nubbly5

Cinnamon opaline cobalt dominant pied - 100% with Dean on this one.

Just a quick non pictorial update. After a bit of a disasterous start with my fallows the Pisano hen and my big fallow boy have hatched 7 out of eight eggs (I've been carefully farming the bigger ones off in an effort not to lose any of the fertile later hatching eggs and it's payed off with only one egg addling early on - YYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY! Also a point of interest is that after laying 6 eggs I took the renegade but very beautiful 3rd place nats lacewing boy away from his hen. She layed one more egg and has sat faithfully on the eggs and has hatched her first healthy pinkie, well fed and looking great. Before the eggs if they didn't addle had difficulty hatching and if they did the chicks didn't survive. After watching this, I'm noticing that in nests where cocks seem to spend lots of time in the nest itself have more addling eggs. This could well be my imagination but then again maybe not. I need to keep some records and then compare hatchability with the cocks removed so that they don't disturb the eggs and hens as much. Will take some pics when the opportunity presents itself as there are some very nice babies coming through.

Ooops thought it was all different birds......

Gee THAT sounds like fallows!!!! Maybe that's another distinguishing feature

And by the rump but you REALLY have to know what you are looking for(just VERY slightly coloured compared to lacewing but you wouldn't see that in opalines)! And yep I've bred 2 of them. How ARE those cin fallows going RIP? Also overheard one fellow at a club meeting saying I got these lacewings from my fallows and I've not had a lacewing near the place ever........ I asked if they were hens, yep! was the answer. We they are likely to be cin fallows then..................

Very nice parents dude! Chicks with good promise but I'd love to see them fully moulted!

Some very handy youngsters there jlee! Hahahaha for some reason that exhibition budgie bug bites really hard too!

Having been there Finnie, I totally agree. Same with horse shows too. The only difference is it's horrible bitchy women in dogs and horses and horrible bitchy men in chooks and budgies - sorry everyone I know this is a gross generalization and much of the present company is excluded of course

Nope, no scale there by the looks of it.

Sexy hen that Nubbly

I'm with Jimmy. I LOVE budgie auctions. Everything about them - selling, buying, looking at the birds, the competition for the bird I want and the social environment. Having been in the hobby for 10 years means that I really don't think I've experienced it any other way than how it is now. Even when I started people were sending birds east for auctions but what I see now is more WA people sourcing birds from eastern states auctions. Our WA auctions have MANY (too many in my opinion) lesser quality birds available for the beginner some selling for $30 or sometimes even less BUT people seem to want instant success and want top quality for nothing and to win overnight. Although I don't begrudge the people I have helped, I've noticed many want birds that have taken me 10 years to produce without realizing that those are the birds I will likely keep to work with and the lesser quality ones are the ones I will sell. So I agree wholeheartedly that beginners want that instant success and pay for it if they can where as the poorer but hard working beginner, unless they have the patience and persistence to keep at it, get left behind and get disillusioned. I think this hobby does resemble the horse industry to a large degree. You might laugh but I'll explain why....... There is a proportion of people who have enough resources to buy themselves every winner under the sun, then there are the small time owners who have enough to own part of a horse and if they are lucky enough might find a winner. In budgies the richer ones can buy whatever stock they want in and can maintain their winning status even if they cannot breed livestock to save themselves. Then there are others that have enough to buy a few birds and work with them dillegently to get their winners over a much longer period of time. I think there is room for all in this hobby but money certainly does help fast track your progress but unless you can afford to KEEP paying big bucks you still have to knuckle down and develop your own line. Personally I don't think the lack of beginners in the hobby can be blamed on auctions - or not the larger proportion anyway. I agree with chookbreeder in that the population of today is vastly different. I do feel that to some degree that the budgie clubs are the quintessential "old boys clubs". A lot of the time I also think Halo is way cooler than a lot of old stuffed shirts who make up endless rules about something as pissy as a budgie. Honestly arguing forever about the importance of ring issue dates, how many birds should be benched at Nationals, the exact wording in the standard etc etc etc, let alone the anally retentive people that I have come across who INSIST that when I steward I should stand exactly 3m back and to the left of the judge, keep my head bowed and not even breath. Too many HUGE egos and super self important people is a real turn off. Then it's not a nice social environment so why even bother spending the money to start with if you don't want to spend time with the people anyway? My mother, some 30 years ago went to her very first budgie club meeting here in Perth only to have to sit and listen to 2 hours of argument over trivial stupid stuff just like perch sizes, seed on the cage floor or no seed on the cage floor etc etc etc. Do you think she ever went back? So what has changed? Big fish in little ponds I call it............. My thoughts anyway.

