Kazzy

I am very excited and so happy that Sheila and Sherbert are doing such a great job looking after the babies. I also got 4 babies in another nest (mum is creamino and dad a green spangle/albino - two of the chicks have red eyes as well). Kazzy, I had a look at your fabulous aviary....it looks fantastic! Do you breed for show or just pet types? I'm moving away from pet types and breeding more show types these days..... well trying

Thanks guys. I do love it too. Taboo, it can hold about 100 to 150 birds. They have plenty of room to fly and do love it too. I feel we did go back in time Maddy! We searched many places to get recycled materials. We found the old toilet door and porch flooring at a demolish of a house, and the roofing iron and weather boards was from an old farm house. I think it took more time actually getting the recycled materials than actually putting it up! Heres another photo. View from the house:

Thanks Kaz, its working really great. I have done some upgrades: Enclosed a small part of the veranda for breeding cages, concreted the floor, and put a small garden along the front. Of course since joining the local budgie club, I have expanded my flock quite quickly and found that the room that I have could run out very quickly. However, I am determined for this not to happen as I love my aviary and its appeal and don't want it to begin to look like a very big mess of sheds added together. Staying to a strict managable sized flock also keeps only the best birds in my aviary to work with. I have also started a vegetable garden and of course grow silverbeet especially for the birds. Although the sparrows love them too! Those pests! These photos were taken about 6 months ago, but not much has changed since (except the plants have grown a bit......actually looking at it now... the plants have grown alot)

The yellow faces are gorgeous

Wow! What a box full of babies you have! I also breed lacewings and albinos. Yep. I agree. You definitely have a lacewing there on the left. It will be a hen too! Can't wait to see photos of them feathering.

Gorgeous photos! :mallet: What camera was it taken with? Such a great moment captured!

Hi, I currently have GenericBlue's sky fallow cock in my aviary at the moment. I am hoping he will like one of my hens for breeding after winter. He is lovely GB!!!!

Sunshine, out of all the green series, I think the grey green bird is the prettiest. Especially cinnamon pied grey greens..... lovely outcome.

I've noticed that mine seem to sleep hanging onto the aviary wire on mild nights, but as the weather is getting colder, they are now sleeping on perches where it is warmer.

Welcome Robyn. Reading your thread reminded me of myself about 2 years ago. I too started out with a similar sized aviary with 4 budgies.... since then I now have about 40 birds, my husband has built me a fantastic cottage style aviary and I am going to my first budgie club meeting in a few weeks. Have fun here!

Last year I used cheap tarps to protect my aviary They are great budget water protection (you can get them for about $2 each), however they don't let any precious winter sun or light into the aviary. So I made some of my own plastic blinds today, instead of purchasing a blind which is quite expensive. I went to Clark Rubber and found some PVC which is generally used for table cloths. It comes in different thicknesses and I found that .3mm was probably sufficent. It's not rated for outside used because over the years it will break down. But I will be removing it in the Spring anyway. You can buy it by the metre, about $13 per metre, and the width of the roll was 1.8m, which is about the width of my wire. (Unlike the Bunnings blinds which the standard width was 90cm with a 2.4 m drop, which it a bit too long for my wire) I then purchased a tool to punch eyelets into the plastic (cost about $10) to attach the plastic to the wire with cable ties. On one side of the aviary I attached a small length of polly pipe with cloth tape so I can roll it up on the nice days, (this side is also under my veranda, so it really is more for wind protection than rain protection). On the otherside I just fastened all around using cable ties. All up it cost me about $50 instead of hundreds, and I have left over plastic for any breeding cages that might need protection too! Some pictures: The front with the blind rolled up The front with the blind down Side of aviary

Loooooove your pied babies Very pretty!

What a great story.

I must say that Nibbler is cute but this guy above has the gorgeous head "fluff" in this photo. So cute

He is a Greywing. I thought he was a grey greywing, but he might be a sky greywing. I'll find out when I bred him. He is an 08 rung bird so I am waiting till after winter to be sure that he is old enough then.

The sun in the aviary this morning was lovely and so I decided to take some photos of the "heavy moulters" Poor things :thumbs_up:

Is Minka a melanistic spangle? Great birds!

I was thinking also the same idea too. Maybe a sky blue (or violet) spangle cinnamon pied (even with a yellow face would be pretty)

Welcome to the forum

Thinking of you AV.

Recently I had my lutino hen develop a feather cyst on her left wing. The trip to the vet confirmed this and he showed me how to lance the cyst. It appears to regrow after every lance, (so far she has had it lanced twice) but I concentrate on removing as much of the feather and folicle as possible in hope to completely stop the regrowth. The cyst hasn't stopped her from having a happy & healthy life in the aviary. She is looking the best she has ever been (except fot the feather cyst of course). For those interested in some pictures of early stages of a feather cyst I have added them below. Hope this helps others.

Isn't nature wonderful! Every now and then something different from the norm is presented to us as a treasure. How special are these hens!! Can't wait to see further photos and updates of these girls.

Spikes and tail-less birds in my aviary too! What... a show during major moult? Wouldn't you think a show during this time of the year is a bit hard to pull off Kaz? Do many shows run at this time of year?

Hi Welcome. Your boy "budgie" is a lovely size. I had to laugh about your name choice. I had a cat when I was a kid called "puss".