nubbly5

Well I've never used cod liver oil but have used Vetafarm's Breeding Aid (a mix of different plant oils) for all breeding pairs and chicks for oh.....um.... 10 yrs now with great results and no ill effects. It doesn't go off and really seems to help the breeding pairs with breeding condition and chickie feeding.

Lacewings, lacewings, lacewings and lacewings......................... oh and violet clearwings have to be in there.

Lets have a look GB! If you have to go and buy something else, at least put her to the bestest cock you have in the mean time. She is super and very important for you to try and get some of the genetics she has made available to you so that you can continue her quality through your stud.

Good to hear that he is mending well! It's always a real scare when one of your best birds gets sick.

You have a Normal Dark Green/Rec Pied there Jodie! Dark greens often have blue around rump and vent.

when you say this nubbly do you mean to pair best to best or do you mean say i have three hens and 3 cocks two great two avrage andto very avrage do you mean pair best to best avrage to avrage andlastly very avrage to very avrage or should you put best to av and best to av in both first to pairs and justkeep outher two not so spesh ones in case something goes wrong ????sorry :what: Best to best so long as you are not doubling up on problems. Rank your cocks and rank your hens, then put the best cock with the best hen but make sure they compliment each other. The second best to second best. That's a bit of a simplistic way of looking at it I suppose - espcially in your case where you are starting off with different birds from different breeders so I'll temper that by saying - rank your birds - cocks and hens and choose the best cock and then starting at what you think is the best hen, see if you think they are complimentary. If they double up on faults (both big but no feather for example) work down the line of hens until you find a hen that suits the cock. Does that make sense?

Sounds fine! Just send me a PM when you have updated otherwise there's a good chance I'll miss it! As to your points I agree with everything except for seperating your birds into 3 groups, just be mindful of the traits that you need. For me at the moment I'd be trying to plonk more feather (top blow, face features, feather length into you line of lacewings. Use those birds from your stud that you identify as having the best of those features and pair them to the best overall lacewing or split lacewing you have. Do that with as many pairs as you can going from best to second best etc etc and then when all those chicks are 12 months old assess them for those ones that closest match the bird that you want. I do feel you have to train your eye a little (not trying to be nasty or harsh) and that's why I suggested making sure that at every show, try and get a good look at the winning birds. Look at the features and compare them to your birds. What needs improving in your birds. Try not to get "aviary blind" - only being able to see your own birds.... hard to describe but people tend to get fixed into their head what they have in their aviary already and stop really LOOKING at other birds. This is why I first started stewarding at shows 10 yrs ago - so that I could always see what birds were getting picked and sometimes even get the chance to ask why - hone your eye! Grab someone who you know is a judge or is known to have a very good eye and ask them WHY a certain bird might have won. Not that you are being critical but that you want to really learn and hone your eye for a good bird. I'm in no way suggesting that you don't HAVE an eye for a budgie already just that I think you need to be able to see the potential that each of your OWN birds might have in your stud. Good luck, you know I'm always willing to let you know my opinion on a certain pairing and just be patient! If you keep going methodically you should start to see your stud developing.

