nubbly5

Dammit! Hen died! That's $400 and no hen!!!!!!! She passed the egg but had obviously prolapsed overnight. Sunnie, I've has soooooooo much trouble breeding fallows that I can't speak from experience other than to say that my best fallow HAS come from a split to split pairing. But I've really not bred too many totally to be able to say for sure. But *** the wastage is high.

Definitely a boy kellyj just that the pied acts on the cere too removing colour there as well so the normal blue cere appears pinky purple.

Dammit! The violet fallow hen I got from the last brasea auction is egg bound........ What's with these fallows!!!!!!!!! She is now oiled to the max and in the heat box hoping she passes the egg okay. Otherwise, more eggs and all pairs nesting etc.

Thanks for all the wishes guys! It makes a big difference. Finnie the bell thing - Grant did suggest it but I also suggested that he might invest in a new helmet first coz I'm bound to smack him And Splat - what a horror! I can't believe how quickly it all can change...... I can certainly relate at least to some degree.

I wish I could make some money off this one! I've DONATED it to BRASEA so all the proceeds go to them......

Thanks Catherine, Kaz and GB. I had a shower and a big cry whilst there was noise to cover it but still feeling sickened but very thankful. He's home now after being at the emergency ward for 7 hours for x-rays and CT scans. He's resting comfortably enough. Leg is okay, only the small bone in the leg (fibula) but shoulder is pretty shattered. Still, he's alive with little long term worry. Bike is a write off though.

Well it's got to have been one of the worst days I've ever had......... Hubby and I went for a ride with a group of friends. I was happily tonkering along at the back only to come around a corner to see a bike laying trashed at the side of the road. In horror I realized it was my husbands bike. It was absolutley smashed facing the way we had come and on the other side of the road with Grant nowhere to be seen. The guys we were riding with said I screamed from the moment I realized what had happened to when I found him injured but okay down the imbankment. He is one lucky boy, after hitting a tree it looks like his bike became airborne, somersaulting and spitting him off over the top. He must have hit a few things on the way to his final stopping position as he now has a broken leg (fibula only) and a shattered shoulder blade and a crack into the shoulder joint. No internal injuries, no plaster and no surgery at this stage. I can't tell you how it felt to not know if you are going to find your soulmate dead on the side of the road. I am still very shaken, although while looking after hubby I'm being brave and strong - inside I'm churned up and teary........ Needed to share somehow.

I'm guessing he is the author of one of my favourite colour genetics books "A Guide to Colour Mutations & Genetics in Parrots". edit - meaning Dr Terry Martin. Oops Sorry Anne - as usual I didn't realize I wasn't on the last page - doh! Hoping your hen recovers.

Just got back from ANOTHER week away with work and have done a quick count up of some 20+ eggs with some showing fertility already YAAAAAAHOOOOOO! This pair has laid 4 eggs. The first was porous and broken and so was discarded but they have since laid another 3 with the first of these showing fertility. I'm soooooo excited as these are a very nice pair of dark factor birds and I really am hoping for some olives and dark greens - I don't mind at all about the opaline as I hope to use the babies in my fallow breeding. Spangles are neither here nor there but I'll take whatever I get very happily! This pair has 3 eggs. No fertility signs yet but might be a touch early if the first egg is infertile. But I'm soooooooo pleased and very hopeful for this pairing. Oh and all changed pairs are now exploring their nest boxes.

oooooh Global Moderator! So we can't p*ss you off now Finnie, is that right?

Bugger! So sorry to hear that Kaz! She will be remembered in all her many and various progeny that adorn your and others aviaries!

Oooh! Lots of babies coming now! Really looking forward to fledging photo's tosee what surprises have comeout of your pairings.

hen

RIP the reason I said rec pied in the end is the excessive grizzling of the wing markings. I was initially thinking this is just TBC but usually TBC grizzled grey markings are towards the bottom on the wings not up at the shoulder like this hen has. Still think it could be a heavily marked dom pied too but the grizzed markings just don't fit for me. As always there are a few different alternatives and it's always a bit of detective work, sometimes not getting the full answer until after the chick has moulted or sometimes after you've bred from the chick to confirm something. Yarr! but you LIKE my cinnamon fallows right?

Niiiiiice! RIP I was thinking the same thing :nest:

Thanks Anne, info like this is very interesting and extremely helpful to the rest of us!

Thanks CB, they certainly are a hard variety to maintain for some reason..... I thought getting some of Jean's birds would be a good option and was lucky enough to have Daryl bid at the Brasea auction for me. Also super nice of Jean to gift the green split hen I thought. The cock in the first photo is a boy I bred that came 6th at Tassie. His split brother and sister are down together too so hoping I can continue something of that line. Yeah, John has had some nice fallows but I'm not sure how his birds are going at the moment - don't think his health has been the best lately!

No worries Snoopy nice to see you on the forum! I think the surprise packages that pop out of different pairings is the exciting part of breeding budgies. To more clutches you breed from these parents the better the idea you will have on whats hidden underneath!

Thanks Shannon, that's nice to know as I really don't know anything about his birds!

