nubbly5

On the face of it you will have all cinnamon opaline hens, all cinnamon cocks/opaline. All light green (half of which will be split for blue) unless the hen is also split for blue (in which case you have a 25% chance of blues, 50% chance green/blue and 25% chance green (obviously green/blue and green looks identical)). Unless there is something else that they are split for that is unknown..........

Thanks Jetrick & JB! It's something I've always wondered about really - exactly how good or bad my breeding results were relative to others. Anyway all thats left to show now are my grey greens and BES and then I'll close this thread off and start again on a new one in September for our 2010/2011 season. It's hard to get my head around the fact that our new rings will turn up in September again - so used to them arriving Jan. But I'm looking forward to another season and have already planned a few pairinings in my head based on results from this year. So here are the grey greens. There is one absolutely stand out boy in this lot. He is a full brother (from a later nest) to the grey that won Commended at our WA Young Bird Derby but he has better buffier (if thats a word) feather and looks amazing (if a bit scruffy) just on his first moult. This is him here! And this is Holy S*&t and Holy C%$p's brother. I've bred a handful of sisters and brothers to these boys all with a similar look and all very long birds. None quite as eye catching as the first 2 brothers though!

Hmm sounds interesting and would love to see pics and parent pics! As to intensity of yellow, there is a long held belief that adding dark factor increases the intensity of yellow ground colour in birds but I have many light greens (no dark factor) with really nice intense yellow ground colour so I think you can affect yellow intensity by selection just as you can affect other traits. I have combined these particularly with my Lacewing line to produce nice golden coloured birds. Golden faces, as explained in the thread, are caused by a gene that REMOVES yellow so infact a normal green with a golden face gene has LESS yellow present than if it did not have the golden face gene. Try not to think about yf's as blue birds with yellow added, think of them as greens with yellow removed. So, as explained originally, golden faces have the least amount of yellow removed followed by YF M2 and then YF M1. If you think about them as blues with yellow added, then you get caught up with questions about golden faces have more yellow than yf's and blues but what you really need to think about is golden faces having less yellow intensity than normal greens. Clear as mud?

You might have some luck contacting Murdoch Vet School. Working with a few large animal vets here in WA, I know lots of them are looking for staff (vets and locums willing to do large animal work). Weather depends on where in Australia you lob - from warm and dry to cold and wet......

Is it?????? See I'm not really sure compared to other breeders what is good, bad or ugly. I did have clear rounds, a few DIS and a few chick losses. The total was approx 180 chicks from 24 boxes with 2-3 rounds per pair depending on the pair. All you hear from many people is "how good" everything is going or conversly "how bad" everything is going without any real facts and figures shared. Looking at it critically I guess I used 60% of the boxes for 3 rounds and the rest for 2 so say 2.6 rounds on average this season. 176 chicks rung gives 67.6 chicks per round. Divided by 24 boxes = 2.8 chicks per box per round over the season. Considering there were a few clear rounds I guess this is not too bad overall. What do other people expect on a TOTAL chick per box per round output per breeding season? Honestly I don't know if this is good or not really! Still been the best year I've managed so far so I'm pretty happy in relative terms.

Dave, I ordered 150 rings (my normal amount and usually I use just about all of them but a few). This year I had to order an extra 30 rings and have 4 left in total. So the best breeding season I've managed so far. I think having a continuing season from Sept to March without a break in the middle (Jan - Mar and then Sep - Dec) was helpful. Also we had NO spring. It went from winter to summer without much variable stuff during spring time so the birds kicked into condition and were not affected by weather variations early in the season which normally affects chick hatchability and survival.

Yellow faces, Cinnamons. I have only bred 3 YF babies this year - one of them a YF white lacewing shown previously in the lacewing section. The other 2 are nice but the hen is quite heavily flecked.

Yeah sorry about the notations. My habit from show managing! I always put notations on the sticker to ensure I do not lose track of birds that need to be brought back up to be judged again others. In this case yes BNA was Best Novice Adult and RBN was Reserve Best Novice.

GB you can definitely tell the diference between a grey green and an olive - easily! Grey greens cheek patch is grey or steely blue, olive has violet coloured cheek patch. The issue is that a double dark factor (olive) plus the grey factor (so an olive grey green in effect) looks like a grey green with the cheek patch AND body colour affected by the grey factor so unfortunately it won't look much different from a normal grey green or even a single dark factor grey green.