okay, lots of questions there! You have to look at the lace's and splits as your group of birds to work with adding normals here and there to improve the line. So yes AS a lacewing the cin/ is useful, probably as a normal cinnamon people would cull him. As far as lines go, in the end you will end up with a group of birds with generally the same lines. That's pretty muh how studs develop. I see no real need to try and keep lacewings in seperate families - I've only done it with clearwings to try and preserve a family pool of super clearwinged birds. Look at your lacewings as a whole pool of birds and pair that way. You want to join the substance you have in the majority of your birds with the feather you have in a few of them. You can always use a normal or cinnamon from your normal breeding program to plop into them as an outcross or you can buy a normal or cinnamon outcross for your lacewings specifically later on when you have evened out a line of birds. At the moment you have a group of irds all with different features that you need to work into a single line. Definitely keep the nest feathers and see how they develop BEARING IN MIND that they have all the features you already have in your birds and none of what you need but you need something to start off with and if they have a good background then they are worth a try! As I said before you will need to be careful of what you use them with whereas the top cock would be handy across a few different hens. Again Milton is useful in that he is a big bird with good substance and deportment but again look at the narrowness across the cere and the lack of feather on top. There is a pattern here!!!!! I can see what you like in a bird but you need to go out and have a good look at your open/champion breeders birds at shows. Look at them critically, what is it that makes them different from the birds in your stud. Write down what you see if need be or take photos and compare them to your birds at home. Then go and sort your birds for a particular feature say "width across the cere" just for example. You need to have in your minds eye exactly what you are aiming for. Even take a picture of a bird that does well that you really like and stick it by your computer so that you are looking at it regularly. You need to be able to say, "yes, that bird HAS something of the features that I need". You DO HAVE all the tools you need to progress at this stage, you just have to be able to see the features in your birds. One cock might be a tiny bit better in blow from top down to his shoulders than the others or a hen might just have more directional feather than her sisters. You need to determine what it is you need and then select those birds to breed with. As far as using dark factors..... my thoughts are (and this is just my opinion okay)....... dark factor is great if you are breeding yellow laces but even more important is that bright golden ground colour. The reason people suggest dark factors is the theory that dark factors deepen the yellow ground colour (which it does) but there are light green birds around that also have magnificent deep yellow ground colour. This is starting to get more into variety characteristics, which are somewhat important, but not as important as type at this stage. Still if you have access to reasonable birds who ALSO have great golden ground colour then so much the better, if not it's something you can concentrate on more once you have established a line of lacewings. Dark factor in white lacewings is something of a problem as white shows up suffusion much more readily than yellow and I would steere more towards greys if you want to breed whites. Blue tends to leave a patina of blue sheen on many white lacewings and in dark factor that can be a bit obvious. But again if it's a good bird it doesn't matter one jot what colour it is (relative to your breeding program at least)!

okay back again! As I said I quite like the top cock bird although he looks a little short and doesn't stand off the perch (often the picture anyway). I purchased a cock bird very much like him from Lynn Ray (a well known LW breeder from the past) when she had to get out of budgies due to bird breeders lung. He had a wonderful background and was very useful at improving my stud. This cock should be quite useful for you I think depending on his background. Pair him to a bigger but well balanced hen - normal would be good but even the light green cinnamon would be okay too she has the overall balance that suits him and she is a bit bigger (my opinion only). He will breed you some visual hens and split cocks. To be honest I don't much like the 2 young birds. They are very narrow across the cere with nothing much on top (even if they are still nest feather) BUT if they are bigger you can add them in to start building that jigsaw puzzle - they are still visuals, it's just that you might have to work hard to pair them to the right birds to get something you can use out of them. I prefer the hen out of the pair as well she is still narrow without any top feathering but at least her deportment is good and her wing carriage is neat. I quite like the cin/lw boy underneath he will be useful but again note that the top feather is lacking he needs blow and a bit more backskull as well as feather length but he is substantial, dark factored, has nice deportment and outline and will be very useful to you. A definite keeper. Again he is cinnamon so try and find a normal hen that has a bit of blow and top end feather. He has the substance that would be nice in a line of lacewings. Taboo, the MOST expensive single bird I have ever purchased is $330 for a DF Spangle that never bred! Mostly I have purchased birds around the $100-200 mark. I think you can get away with it doing it this way IF you are careful in finding a bird that has something of what you need. If you try and go out and buy a bird that has everything a show budgie should have you WILL pay $000's. People with an unlimited cheque book can buy into the birds they want very quickly but I for one can't justify THAT amount of money on a bird. I think I have been able to bring my birds up to a good competitive standard without going nuts buying expensive birds. It might take longer but it's way less expensive and for me, WAY more satisfying to think that I can get there with lesser birds to work with. As I have said before I will always try a bird that I have bought from a good stud even if it looks like it's just stepped out of a petshop. Skyblue Normal from Henry George auction is a case in point. If I had bred it, I would have been embarrased to sell it (no offence intended Henry!) and when I got it home I was disappointed but hey I spent a whole $100 on it. He has produced some of my best normal birds and given me the sort of feather I have been looking for. He is long since gone but his children, grand children etc are some of the better birds that I have. Maybe that's luck but maybe that's also understanding that birds such as these might not look like anything BUT they have a background that makes it worth giving them a try!