I would say that that is a pretty good reason that you might be getting confused

What do you mean by base colour S_C TBC's have body colour on tails and rumps but it fades out as you go up the body. The chick in question has the typical grizzled grey on the wings and tail you can see that on most of the tail feathers they are normal coloured (as for a normal blue but fade off/grizzle at the ends. The wings are typical for clearbody too although it looks like they are white on the ends of the flights they are actually a light grizzled grey which will darken slightly as the chick moults. Will be interesting to see if it is a cock or a hen in the long run though..... if it's a cock then that IS a bit of a mystery.........

hmm I'm looking forward to her contribution to my stud And sunnie I am pathalogically jealous of you!!!!!! I have had so much trouble with my fallows. But yours are gorgeous and it looks like you are having good breeding success with them!

Some baby photos from tonight. This little cinnamon opaline is looking to have wonderful directional feather - has that eagle look. It's parents are the normal grey cock bird paired with my best opaline lacewing hen. Bummer of it is that this chick looks like being a hen so no split lacewing. There are also 2 cinnamon grey greens in the nest again both looking like hens so might have lucked out on the plit breeding for this round! This is one of the sisters of the above chick. Don't let ANYONE tell you that to get that beautiful golden yellow ground colour you need dark factor normals. This chick shows exactly how golden yellow you can get even a cinnamon's ground colour. These are the birds I use back into my lacewings to achieve that beautiful buttercup yellow. Four chick from my 10th place green boy to a Horrobin opaline spangle cobalt hen that Darryl chose for me from the Brasea auction in Brisbane. A sky opaline. Two dark green opaline spangles just like this. And the youngest, a cutie little normal cobalt. Also snapped in pics tonight. A light green opaline spangle with great feather. From the dark green opaline spangle cock and a dark green hen. No double or even single dark factor chicks - typical!!!!!! But still nice feathered useful babies. The unhappy normal sky sister of the chick above. Seems like lots of hens coming through - not a bad thing but I really need some cocks from lacewings and split lacewing pairings. 37 rings put on and quite a few more little babies to come - still only puts me at about 2 chicks per pair for this round. A bit of a slow start. Oh and the really good news is that my 6th place Fallow boy and the Pizano opaline fallow hen have so far hatched 5 babies with 2 more fertile eggs to go.

Looks like a TBC to me.

Welcome Ixion! Looking forward to seeing some of your birds.

Very very nice Splat! I love the opaline cobalt spangle. The others too are very very nice!

Hey Maddy! Welcome back!!!! Very cute name that "vomity pie" and his poor doormat Good luck with the breeding. It'll be interesting seeing the outcomes of the pairings.

Went up to 2 heads town and drove right past "your new house" today. Looks very nice in person and HUGE!

Opaline greywing spangle. I won't guess on the sex though.

Hey Dean the start of this season has been what I would call very average for us. Always seems to be the way before the weather warms up. Reasonable fertility but countless addled and DIS or dead hatchlings, still managed to ring 20-something babies so far but from 24 cabinets that kinda sucks. Still I don't call it a complete disaster until the end of the season but when you are not used to the difficulties of breeding exhibition birds it can really knock the stuffing out of you. As your exhibition flock grows and you have a better selection of experienced birds I think you won't see such wholesale disasters.

Give Rob and Bev our regards. And hope you pick up a bargain or two!

Finally some fallow babies........ 2 hatchees when I checked today! Fingers crossed that all the other fertile eggs hatch.

So a short update. Some varied results so far. 3 complete clear nests so far. All from inexperienced cocks which is a bit disappointing. An absolute disaster from the #1 lacewing pair with only one chick in the end making it out okay. The attacked chick dies along with the other hatchee that came after it and the other eggs bar one addled so it seems stupid cock bird was spending a bit of time tromping around the nest. This time around I will remove the cock just as the first baby hatches and let the hen raise on her own. Other results have been pleasing. Pair #7 Light Green Cock 10th at Nats x Opaline Cobalt Spangle Hen from Jean Horrobin half sister to Opaline Nats Winner have 4 of their own chicks and 1 foster from elsewhere. This pair had a nest full of fertile eggs but didn't hatch all of them they have 2 (others farmed around other nests) plus they have 2 fosters from the dark green opaline spangle and the dark green hen. Lacewing splits are going well with this gorgeous pair having 3 chicks so far. And this pair (brother of 10th place green) having 4 babies and 2 fosters. And this pair - hen is a DF M1 YF to this wonderful and very young light green have 3 of their own babies, the single remaining lw baby from pair #1 plus one other foster. They just hatched out one last baby - the 3rd one - and have fostered that one out. I'm sharing this nest with the old owner of the hen who gifted her to me. Sorry no pics.