nubbly5

I have always been told AND have found through experience that it's better to buy a lesser bird from a well established stud than it is to buy the best bird from a lesser stud - why? Because ALL the way back in a lesser birds history from a top stud are good birds. We line breed and produce families of birds that show a predominance of certain features so you have more chance of these genes showing up when you use these birds. Conversely a great bird from a poor stud does not have the same extensive and intensified genetic background so you rely on fluking a good genetic combination. Harder to achieve!

Giardia is canker. Kaz (like the rest of us) do regular canker treatments. Sorry to say Kaz but this is stress related. Seen it in varying forms but never this bad and heard of it as bad as this or worse. Not altogether uncommon. Edit: no scratch that. Had a blonde moment giardia is not canker but also a protazoa like canker and therefore responds to ronivet.

Beautiful! Love the ponies they are seriously lovely. You should be very proud.

Definitely a boy. Lutino males don't have a blue cere they stay purpley pink.

Looks like a greywing.

Hey All A little brag because I feel like it! The Australian Agility Nationals were being held this weekend (well Thurs-Sun) in Perth and because I live in WA I thought I would enter. The deal is that there are normal classes each day on Thurs, Fri & Sat at which you have a chance of earning your dog a place in the finals which were held today. I ran 3 of my whippets only in yesterdays classes (some of us have to work ), my boy Greebo in Masters Agility & Jumping as well as Open Agility & Jumping. One of my girls Tchorna in Novice Agility & Jumping as well as Open Agility & Jumping and my youngest competition girl Enya in Novice Jumping. We also did a couple of strategic pairs runs with our usual pairs partner Greebo in Masters and Tchorna in Excellent. So from one days trial we managed 6 passes - Greebo in Open Agility & Jumping as well as his first Masters Strat Pairs run for a pass, Tchorna in Novice Agility & Jumping and Enya in her first pass in Novice Jumping. Passes are great but we also managed from only one days competition to secure ourselves 3 spots in the National Agility Finals. Tchorna in Novice Agility & Jumping and Enya (the little star) in Novice Jumping. So we tonked up to Perth again today (after never having expected to even get one spot in the finals)........ but my nerves kicked in and I bombed every run making my dogs make silly errors........ Still, I am very proud to have gotten that far with only one days trials where others who attended on each of the 3 lead up days have 3 seperate chances at each class to qualify for the finals. And my kids did me proud - it wasn't them that stuffed up the runs today it was me (as per usual)!!! But really nice to know that they can mix it with the best in the country! There was a professional photographer out there today too so if I get some pics of my kids at work I'll post! Edit: The photos are up and here are a few links to some pics of my kids! Enya in the Novice Jumping Finals http://www.yourdogphotos.com/displayimage....=424&pos=53 http://www.yourdogphotos.com/displayimage....=424&pos=55 Tchornie in the Novice Jumping Finals http://www.yourdogphotos.com/displayimage....=424&pos=88 http://www.yourdogphotos.com/displayimage....=424&pos=92 and in the Novice Agility Finals http://www.yourdogphotos.com/displayimage....=423&pos=20 Sadly none of Greebo from yesterday! No I lie!!!!!!! Here is one of him in Masters Agility. http://www.yourdogphotos.com/displayimage....413&pos=236

Yes that is correct a proportion of them at least 50% would be normals split for BES (dilute) and 50% would be BES (dilute)! Or a dilute will give you dilutes (a BES is effectively a dilute that has been selected for body colour clarity and reduced wing markings).

Sorry A-B I am absolutely no expert on Dutch Pieds - our resident master on this subject might be RIP or DAZ and maybe they can give you a better run down on the differences than I can. Maybe PM RIP and ask her for some input into this one.

Not me..... I'm a fence sitter on this one as I'm not sure that if he is dutch pied what that could actually mean in regards to affecting his markings...... sorry. Dominant pieds come in a couple of forms: Australian Dominant Pieds and Dutch Dominant Pieds (or continental clearflighted pieds). We just kind of lump them all into the generic term of dominant pied and personally in Australia Dutch Pieds are much rarer than Aussie Doms. (Well WA at the very least).

