nubbly5

Actually just having thought more about that 3rd baby. It could also be a normal fallow just highly affected by the pied gene. It would be more helpful to make a determination once this bird has moulted into it's full adult plummage, as well as shown us 100% to be male or female.

All these babies are German fallow. The 2 lighter ones being cinnamon fallow and the top one being a normal fallow. The 2 lighter ones will be hens as the cock bird is also split for cinnamon. The give away is the body colour evident on both of the "faux" lacewings as in reality lacewings will show NO body colour or some light suffusion/sheen only. I have bred a number of these in the past myself. I am not convinced that the last one can be 100% called a male at this stage with the lighter colouring around the nostrils but if it does, then there is a bit more going on than just cinnamon fallow. It is also a pied too so wing markings have been significantly reduced and also shows a clear cheek patch so any clues from cheek patch colour cannot be gained in this instance. But the fact that you CAN see rump colour makes it more likely for fallow than lacewing. Yes, 3 from 3 is usual but it's a 25% chance for every egg. Oh and just a note - ino and lacewing are 2 different mutations. Calling them a creamino lacewing only serves to confuse. A lacewing is in fact a cinnamon ino as the ino for some reason does not fully remove the cinnamon markings. Ino's show no marking what so ever. The easiest way to determine if lacewing or ino is involved is repair the cock bird to a known normal (non fallow carrier hen). The production of a lacewing hen will or not over a few nests will give you that answer.

Here here. Very good book but takes some effort to read and understand. Start with easy basic stuff to read like understanding recessive genes and how they work, then sex linked recessive genes etc etc. Look at the varieities you like first (you tend to learn more when you are interested in something in particular). Lot of info on the web if you look. Most of all - have fun! It's a fascinating subject.

Beautiful!

The fist chick is a goldenface NOT green split blue (which is visually a green bird and a green bird only!!!) Working through the genetic options and looking at the birds parents I'd suggest that your hen is a combination yf & gf and the father is a green split blue. Although gf is "technically" dominant over yellow face, in reality both modify the other to some degree so a combo will look different to either. These are being bred in numbers now that the ANBC has introduced the Golden Face as a national variety so we are seeing more and more what the combination of golden face and yellow face produces and it's something in between the 2. So the 3 chicks would possibly be: Golden face split blue (visually goldenface), yellow face split blue (visually yellow face, green split either golden face or yellow face. It may be that the father is split for golden face but then you would not get a visually yellow face baby only greens and golden faces (apart from a 25% chance of a combo again so it may be that as chick 3...) A few options there I suppose.

I think it's fantastic. I can spend no money, time or effort at all trying to improve my birds and then sell them to unsuspecting SUCKERS who want to buy a "minature" budgerigar!!! But seriously, go and buy a bird from any petshop, so long as it's pretty coloured and it will win at miniature shows. Where is there ANY challenge in that. AND for the record I'd challenge Mr Burke to come to my aviary and find a non-flyer. He completed rooted the lovely crossbred mongrel with his stupid designer "Sh*t-Poos", "Cocka-shits" and "Malti-shits", he could have just left the poor old pet shop budgie alone..... wonder if we'll have miniture budgie mills, just like the puppy mills that pump out thousands of the Mr Burke endorsed "designer dogs". Oh and Phoenix - English Budgerigar stems from the fact that the English, being the small livestock embassadores that they are, were the ones who initially spent the time increasing the size and feather of the budgies that were brought over to England from Australia originally. When they got re-imported to Australia they were distinguished from the smaller (non-improved) Australian budgerigars. The showies now tend to distinguish them by Show birds/Petshop birds. But I'd suggest it's a similar situation in the US with the improved birds being termed by the layman as English Budgerigars.

Do you actually have apicture of speckles? It would help to determine what he/she is.

Well anthracite is one thing but you can easily combine the dark factor with grey as Nerwen suggests. So in effect you can have no dark factor grey (would equate to sky if it were blue), single dark factor grey (would equate to cobalt) and double dark factor grey (would be a mauve if blue). So you could purchase a cobalt and pair it with a grey the resultant chicks having a 50% chance of single dark factor. BUT it is pretty difficult to determine the difference between non, single and double dark factors on grey birds. There are subtle differences but generally difficult. Violet on grey can give a more bluey grey. Again hard to tell but some subtle differences.

She is definitely opaline spangle and violet. The colour on her shoulder and lower belly area certainly suggests violet but it's harder to tell due to the yellow pigment from the YF and the pied markings. Dad does not have the violet factor. I'm with hilly on the cinnamon bit. Would need better pics of the youngsters to tell if they are cinnamon (they'd have to be hens too). Oh and she is definitely SF dommie as at least one of the chicks is non-dommie. Dunno re the rec pied combo and I'm with Finnie test breeding but probably not worth the effort anyway - besides, what a lovely batch of really different chicks you got out of that pairing!!!

Hi Jono There are 2 budgerigar clubs in Perth and 1 in Mandurah. Metropolitan Budgerigar Club - Meets in Bassendean Rare Budgerigar Club - Meets in Girrahween SW Budgerigar Club - Meets in Mandurah All have websites with contact details.

okay Splat. How about another blast on the photo show. Surely we have SOME people (like me) happy to enter some birds again!

Definietly fallow! And as Neville says the lacewing was a cin fallow. Having bred a number of these I can tell you that they are virtually impossible to tell from a lacewing except when you breed them.