I like the top cock. He is very much like the Lynn Ray Cock bird that I first bought to put with my petshop type lace hens. He sits a bit short on the perch but will be handy for you to use for sure. Might need to leave the rest for tomorrow if you don't mind. Got a migrane aura that is causing havock with my vision at the moment. Post more pics if you like and I'll comment on them all tomorrow. Sorry about that.

okay so with what you have there you can really get stuck into breeding some laces and splits. You probably don't need anything extra right now unless you can get hold of a nice visual hen or 2 - but you need to decide what resources you want going into the laces. Personally I WOULD have a go with the spangles as they are the best birds you have shown me so far. Spangle is only an issue in that the combo is not allowable BUT you will KNOW if it is there or not due ot the spangle markings and cheek patches. Dominant varieites are not too hard to deal with at least they are there or they are not, they don't hide away in recessive form. With the birds you have here I would go for putting the blue spangle with your visual lace hen and trying to get bigger better feathered birds. Any normal splits keep, the VERY best spangle splits keep and any normal or spangle hens will be fine. You only need to discard the lesser spangle/lacewings. Then pair the best splits with either a different visual hen or a strong normal hen, maybe even a sister if they breed some nice hens (don't double up on spangle though). If you could use a sister or half sister (from same cock) back to a split bred from these parents you will start to cement the features of the cock bird whilst adding lacewing. The spangle hen is a ripsnorter and well worth using too - Nice one Splat!. I would put your BEST split with her. Again the spangle will only be an issue if you get a spangle lacewing hen. But if its a good one it'll still be an okay stock hen. Otherwise as above keep any normal lacewing hens and any normal split cocks, be careful about the spangle split cocks but they aslo are useful if they are strong birds. Again pairing splits back to sisters or half sisters (from the same hen) will concentrate the genetics of the hen line back into your lacewing line. With the lesser birds, pop the cinnamon opaline lt green hen with my grey green cock. He has coarser feather but is narrower and she is fine feathered but wider. Hope for some lace hens. The cinnamon grey green is wider but lacks spot. Find him as good and course feathered a normal hen as you have (opaline okay too) and try to get some of those face features. Again hope for some lace hens. Sherbert is small and fine feathered so needs something bigger, maybe the dumpy hen is worth a try with him or even the cin grey hen to at least get some splits and hens to go on with. I would see how he breeds with some better quality hens and if he does not give you better birds than himself, give him back to lealotta. But he will give you all visual hens and you do need more visuals to work with. Make sure you keep all visual laces for AT LEAST 12 months. They do develop more slowly than other varieties. I didn't think all that much of the boy that ran 3rd at the Nats until he had gone through his baby moult and then a full adult moult. These guys are quite surprising as to how much they change. Another bit of good advise I have been given is to "Never sell your tools". You need lacewings to start with so get and keep the best visuals you can and work your best normals into them. Only when you have an excess of visuals would I ever consider selling any. I never sold any visuals for quite a long time and now it's only very select ones that I think I can definitely live without or have bred well from. Does this all make any sense? But this is concentrating 100% on your lacewings and obviously you want to breed other varieties as well so maybe my advise here is too extreme. If you were to take the spangle out completely go for the coursest feathered biggest cock - normal or split to your visual hen. You do need visuals to breed on with as much as you need good splits too. Then pair the remaining split cocks to your better available hens. Try not to double up on faults whilst at the same time trying to cancel out whatever fault each bird might have. The finer feathered cinnamons try and pair with courser feathered normals. Try not to put 2 fine feathered birds together. You get nice neat birds but the feather length decreases and you don't really progress. Damn! I'm giving away all my trade secrets