Hmmmm greens..... much harder in my opinion...... The bottom one at least is too coloured to me for a dilute but if they are grey green that will alter the depth of colour a bit too. I'll try and fossic up the picture of my 3 different green dilutes for some comparison. Oh and I forgot to mention, YES you do have to be aware of where the dilute is and pair according to your knowledge. Greywing split dilutes paired together will produce 25% greywing/greywing, 50% greywing/dilute and 25% dilute/dilute so to prevent a complete overrun of dilutes you need to be aware of them, just the same as other recessive traits. But dilutes bred from normal splits can be stonkers and are therefore highly sought after as outcrosses for both greywing and clearwing breeders for the reasons I mentioned above.

size of a finch :rofl: :rofl: As hard to catch as a damn finch too.......

Hey Kaz Personally I don't think he really is a dilute - especially not when you see him in his adult plummage. I believe that there is now a reasonable range of greywing genetics from strongly coloured to the original mutations 1/2 body colour. When you compare him to his sister he is not ALL THAT less coloured than her and his skyblue rather than darkfactor plummage would not help. When you look at true dilutes their body colour is supposed to be around 30% of the normal and he definitely is not that far diluted. My opinion is that he is still greywing but with body colour modifiers more like the original form of the mutation, not the now modified fuller body colour that is required by the current standard. I think that the way the current standard is, there will always be a bit of confusion and judges will have to make subjective decisions based on how the bird looks according to the standard. Unfortuately for this bird he is really neither nor due to his slightly reduced body colour intensity. So for genetics I would be classing him as a greywing (noting that his body colour is not optimum). What you enter him into a show as will probably always be a bit of a pot luck like with a heavily marked albino - some judges will wrong class it into lacewing and some won't depending on how heavy or not the markings are. The BES cop this quite a bit too - are they too heavily coloured for the BES and so should be entered into the dilute (AOSV) class - some judges will ping a bird and some won't that's just how it goes as we all see things a bit differently and the standard means that we have to make subjective decisions. So to work with these birds, YES it's very useful. Greywing is dominant to dilute so if you breed a full greywing to a full dilute ALL the babies will be visually greywing (but split dilute) so you don't have to mess about for a full season breeding normal splits which you can't show as greywing. BUT dilutes have diluted body colour and sometimes the modifiers that affect body colour will be passed onto the young regardless of if they are genetically greywing or not. Same thing happens with my very clear clearwing family - I have dilute in that line but the dilutes I breed from them have diluted body colour but retain the clear wings (wing modifier passed on from the clearwings). There is always going to be variation between birds and you then have to make the decision - is he good enough for you to use in your greywing breeding REGARDLESS of the fact that his body colour is not optimum. I would say yes but work with a strongly coloured partner for the bird.

I think he may well be Dutch pied but having only really seen a few proper ones in photos I'll defer to RIP's superior knowledge of these fellows.

Ummmm CAN be split for black eyed self. BES is basically a dilute (normally a cinnamon dilute) - why do you say it can't be split for BES? I think you are getting confused with Dark Eyed Clear .... yes? I breed the little suckers and they are (as I have been finding out) just as hard to breed as clearwings. You breed for size and hey presto you have dark wing markings and heavier suffusion (both no-no's) and when you have a nice variety specimin it's the size of a finch!

okay jlee I reckon something like this: 50% normals split for greywing 50% greywing split for bes (effectively a dilute) Of which 50% of them will be spangles and 50% will not The only complication is if the bes was actually a cinnamon dilute which is common for exhibition bes to help reduce the suffusion. If the cock might also be split for cinnamon which will give you the chance of cinnamon greywing hens split for bes (dilute) and cinnamon hens split for greywing.