Not spangle! One of the parent would need to be spangle and they are definitely not. TBC and dom pied would be my guess based on the parents. The mum is a pretty heavily marked dom pied so the lack of markings wouldn't be a surprise on this chick. Grizzled grey wings is a giveaway for TBC. But I also think opaline due to the head markings that I CAN see (not many mind you), the diluted body colour and the wing markings but I'd have to see that one solid coloured tail to give you a definite on that one. Maybe greywing too just looking at the throat spots but hard to tell. Seems a bit too diluted for just oplaine so maybe greywing is a real possibility. Possibility of red pied I suppose as grizzled wings is also a rec pied indicator but I'm not convinced. okay just had a bit of a comparo and getting more into the rec pied idea! So revising to TBC opaline rec pied (maybe greywing in there too.....).

Well that is too bad, cuz it sounds like you would be, in a way, ruining your dilutes. If you take good ones to get the splits, and then further down they pop back out with that modifier, and they aren't showable. Well dilutes are not currently a big show variety. They are not included as a national variety and only lumped into a combined AOSV (any other standard variety) class along with saddlebacks, ummm and a couple of other varieties (bad for a judge aren't I! my standards in the car and I can't be fagged getting it!). I'm not sure what the consensus would be if clearwing modified dilutes get onto the show bench, might be good...... less markings and all that...... not sure really. Things are changing here though and there are strong noises that dilutes will be a national variety soon so maybe they will be elevated from a tool used to improve greywings and clearwings to a competitive variety in their own right. Probably the worse problem is that the clearwings will also modify their size and feather making them less able to compete against dilutes that pop out of a normals breeding program.

Well some of you might know that I've been struggling keeping my fallows going in any sensible fashion. So this year I was at the deciding point should I continue with this variety or quit them completely. I've got too many varieties as it is but then when I took stock of what I still had in the aviary it was enough to rebuild with some added input. So at the last Brasea auction I purchased 3 birds 2 visual fallows and one split. And then at the Pine Rivers Auction I purchased 3 more visuals (all with the help of Daryl! Thanks so much!). So here are pics of them all bar a sky fallow cock from the first lot. Violet Fallow hen from the Brasea show from Jean Horrobin. She is actually not a big bird but (not that the photo shows it) she has a lovely face and is reasonably wide across the cere and has good body colour. This cobalt split fallow is also from Jean Horrobin at the Brasea Auction. Very small but reasonable feather and from a family that apparently breeds really solid hens. The green slip fallow hen is a free bird that Jean popped in with the Pisano birds that I got from the Pine Rivers Auction (how nice is she) that is related to the cobalt cock (maybe brother and sister or half brother and sister). She is a lovely solid '08 hen that Jean was not using this year. 2 visual fallows from the Pine Rivers Auction from Antonio Pisano. The cock on the left has a really nice face for a fallow better than the cock of the right but both have good body colour. Neither are large birds but then I didn't pay heaps for them either. This opaline fallow hen, also a Pisano bird, is poorly coloured without much feather but hey she's a fallow so I'm not complaining AND she is a '10 bird. So will be useful for me in the future. Only the sky fallow also from the Brasea Auction I have not photographed. He is the poorest of all the birds but bred from Horrobin x Golightly lines and again, he's a fallow so who is complaining. Will get a pick of him later.

So before that happened, you would occasionally use a normal to improve your clearwings, and their body color? Also, when using the dilutes, does that get you a nice line of dilutes going at the same time, since with the /dilutes, you will sometimes get a nice visual dilute pop out? Well I'm not a clearwing expert by any stretch of the imagination but yes plus ensuring that you don't use clearwings with a lesser body colour when you pair back the clearwings. It's really evident in some of the violets actually - just as a random comment . Yes you will have the odd dilute pop out if you pair clearwing/dilute to clearwing/dilute (25% chance) BUT the unfortunate thing is that most of them are of such poor quality that it's not really worth putting them back into the clearwings (unless they are an improvement on what you've already got) and they are not that much use for other varieties (except maybe BES) as the clearwing modifies the dilute so you get a kind of dliute clearwing (it's actually a dilute but has the wing modifiers of the clearwing) so good for BES which require no markings so long as they are of better quality. Why oh why did I take these things on is beyond me - but the are PRETTY!

His finer points are that he has nice feather is a large boy AND he is dilute so when you breed him to clearwings all the chicks will be visually clearwing split for dilute. The cheats way of improving clearwings! They also have less dark wing modifiers so generally affect wing markings less than normal outcrosses. The only issue is that over time and with constant use you can also dilute the body colour of clearwings bred from them. Yep, I've not spent any money at a vets on one single bird actually - that's not a brag by the way, it's just more of a flock mentality come from working in production animal systems. I've spent money on a FLOCK diagnosis but not to save one single bird no matter how expensive or valuable it might be in my program. MAINLY because I'm of the opinion that, by letting the birds select themselves out to some degree, that I retain a flock of birds that have robust healthy immune systems (as much as I can affect that). BUT I will intervene in a mass disease outbreak as some of the issues stem around intensive livestock raising conditions imposed on the birds by us. You should see those budgies out in the wild. They would rarely if ever come in contact with their own or other budgies poo's, they fly for miles and roost in trees so spread apart. 2 or 4 in a tree and they flit around all over the place....... And I'd rather not lose quantities of my budgies all at the same time, it kinda puts a big dent in your breeding program.