Good to hear. Hoping he continues to improve.

okay so he is split for yf! If he breeds yf babies you know that but he is not split for blue. He can have only 2 genes on that allele - you can see the green one, he has bred yf so the other gene on that allele is YF. Any birds he breeds that are NOT green will be yf. His face is okay but without that longer feather he just hasn't quite got what you need. He will IMPROVE what you've got in the hen you showed me for sure BUT you will still need some more feather as you progress. The cin grey cock is better as far as feather but he goes straight up from the cere. Still a useful bird in your stud. If he is split for lacewing put him with a strong normal hen and hope for some hen chicks. If you are unsure, put him with a lacewing hen. I get that it's really hard to buy birds with feather like that BUT you CAN buy lesser birds from studs with that sort of feather. Henry George, Mark Chidel, Ian Hanington etc. Many lesser birds from studs such as these will give you some chcks with longer courser feather and then you can use those. Look closely at the AVERAGE bird from consistantly strong studs. You can do this at your local club level. Look at what studs CONSISTENTLY show the sort of features that you like be it feather quality etc and then approach that breeder for lesser culls AND USE THOSE CULLS don't just send them on their way coz you think they are too small or not marked enough. Use them on your best hens and you should get SOMETHING you can use. Not everything is going to be super duper though and selecting out the best is important. In this way you can get great improvement without spending huge $. You need to be observant. Take picture at shows and analyse the feather type. If something catches your eye, look for that studs birds next time - is the feature consistant or improving - try and get a lesser cull. If not then don't waste your $ chasing after birds without the background that you need. And variety is variety - at the moment the standard says 60 points to TYPE, 25 points to colour 15 points to markings. Focus on type formost whilst still trying to keep the variety as much as possible but don't sacrifice a good TYPE bird for a good variety bird. Trying to get both is the optimum but not always what happens. Until that standard is changed don't throw out the baby with the bath water. UNLESS you don't want to be competitive and that's okay too but then why bother breeding exhibition budgies at all?! Retorical question there. Hey and after that preaching session, remember, this is just my way of doing things and I'm sure there are others more experienced who also have some great advise they can lend.

Green yf and blue all occur on the same allele - only 2 genes can be present on any 1 allele. Also green is dominant to YF and YF is dominant to blue ...... hang on just go and re-read the Great YF Symposium again will you! I can't really be bothered to type it all out again. In short he can be split for YF or he can be split for blue. Think of it like the Greywing, Clearwing, Dilute series. Just sneaking off for dinner will look at birds after okay?

Canker is something that can crop up at any time. Not just when you bring in new birds. Routine treatment 3-4 times per year for budgies is recommended for canker.

Well her wing markings were so uniform that I didn't actually think she was opaline but on closer inspection lack of head barring maybe sayd she is. Can you get a picture of her main tail feathers then I can tell you for sure. He's not YF. He might be SPLIT for YF but he himself is a grey green opaline (maybe dark grey green). If you pair them together IF he is split for YF it's only going to be a problem if they are both split for YF or she is split for blue and then you might get a YF lacewing. Not essentially a problem if you are breeding birds to develop your stud but a bit of a problem if you wanted to show that bird. He has that really nice deep yellow ground colour that you want to try and keep in your yellow lacewings so thats good. He IS better than her generally but still lacking the feather quality you need to find. He needs more blow and longer feathering. If he is the best you have at the moment then use him and assess the chicks. They may well produce something out of the square and they will be better than her most likely. In the meantime try and find a normal (any colour) that has long buff feathering. Something with more of a puff ball look to his top end (if that helps any!). More like this: So far from what I can see your birds are all quite tight or fine feathered so that's probably what you need to buy in at some stage.

