blood clotting process and without it chicks can easily get mushed and start bleeding and not stop, then if they stop moving they get stepped on more and bleed (bruise) more. Thats my take on it anyway. Excellent sources of vitamin K include: spinach, Swiss chard, green beans, asparagus, broccoli, kale and mustard greens. Very good sources include green peas and carrots.

Agree with GB, those eye lids are compromised. Can she blink? If anything they pose the greatest problem at the moment, wonder if they'll get any better. Good to see she's still trucking along

A new picture would be great, but on a side note, if the cinnamon is a hen its a cracker!

Any evidence of egg eating? White flecks of egg shell leftover? Patches of yellow (egg yolk stains). Anything like that? If she has laid on any given day you should notice, after laying hens often look like they've gone from being fat to anorexic and then they are plump again the next day. My hens often come outside and fan their wings out and pant after laying an egg and then go back inside after a minute or two.

Just because you dont see them mating, doesnt mean they are not. I have cocks I have seen mating all day and never fill an egg. Yet cocks that i've never seen mate have filled every egg their hens ever laid!

The chance of each gene getting passed on are quite simply worked out on punnet squares. Each bird has 1 pair (2 genes) for a specific mutation. There is a 50/50 chance the of passing on either gene to the child, and the childs pair is made up of 1 copy of the gene from each parent. So for example if you have two normal greens, they both have the wild type gene for yellow production. Each parent will be (W/W) (w for wild type just for this example). In this case even though there is still a 50% chance for either of the genes to be passed on, they are all the same type of gene so all chicks will be (W/W). If you then change one parent to be split for blue (W/:D and the other remains normal (W/W) then you do the Punnet square like this basically: Parent 1: (W/:D Parent 2: (W/W) Possible combinations in the chicks: Parent 1 (W) Parent 2 (W) (first of 2 W's)= (W/W) chick (1/4 or 25%) Parent 1 (W) Parent 2 (W) (second of 2 W's) = (W/W) chick (1/4 or 25%) Parent 1 (B.) Parent 2 (W) (first of 2 W's) = (B/W) chick (1/4 or 25%) Parent 1 (B.) Parent 2 (W) (second of 2 W's) = (B/W) chick (1/4 or 25%) So you can see there, you will get 50% normal wildtype chicks (W/W) and 50% wild type (green) split for blue. (Eg add up all the identical mutation outcomes 1/4 + 1/4 or 25% and 25% and you get 50% for W/W and 50% for W/:D. Now change it so BOTH parents are split for blue and you get this: Parent 1: (W/:D Parent 2: (W/B) Possible combinations in the chicks: Parent 1 (W) Parent 2 (W) (first of 2 yellow production genes)= (W/W) chick (1/4 or 25%) Parent 1 (W) Parent 2 (B.) (second of 2 yellow production genes) = (W/W) chick (1/4 or 25%) Parent 1 (B.) Parent 2 (W) (first of 2 yellow production genes) = (B/W) chick (1/4 or 25%) Parent 1 (B.) Parent 2 (B.) (second of 2 yellow production genes) = (B/W) chick (1/4 or 25%) Now add up all similar mutation outcomes = 2 x W/B is 1/4 + 1/4 or 25% + 25% = 50% chance of (W/B) (Green split blue) 1 x W/W is 1/4 or 25% = 25% chance of (W/W) (Normal green) 1 x B/B is 1/4 or 25% = 25% chance of B/B (normal blue). So to sum up you can say the outcomes for green split blue x green split blue are 25% normal green, 50% green split blue, 25% blue chicks. Or you could say one in four chicks will be normal green, 2 in four will be green split blue, 1 in four will be blue. AKA for every four chicks you will get ONE blue if thats what you are after But those are just the odds anyway. Single factor violet x single factor violet would be the same - 25% no violet, 50% single factor violet, 25% double factor violet. Whether a gene is recessive, full dominant, partial dominant or co-dominant has no affect on the chance of it getting passed on. Its ALWAYS 50/50 as two which of the 2 genes for the mutation is passed on and that applies to each gene that gets passed on to the sperm or egg. Sex linked are a little bit different however, wont go into that This is the same for all mutations, look online for punnet sqaure examples or tests you can do yourself.

:rofl: Anyone? Hard to say about the dark factor. Violet would give a dark factor-like change to his appearance, law of percentages would argue he has one dark factor :rofl: Could be zero, but its neither here nor there until you breed him!

You had your answer that it was the father way back then (in red) Wish i had seen this thread before, they look cute with the pin feathers. Lucky for you the son carries the gene. If this chick is already set for sale why not breed the father again? you might get another one (or more) In response to your first quote - read my last message. The father sired some 20-30 chicks prior to that with NO crest-like disturbance. Then with the violet hen, two chicks appeared with it, BOTH from the same cock AND same hen. These were the hens first chicks and the cock had already produced many chicks with NO disturbance so I thought it was the hen and sold the cock bird. I got another 5 chicks from that cock and the violet hen, none of whom had the disturbance, so i paired her up with another cock to see if it WAS her, and none of those 6 chicks had it either. Sold the cock bird thinking the violet hen was the carrier. I do have some of his offspring still.

