nubbly5

Thanks Dude, I've got about 160 birds currently.

Looking forward to seeing some clearwing and lacewing results there Shannon. Hope all goes well!

Well had our first egg today but it had a little porous line at the pointy end and was stoved in so threw that one away, but boding well for the keenness of the hens. It was from pair 8 - Dark Green Opaline Spangle x Normal Dark Green I have also changed all of the pairs that were not showing any interest in going into the nest. Pair 13, 16 and 21. So pair 13 is now: Dilute x Dark Green Clearwing - this is one nice clearwing hen but a little more heavily marked than the previous one. Pair 16 is now: Olive Clearwing x Violet Clearwing - more heavily marked than the previous hen but not as bad as some of the hens I've got and she'll add more style to the cock. Pair 21 is now: Normal Cobalt/Fallow x Normal Light Green/Fallow - Both these birds came from Jean Horrobin, the cobalt from the Brasea auction and the hen as a freebie in my last lot of birds from the Pine River Auction. BUT the cock doesn't feel full behind the vent so I'm expecting that unless he really kicks in over the next week or so that these guys will be fosters for the first round. I was pretty stuck for cocks though so there is little choice I'm afraid. He looked shell shocked and worse for wear when he arrived, very light on too but over the last week he has settled in and is starting to look respectable again.

Very nice cock bird violet or no! The hen is okay but not the quality of the cock by far.

I am more than happy to discuss capitalism, but firstly I need to now your critque of Karl Marx, and Marxism, so that I have a better understanding of your view point, cheers i would suggest as a breeder of birds for many years that this suggestion of method was not used we here on this forum have people in all fields of work with many partaking in jobs that have many different products that im sure if looked into may be able to be used for birds however this information comes with no back up or guarantee i would suggest if you lacked money for a vet to ask here for a safe alternative two of our members expert in these feilds are nubbly 5 and rip budgies dont go using this above method suggested by member al@n as it is not proven or fool proof it has no wright up to stand it up with proven history of use and full report of its effect in long term this is not an opinion by the way this is a safety warning so to speak my opinion would not be received well if spoken im certain of that :question: ,yours gb Do you have any scientific rigor to support your opinion. Iam sorry I should not have said that because I know that you do not. please remember that opinions are like armpits most of us have at least two and they generally stink. I am happy for you to be critical but I expect that intelligence should play a role. If you are going to be judgemental at least do so with fact not opinion, Cheers love. Hahahaha Alan you are very funny. First you tell us (without basis of fact as you obviously can't provide a published article reference) to use an untried product on our birds and then you want to start fights with everyone. It's very amusing to see this sort of behaviour from someone who is supposedly so intelligent.

Hen

We live in a capitalist society how do we "become apart" from capitalism? We are able to run this forum due to capitalism (see the adds?) but no-one here directly benefits from the sale or distribution of goods and services so I'm not quite sure what you are getting at. And as far as a democracy well there is no "rule" as such so the "majority rule" being the understood characteristic of a democracy doesn't really apply no one person dictates what the others have to do, we might give advice based on personal experience, opinion or heresay but we certainly have no way of enforcing that "rule" - you are free to do what you want, remembering not everyone will agree with you but that matters little. We all decide and act individually so the rights of the individual are protected, sure we have non-elected administrators who sometimes edit out posts when they don't like them but generally following well accepted rules - non democratically decided by the way Oh and back to Frontline - could you direct me to the published article where fipronil was used to treat parasites of anything other than poultry. I can't find (a quick look mind you) anything other than rabbits etc, dogs and cats of course but very little on small birds and parrots. I would really like to see an LD50 on a parrot species plus fertility results before making up my mind that this is a good alternative. edit: oh-oh I've been dragged into the fray......... :question:

He's getting you well trained! But very cute..... puppies of any breed are just adorable (oh except Shar Peis - sorry to any Shar Pei lovers here!).