Meant to being the operative word Kaz. If you rely too heavily on the standard (which is only an opinion of perfection) then you get too bogged down on detail. So many things can affect colour of feet, markings, etc etc that you can get really tangled in the "but the wing markings are more grey than brown" or "it's feet are pink not grey". Even with pink feet it looks greywing. It may have been bred through Cinnamon or maybe the dilution is affecting foot colour too. Who knows. All I can say is that with the evidence presented here it looks like a greywing. Maybe down the track with some breeding results under her belt there may be evidence of something else.

Wow Finnie! Really no spangles? We had an auction here recently and there were so many spangles and they have so gone off the popularity scale that many of them were passed in. Can't move for spangles over here. I can't stop breeding the buggers and I don't want them really. Just have to treat them like a normal in my breeding program......

Hi b4l! There are quite a few clubs around on the east coast (although being here in WA I don't know exactly where they are). Maybe contacting the Aust National Budgerigar Council will help put you in touch with your closest affiliated club.

I was on the FB pages until a) someone got stuck into me for some help I tried to give and b ) another someone broke into a few aviaries in WA and advice was given not to post birds on FB. The a) can go and stick his head back up his **** from where he pulled it in the first place and the b ) hasn't been caught yet so my visits to the FB pages are over. Not that I've had a lot of time to be either here or there to be honest. I'll try and take some pics of some of my new youngsters to post up soon....... I hope. Hehehe I do love how this forum censors out things like **** but not cock!

Could be either! Still well worth the pairing and it's kind of fun to see the outcome of a not 100% certain pairing!

I'm not 100% sure..... any more information about usage - oral or spot on? A WORD OF WARNING GUYS. JUST CHECKED WITH MY VET TO MAKE SURE .IVOMECTIN FOR BIRDS IS BROKEN DOWN WITH OTHER THINGS, THEY DON'T USE POUR ON IT'S A DIFFERENT ONE SO YOU COULD KILL YOUR BIRDS IF YOU USE POUR ON. Please check with an Avian vet before using it. And that is how your vet makes his $.

Yep.... have to admit that my life has changed somewhat and the BBC has taken a back seat. I have a cruize around every now and then to see what's going on but that's about all. Have no time to take pics and post but try and help out now and then...... Um sorry......

In answer to your cheek patch question. Mauve makes for quite dark (dull even) cheek patches. Violet modifier too can affect cheek patch colour making it deeper in colour. Really I still do think this guy is a greywing based on 2 different things. Wing markings (not so much the colour - I've had clearwings with darker wing markings than this) but the clarity. The thing that I've noticed over the years is that greywings (not dirty clearwings) have quite stark markings whereas clearwings have fuzzy markings. The second thing is his body colour. It's too dark for dilute. okay it could be clearwing OR greywing based on colour but all things considered I'd still have to say greywing. There is always the opportunity to be wrong though! As Finnie says test mating can help but these 3 varieites are so muddied these days that even that can be difficult.

She doesn't look cinnamon or dilute but she IS opaline which will affect the way the wing markings look. I'd wager on greywing. Don't know about full bodied (greywing/clearwing) as many of them breed true with a full body colour anyway these days. Only test mating over time will work that one out. Just a thought...... what do cinnamon greywings look like?..........

Tania these varieties have features that are often almost interchangable depending on how they have been bred. To me he looks very much like the original greywings - 1/2 body colour, soft but distinct grey wong markings and his tail QUILL looks grey in the top feather. The bottom feather is more neutral quill colour which may indicate dilute or maybe because his grey wing markings are quite light. Suffusion level is very subjective too and being violet (I don't agree with mauve but think he is cobalt & violet) you can often get very washed out violets. In my clearwings I have a line of birds that breed this pale washy violet. I think it's been documented somewhere else too from memory. This combined with the dilution of the greywing could produce his body colour. But so could the dilute mutation. He is strongly coloured enough to be a greywing and dilute enough to be a dilute. He might well be a heavily suffused dilute only to me his wing markings are more distinct than most dilutes I've seenand his body colour more heavy. The trouble with these varieties is that their characterstics are partly governed by modifiers which affect wing markings and suffusion level and these can be interchanged between the 3 varieties on this allele sometimes making a 100% distinction difficult. You can get dilutes that have NO wing markings if they have been bred through clearwings due to the carryover of the clearwing wing modifiers to the dilute. Still my best guess (and other might guess the other way) based on what I've seen from my birds and others over the years, would be greywing.

Looks like a Greywing to me. There is a huge variation in the depth of greywing wing colour and the original greywing mutation was a 1/2 body colour with grey wing markings. The key difference for me between greywing and clearwing is the CLARITY of the wing markings (although a good clearwing should not really have any most do). The greywing markings seem way more stark, more precise whereas clearwing markings when they have them seem more fuzzy and indistinct. But the body colour is a giveaway. Clearwing would be bright vibrant colour. Dilute SHOULD be more diluted than this. My pitch..... Greywing.

Light Green Opaline Spangles. One of them well marked (black wing markings) one of them poorly marked.

Really nice combo of babies. That's the fun part of breeding budgies in my opinion. Bred a grey dommie (told she was violet grey but who would know by looking) to a sky blue cock and got, grey norms, grey violet norms, cobalt norms, violet norms, grey doms, violet grey doms, skyblue norm and a cute little cinnamon opaline sky dom (over 2 rounds) ....... mix and match babies The things that come out of the breedings as a surprise are the thing that makes it interesting!