Interesting update. I sold the father of both crested hens and kept the violet mother - thinking that the 'partial crest' (or feather disturbance or whatever you want to call it) was from her. Turns out it was from the father! Heres a brief (but incomplete) history of his chicks: Father x grey opaline hen = had around 20 chicks together, NONE showed any feather disturbances that I was aware of. Mind you this was VERY early in my breeding history. Father x YF violet hen = 2 partial crested hens, both of whom were (coincidentally?) superior to their siblings visually (size, feather, spots etc). Well of the 20 odd chicks with the grey opaline, I kept one son who was the same visual mutation as dad (yf2 opaline sky blue). I use him in my hand tame / pet type breeding as he is gorgeous. He was paired with an older hen who laid 7 eggs, 6 of which were porous and dried out at varying ages. The seventh somehow survived and hatched - and is now showing the same spiral feather disturbance as one of his aunties. The first hen had a double spiral as you can see in the beginning of this thread, the second had a single one just on the left side - exact same spot as this boy (her nephew) has. Unfortunately this pairing (and this chick) were pre-ordered hand tame babies so i've already made a commitment to sell him!!!!!!!!!!! I really want to back out and keep him to breed back to the aunty with a double spiral as I want to try double up on this. I've talked to the potential owner about 'borrowing' him for breeding once he's older and she's agreed thus far... I don't know... I really want to keep him but its already been arranged... T_T Here are some pics, I added arrows to one to show the direction the feathers are obviously growing as it doesnt show as clearly in pictures. A few days ago: Today: More from today: Directional arrows to show growth direction a bit clearer: Normal chicks feather growth:

Once caught a hen in the process of doing the same, fortunately caught her very early on but she had a mouth full of pin feathers in the shaft still and she froze instantly and had this really aggressive look to her - started squawking at me. Lets just say she found herself in the flights very very quickly

Scrambled :thumbs_up: Or scrambles.

My double yolker had two little heart beats at day 4, night 5 there was apparently some sort of night fright, 2 hens off nest including double yolker hen. Lost both nests of eggs, hens went right out of brooding mode and would not lay again, both in the flights now.

Male recessive pied.

You could try the bottle brush tie method? Or some other soft coated thin wire tie off type method. Be very careful to make a fixed loop that cant be shaken off but wont tighten or you'll lose the feet to strangulation. One method I considered trying was to use to open leg rings (the ones you can close around the leg and then release later if you want). Tie some wire or string to each ring, and then close the rings over each leg. Worth a shot.

Well you learned tip #1 - dont pull blood feathers! Unfortunate timing of moulting is a constant problem. It is helpful to time feed changes or other changes that can force a bird to moult about 8 weeks prior to a show. Often birds moult after breeding, feed changes, location changes etc so these are tricks that CAN be utilised if done properly. As for the actual preparation I've never really done it so i'll leave it to the experts

But a mauves cheek patch is very different to the colour of this birds cheek patch! But then we've seen a lot of variation in cheek patch colours that are 'supposed' to be either violet or slate blue. Whether that is the problem with blue showing up properly on camera, use of flash or not, camera quality, light quality or just the birds themselves who can say lol. Edit: But I will agree that a mauves cheek patch is different from the colour that appears in the photos of this bird.

Interestingly the whole "violet grey or mauve?" is a reasonably tricky and often debated distinction. If you look back through my threads you can see how hard it was to figure out the colour of my own violet grey / mauve chick. Turned out to be a violet grey, but i later bred a mauve that was a very very close colour. In both birds the tail was the main identifier - the violet grey had a black tail, the mauve had a deep deep blue tail. Your bird is pied - it has a white tail. So no help there (See why I advise avoiding pied until you have fixed your violet line? Then its a simple matter to introduce a double factor dominant pied cock to one or more double factor violet hens from your violet line and bingo!) Link to thread: Mauve Or Violet Grey?

If he is grey, pair him to a sky blue and you'll get 50% grey factor and 50% blue chicks (not counting dark factor or violet). If you are trying to see if he ALSO has violet, then HALF of those blue chicks have a chance of visually showing it. Because grey cannot be masked, the best way to get rid of it is to pair greys to blues (or greens if thats what you want) and only keep the chicks without grey. No other way to do it

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Parrots-1638/20...ying-eggs-1.htm Answer at bottom of page.... The spinach rumor took on a life of its own once laypeople heard that it can prevent calcium absorption. They seem to have taken that one little fact and passed it around until it was nowhere near what it started out being.A bird would have to eat almost nothing but spinach for this to happen. Reasonable amounts, together with other foods in a balanced diet, will not, in most birds, be harmful. Calcium deficiency comes more from an all seed diet than anything else. Lack of natural sunlight or full spectrum light, thus blocking vitamin D which aids in the absorption of calcium is the next most common cause. It's virtually unheard of for any pet bird to suffer hypocalcemia due to spinach eating. I'd have to agree - the story about spinach binding to calcium is true, but it ONLY applies to calcium consumed at the same time as the spinach and it doesnt bind to ALL of the calcium. Its quite relative - how much calcium is bound is dependant on how much spinach is eaten. The birds are consuming calcium blocks throughout the day from what i've observed so spinach is fine, calcium binding is a factor but the benefits of the other nutritional aspects of spinach far outweigh any calcium binding concerns. However - I would be hesitant to give it to birds who are known to produce weak or soft shelled eggs but thats just common sense in my books! And it actually provides a lot of calcium in and of itself - perhaps more is provided per leaf than it can even bind so the worry may not be valid at all!