I find this a bit ironic! Finnie - I'm shocked

Sorry to all the birdie lovers out there but several hundred dollars for a vet bill and at least a 400km round trip to get there means that this little guy will have to take his chances with my ministrations. If it is what you suspect then surgery on what amounts to a $100 or so budgie is out of the question. As it is he seems pretty happy so maybe he'll cope just fine with his crop sagging between his knees (god knows mine is just about there too!).

If the airsac is ruptured then the crop is allowed to drop into that space. Ahh okay. It's probably that then. Did you manage to treat your birds and how. There is no accumulated air to release but the crop is well and truely displaced. He does seem pretty happy in himself though so I'm not sure what else I could be doing to help him.

So ruptured air sac. Does this mean the crop displaces? I could actually feel the seed in the crop way lower down than it should be. And it gets bigger and smaller as the bird eats etc. Is that like yours too? and if so what was the treatment or outcome? okay i was typing as you were editing. No this is not it. It's definitely seed in the crop not air under the skin. I can feel the actual seeds and move them around but the crop feels distended and flaccid. It's hard to explain but it's maybe more like a herniated something..... allowing the crop to travel down the neck..... that's the only way I can explain it.

Gosh Dean ONLY $100. I've paid significantly more for birds that have been complete duds. I had a discussion with a fellow breeder on the weekend comparing what we had bought and his comment was that he had spent well over $5000 on birds over the last few years at least half of which didn't breed or had significant issues (that's a wasted $2500). Sometimes we just have to be a bit lucky not to get dudded. I hope to hear of the successes that violet pied has with his new birds to restore some of my dwindling faith in human kind!

I've actually never seen it before GB. It LOOKS like a ruptured crop but the bird is now looking very healthy and happy in the heat box although his crop still looks pendulous and saggy. I would have thought if the crop was actually perforated that his health would have deteriorated significantly by now. Instead he is busting out of his little skin. I haven't even treated him with any antibiotics even though I thought maybe I should if his crop is perforated. So maybe it's just distended, why I don't know. I have no idea if it will revert to it's original position or if it'll just stay that way........ I'll let you know how he progresses.

Latest update. All bar 3 pairs (not including the recently changed pair 4) have been in exploring and re-arranging their nestboxes to suit, but too early to expect eggs yet. The 3 not exploring are pair 16, pair 13 and pair 21. All these hens bar pair 21 are 2010 rung birds so I might be asking a bit much of them just yet. I vaguely remember having the same problem with the hen in pair 21 last year (my crappy recording though, I didn't write that down anywhere.....oops). So I'm thinking of changing the hens in pairs 13 and 16 and replacing pair 21 with a pair of newly arrived fallows from the Pine Rivers auction. Will update pics when I get them done.

Fipronil (the active in frontline) is a very effective extoparasiticide (mites lice etc) but maybe it's best we leave Alan to experiment on his own birds and tell us his findings, as there is no work that I can find that has been done on budgie parasites. There is a restriction of use of fipronil on poultry but that's probably because withholding periods have not been established for eggs or meat from these birds. It HAS been successfully used on other small animals though. BUT it will not treat endoparasites (worms) so ivermectin remains as the product of choice for me. And GB your social skills are just fine - don't let anyone tell you otherwise! We know you have the birds best interests at heart always and we love you for it!

I agree to some point with you Alan but with the push to win we all tend to ignore or put up with poor fertility. I'm sure we could make BIG inroads into fertility if we selected specifically for it. Unfortunately we actually don't select for it much at all. Unfortunately for Dean, he has had to start from somewhere and although HE might be able to eventually make a difference to his own stud in time, he is at a point where he is paying the price for the hobby's general non-selection for fertility. And don't tell me that if any of us breed a fantastic chick from a pair that addled all their eggs bar one or from a cock that only filled that one egg, that we don't keep it based on it's visual qualities but cull it because it came from parents of lower than wanted fertility. So although I don't think selection for fertility and selection for exhibition quality are totally mutually exclusive, I think it comes pretty close. Unfortunately I don't expect any debate as this is just my opinion, maybe based on 10 years of breeding budgies, 25 years of breeding pedigree dogs and an involvement in the breeding of many different varieties of food production animals, but an opinion none the less!