Nope all good! Not sideways here - maybe you already edited..... Nice hen, just needs a little bit more everywhere. The sort of bird you need to keep in your minds eye is this hen plus size and feather. Nice wing markings are good but never ever throw away a lacewing just because it has poor markings - throw one away if it is small AND has crappy wing markings but not for markings alone. Upscale her and add buffy feather and you are heading in the right direction. Probably just need to watch the backskull a bit on this one and maybe wants a bit more shoulder to really give her impact. Oh and to me she needs a bit more body. When you sit back and look at her she has a nice enough deep mask but looks a little unbalanced with a shortish body. Go for buff feathered cock - normal preferrably as cinnamons have finer feather anyway with width, blow and backskull. Don't worry about split lacewing at this stage. If you are serious about improving your lw line you need to add into it from your best normals. Breed some splits from her and the hens can go into either line then too. Try not to sacrifice size but if you have to get width, blow and backskull in one bird and size in another thats okay too. Thats what building a line of birds is all about. I worked on feather first and now on size without losing the feather but either way would be a problem - but as a judge I think you'd do better with typier smaller birds in novice classes than huge rough feathered older style birds. Might be wrong here so don't quote me but for me as a judge a well balance bird is better than a huge rough one but once you have the feather you want size is imperative if you want to get to the highest level.

Ooooh how exciting! Many people do many different things. A concrete floor will assist in keeping the aviary clean but many people run with sand floor but you have to dig out regularly and replace sand. Water proofing is pretty important too. Oh so many things....... as GB says have a scrounge around the different threads to see what others have done.

Moxi-T is a broad spectrum antibiotic it won't hurt but also won't help if it's canker or food toxin. As GB says vomiting first stop is canker then maybe mega - but that amount of vommiting and quick deterioration points more to canker. Still it's only a guesstimate as always. If it's toxins from food not much really helps other than supportive therapy - heat, no draughts, milk thistle (liver function support) etc until their body can properly remove the toxin. GB lemon (citric acid) helps to supress mega bacteria as does ACV, red cordial?..... well some brands were known to be mildly antibiotic in effect for humans (suppressed certain bacterial infections E.coli and staf. aureus) but probably not as effective as normal anitbiotics and the sugar in it can also promote the growth of protazoa and bacterial by providing more food source. Good luck with him. Hope he pulls through okay for you!

Any bird that breeds better that themselves is gold (unless they are really shitty to begin with of course). That's why I always say that an average bird from a good stud is a better purchase than a top bird from an average stud. The average bird from a good stud will usually (not always of course but often) breed better than themselves - all that genetic potential in the background of the bird. Yes this hen is nice enough but maybe a tiny bit small as you say - I find size and length just about the hardest thing to get into my birds. If you haven't already got it, it's hard to breed in. I also find that she doesn't quite roll all the way from the crown (top blow) down to the mantle which makes her look like she doesn't have as much backskull as you might want. Probably that she blows the top but not the nape. I'd like a touch more mask and spot but still a tidy hen. So far I'd still like to cin grey best, this one next then the dumpy one BUT if this girls chicks are better than the cin grey no matter who you pair her with then that tips the balance in her favour a bit as well as her better facial feathering.

okay hens to cocks - if you have 20 cocks, keep 30 hens (so half as many again). So people recommend twice as many (20 cock to 40 hens) but personally I thinks that's overkill. The cin grey is a NICE stock hen very good stance, follows through quite nicely behind the perch, maybe a tad heavy in the wings, great mask, spot and good backskull but like you say a touch narrow across the cere. But overall a classier hen than the one above. Even if you were shy of cinnamon I would be using this hen before the top one. Anyways I think it's better to steere away from opaline where possible due to the opaline making the lacewing markings all smudgy and horrible.