Lutino.

okay, just been to see our local vet to check out our little stud boy Whippet and whilst I was there I asked him how good he was with birds - not very was the answer BUT his WIFE did her honours thesis on Budgie worms of all things. I asked her about worm resistance to ivermectin in birds and her comment was that there was no REPORTED cases of resistance to ivermectin in bird worms. Also as a side discussion we discussed hearthworm preventative treatment and as yet (after about 20 years of using ivermectin to prevent heartworm) there is also no reported cases of heartworm resistance to ivermectin. I also asked what rotation options we might have. Wormout Gel was one of them and we had a look at the label. It's a combo of a white drench (bz) and a tapeworm active. This actually might be a really good rotation treatment option as ivermectins DO NOT treat tapeworm. Although tapeworm is relatively uncommon in budgies it can still affect them and it may well pay to rotate to Wormout gel every couple of years to break it up a bit as well as ensuring tapeworms are adequately treated too. We did not discuss Piperazine so that also might be an option for rotation too. Although my vet was not too concerned that we might be building resistant worm populations based on actual numbers treated and frequency of treatment, the theory that lice and fly vet entomologist guru Dr Gary Levot discussed would indicate that it could well be a problem. Any population placed under selection pressure might develop a resistant strain and continual use of one chemical places continuous selection pressure on that population so there is a chance in my opinion.

Oh come on Dave!.............. Where would we all be without the odd dumb question or 2. Ask away Ratzy and don't feel bad about asking a question that might seem a bit obvious to the rest of us! The only dumb question I think is a question not asked. At least Ratzy didn't publish a web article based on obvious and complete lack of understanding

RIP beautiful Nibbles..... My heart goes out to you and your family Hannah.

Lutino or very poorly marked lacewing. What colour are her 2 main tail feathers? If they are yellow with a white quill then she is lutino. If they are even slightly cinnamon or have a cinnamon quill she is a poorly marked lacewing. So you either have a cock bird that is split for lutino OR that little crossover between the cinnamon and the ino gene (which originally caused the lacewing mutation) has happened in reverse and the cinnamon and ino gene have crossed back over onto seperate genes in this instance - happens in a very few percentage of breedings.

A-B the issue you have is that cinnamon affects the intensity of the green. I have bred many cinnamon dark greens and a few cinnamon olives and they ae quite hard to tell apart. In that respect we could all take a stab at it and it'd probably be a 50:50 chance. Breeding her will give you the dark factor results. Also to me she just isn't quite grey green enough to be an olive but then like I said, they can be a bit tricky to tell apart in the cinnamon version.

Bloody ***! I argue BLACK AND BLUE that this bird is NOT a yf. GB too argued the same but noooooo RIP comes along and hey presto so long as she says no yf it's not a yf. Nubbly goes away grumbling........................ :emoticon112:

Was this our "YF Cinnamon Mauve" discussion from before A-B? She still looks to me to be cinnamon green but not a light green. I'd pitch for Cinnamon Dark Green based on her cheek patches. If she were olive I'd have expected darker violet cheek patches and she strikes me as not quite grey green looking enough now that she has moulted out. She still looks like she has a few baby feathers to moult out from her chest though.... It'd be great tp follow this story through with a test mating. If you pair her in the future would you post up the results?

Isn't that right though? A Clearflight paired to/combined with a Recessive Pied produces a DEC? I thought I read that somewhere, can't for the life of me think where! When I think of I will let you know! EDITED: It was Barrie Shutt's article on Budgerigar Colours and Mutations. If a Rec and a Rec were paired it would create a "DF" which would be actually be called a DEC wouldn't it? Or am I still confusing mutations? I know you can't actually get a DF Rec which is why I thought it was a DEC... someone correct me cos I'm feeling slightly stupid right now :emoticon112: As RIP says Continental clearflight (is that a Dutch Pied?) and rec pied gives DEC. BUT Rec and Rec paired together will only give you Rec (DF yes! As a recessive mutation the bird has to have 2 copies of the gene for the recessive mutation to show visually). So effectively a rec pied has 2 recessive pied genes (effectively df rec but we don't call it that with recesives). If it was only 1 red pied gene it would only be split for rec pied.

Oh Hannah........ poor Nibbles, poor you. What an awful decision to have to make!