Welcome Doc! If you prefer greys/blues over greens then pairing the grey dom to the albino will ensure all chicks are blue series and all will be visually normal (unless the dom is split for ino of course). You might get some nice surprises to depending on what the albino hen is masking (spangle or some other dominant variety for example). Pairing the green to the grey hen later on will give you the opportunity to breed away from grey as well (unless the hen is a df grey) and give you some nice dark factors. If the cock is split for blue then there is the chance for some cobalts maybe..... UNLESS you want to pair for type rather than colour........ If that's the case then (although it's really hard to judge from the photo's) I'd pair the green with the albino. I actually prefer the albino over the grey as the grey has than pin headed look with a big rather squatish body. The head and face on either hen, there is not that much difference between. To improve your birds towards the exhibition style of bird then need to consider size, feather and deportment and pair best with best.

Just like "Where's Wally?" Very cute!

Horse blocks are okay, they don't contain urea as it's toxic to them too. Not all cattle blocks contain urea either but you need to check. Sounds like the one you used Splat was just fine. "Dry feed blocks" are the problem as the urea is used to help ruminants digest dry pasture. It's just a bit of a worry when people use things without knowing the full implications/technicalities of them. An example I'll use (without naming names coz they are on this forum too) is one breeder I know was told to use Ivomec cattle pour-on for scale and worm treatment. Now Ivomec is safe and effective but another popular cattle pour-on (well spot-on actually) Tiguvon is a very powerful organophosphate pesticide and while effective on cattle lice is very deadly to budgerigars, so this breeder found out after killing all bar one of the cock birds that they treated - all of the cocks in their stud that is! So not all cattle pour-ons are the same AND not all cattle blocks are the same. So I like to caution people on the random use of products they are not fully familiar with as well as when we talk about stuff we use here, being specific about it and why, so that others don't just go out and get any old cattle block and then end up with an aviary full of dead birds. And hang in there Dean! When things start to go right AND THEY WILL, this season will seem like a dim memory and the successes will outweight the hardships - otherwise none of us would bother doing the exhibition budgie thing at all!

A couple of my violet clearwings. Interesting how the photo's never show violet properly. The cock bird is a stunning deep purple colour which really is not well shown here.

Probably better you did throw it away! Often cattle blocks (any ruminant blocks actually) contain urea which ruminants can convert to a form of protein but which is toxic to other animals that don't have bacteria in their stomachs to do the digesting for them. Make sure it's not one containing urea or you are likely to poison your birds! And Dean, what everyone here has said is spot on. Breeding better budgies is really hard work and most of the work comes in finding a system that works best for you and your birds. It might be feeding, breeding time or whatever but we have all developed our own systems to get the best we can out of our birds but I think we have all had the heartbreaks along the way too. You are definitely not alone with your experiences although I have to say that you've had more than your fair share of tough luck this season. It should get better than that but will never be as easy as breeding your pet quality birds.

Yes it does reduce both wing and body colour. The body color on fallows is supposed to be approx 50% of a normals intensity but at some stage you need to breed more visual fallows to work with and that's the stage that I'm at right now. Happily both the fallows in that pairing have very good body colour so hopefully it's not too much of an issue. The hen in pair 21 for example is too lightly coloured.

Thanks Splat! Yeah, he's very nice. When I got him and another grey green from Mark I was thinking that they are nowhere near breeding condition but then I put this fellow into my hen flight as him and his buddy were just that little bit too bonded to each other (gay budgies!!!) for my liking. He immediately zero-ed in on the hen of his choice - the one I've put him with - which was a nice pick by all accounts, so I'll give him a shot and see how he goes, can always use them as fosters for the first round if he doesn't fill his eggs I suppose.

Yep Kaz is correct. My very first lacewing hens came from a clearbody that SOMEONE had used lacewings to improve. I had no idea what these ino's with cinnamon marking were to start with......... :laughter: Ino is commonly used!