okay all - this is a work in progress. GB asked if I can critically assess her lacewings so I asked her to post up any bird she thinks she might use as well as some comments about background and why she thinks it's a good choice. She has asked me to be harsh if needed so please don't be offended by any of my comments. If you think of something that can be added to help please do! okay GB first things first - hens are often hard to come by and things happen to them during the breeding season. Aim to keep 1/3 to 1/2 as many hens as cocks. When you go to pair up choose your best and work down if there is something not working with a particular hen. Also you will need good normal hens and cocks for outcrossing. I prefer normal hens (not opaline or cinnamon) as I know she will not be split for either but will use a good cinnamon opaline if it's a good bird and I want something of the features in my lacewings. If you are breeding whites I'd stick more to the grey lines as blues tend to lend more suffusion which you do not want. So to the hen. To me her mask is acceptable if I were to put her to a longer masked cock bird. Her real drawback to me is the backline as you said but it's not a dip in the back, she is more heavy in the rump and cuts off sharply under the perch. She is what I would call a "dumpy" hen. Her head feather is a bit disappointing though. Knowing the cock she came from you need to choose as buffy a hen as you can for him as he too is more fine feathered. This hen to me lacks on the top but has nice enough width. Just needs more feather on top. Depending on what other hens you have, I would be tempted to hold onto her as a 2nd line hen.

snh snh snh "They chewed their way to freedom"....... Very nicely done Daryl! But me thinks you have WAY too much time on your hands.... Exhibition bush budgies with Henry George blood...... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA just got to the 12 yr old budgie that lived on porridge.......... WHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Oh one other thing. If you do go ahead with this I would ensure that when you put in the pipes you angle it just a bit past vertical (towards the flight area) so that dripping is easier to catch. Too vertical or angled closer to the wire means that drips fall down close to the wire and are harder to catch. Hope that makes sense! Once the glue goes off you either have to live with it or recut pvc to adjust!

Not a pain at all GB. Water usage appears to be approx 3-4L per day. Obviously not all of this is consumed by the budgies. I empty "slops" water from drips and obtain around 4-5L every few days to a week but it does allow me to be able to run most medications quite easily. For products such as cocci vet, ronnivet or others that are better run as a few days treatment I first empty the system fully of water. Then add around 8L mixed medication to the cistern and drain air until product runs through. I leave the mains water turned off and add 4L daily so can be reasonably confident of high enough turn over of product. The initial 8L is for line fill so there is one day lag for product to flow along the lines. That's about the only real issue I have with this system - due to the line length you need reaonable fill initially so that the cistern does not completely drain over the day but is ALMOST completely used. It took a bit of fiddling to work it out properly. The only thing I don't use the auto drinkers with is psitacosis treatment (psitavet) as using the autodrinkers means mixing up way more than actually needed and potentially wasting alot. The cost and the difficulty of obtaining pstiavet makes me a bit more reserved with using this treatment through the drinkers. So for this I turn the whole system off, completely drain it and place one little bowl drinker in each flight which then gets changed daily. In that manner I then only need to use around 2L per day. The biggest issue I have had with this system is the dripping. Even though I was told that these drinkers don't drip - they DO! So initially I constructed a wire mesh top over stainless bowls (original drinking bowls) to catch the drips whilst revent the birds from accessing smelly poo-ie water. They worked fine BUT I work away a lot and have a very uninspired bird carer (not that I'm complaining mind you - not really) of a husband who didn't like emptying out the bowls so let them overflow (they were only little 10oz bowls), which kind of defeated the purpose of having bowls to catch the drips anyway!!!! So after some thinking and negotiation we came up with a system of 1L plastic jugs (free from work ) with a floor drain to stop birdie access. Now my hubby is exempt from emptying the pooie slops water (which he is happy about) and the aviary stays dry and free of pooie slops water (which I am very happy about). I'm just going to scurry off to get a picture or two! So here we have nipple drinker with our "slops" bucket arrangement underneath. Leaving the nipples to drip defeated the purpose of having a clean water source in the first place and the little bowls we initially used we okay but for the reasons outlined above we came up with something better. As you can see 1L plastic jugs with floor drains from Bunnings which just sit in the top. No adjustments of the jug or the floor drain were needed and this keeps the budgies and the "slops" water nicely apart! To fix to the wire we just cut PVC pipe in collars and fixed them to the wire with 2x cable ties. All quite cheap and easy to do. Also easy to clean and easy to replace if need be.