Kaz, a lot of these are young birds not yet moulted out of their baby feathers so some of them are less than 3 months old and some are moulting out their baby feathers. My adults are not yet moulting but I think the cooling weather will stir them up. Mostly it seems that my birds moult a bit later than birds in Perth.

Thanks guys! Some are good some not so good. The last grey has great feather but is smaller and has a shorter mask than I like BUT they are all still young and will wait until they are 12 months old before making any decisions on them. So here are my opalines (normals and cins). I am dissapointed with the 2 normal green opalines, they showed so much promise as youngsters but just have not developed as I expected. Not enough feather on top and short stuffy masks. The cin opalines I am very happy with and will be extremely useful especially most of the hens. Also the spangles. Didn't breed too many of these thankfully as they are not my favourite variety but they are useful none the less. Most of these (cin spangles at least) are Gazzard lines and have great features but take quite a while to develop size wise and are always quite small as youngsters.

Wet balls? It's a girl!!!! :budgiedance: Anyway it's not just wet balls, I put in enough water that they are literally wading and the balls are floating around. Makes it REALLY worth their while to stay on the perch. Then when I get sick of the mental flapping and jumping around the cage the sprayer comes out too!!! They eventually give up and sit still to dry off. You can tell how good or bad they were by how wet they are. Just wait for the next batch, there are a couple of rippers! So here are the next lot - greys and blues.

Back from Argie! Had fun at MBC judging and saw some nice birds. So back to posting my baby variety photos! Clearwings go next. It's been a varied year for these guys. Numbers bred have been good but wing clarity varied. Some good some terrible but I guess thats what you expect when you try and up size in this variety. Now back to trying to keep size and clear up wings again.

Does that mean I get my money now :hooray: Nice purchases! Seems you have a good eye for a budgie. I particularly liked the cin opaline boy.

In years past it was common to consider that cock birds had squarer heads than hens. I remember reading and hearing this quite a bit when mum was breeding budgies in the 70's. This was when budgies had less feather and blow to disguise the actual head shape. Even old budgie books will describe the differences between cock and hen heads: "The Cult of the Budgerigar" Fourth Edition 1954 - Hens usually have lower domes and more budging frontals than cocks. It was the "higher dome" on the cocks that gave them a squarer looking head to a hen. It was not really a reliable difference though, so this was only a help in sexing budgies with the cere being the real teller.

Splat if his condition is good and he is bright and happy there should be no reason not to take him. Many birds cope really well with showing and so long as you give him a few days to ensure he eats and drinks well there should be no reason why he should also not breed well. You really just have to guage your birds. There are only one or two of my psycho birds that I would not show consistenly so long as there was a week or so between shows.

Top job Splat! Looking forward to seeing some pics. Sounds like a great showing future ahead of you.

Hmm just saw this. Bad choice of words by me there..... Sorry if I got your hopes up there Kaz. I'll post more varieties when I get back from Argentina.

Very nice!

Likely it pantry moth larvae. Do you see moths hanging around?

Glad you enjoyed the thread budgieman. The question I want to ask you is how old is the cock and is his mother more or less mottled? Although he looks reasonably mature he may well not have finished his full adult moult during which time some body feathers might be less suffused than the others. And Jimmy if you read the thread you will see that there are 3 accepted yf mutations - mutant 1, mutant 2 and goldenface (aka Aussie yf). So yes they do exist.

My 3rd place Nats lacewing boy is from a brother to sister pairing. I have had success with very close pairings including father to daughter. GB the best way I know to establish a cock line in your stud is to breed one cock to several hens or two at least so you have a number of half brothers and sisters. You theb pair the half brothers and sisters together the better ones and i personally would also pair the father back to one of his better daughters. I would even use the father again if I could over one of the granddaughters from a half brother sister pairing. I would only do this however if the cock was substantially better than the rest of my stud and if not I would just continue with best to best half brothers and sisters. If you don't know the parentage of both cocks establish two families of them first seperately before you breed the chicks back into the other cocks family. You need to fix the features into the line before you have the feature there regularly enough to be able to combine it into another line.

Well just my guess but I would suggest that it's a cinnamon. Usually cinnamons eyes start obviously plum but darken to black but often if you compare a normal and a cinnamon in natural light, the cinnamons eyes have a plum tinge compared to the normals true black eye.

okay here are all my dom pieds. Don't mind the wetlook! I got so frustrated with them that I stuck them in a cage with water in the bottom - that sorted them out pretty quickly . Just for you Kaz!

Linda those albinos are really nice. Shame about the splayed legs fellow - he has really nice feather!