nubbly5

What a great mixed bag of babies in such nice colours and varieties! It's so exciting when unexpecteds pop out of the breeding! Did you know or suspect that you had so much greywing in your birds?

In this case generally called DIRT! You can see from the grey I prepped for show that once they are nicely spruced up there is no more dirty stained look. If you look carefully you can see some staining on some of the yellow lacewings too. It's especially prevelent on those birds that seem to relish fresh corn on the cob. I don't know what they do on it but they usually end up with grubby faces and masks. Usually when they moult out it all looks nice and fresh for a while and then they get all grubby again (unless they get a wash!). Sometimes though the staining can indicate respiratory disease or even airsac mites but in this case it's just filthy grubby budgies.

Thank JB you are too kind but remember that these are my normal greens and there are definitely a few in there that won't be staying on! The other varieties are probabaly a different story quality wise too. Okay so here are the Lacewings. As much as the normal greens are just about all boys, the lacewings bar a couple are all girls - what's with that! At least I can use a whole heap of normal greens over lacewing hens next season.....

Thanks Shannon!

Well I went a bit nuts a took pics of all the greens I bred so I thought I might over a period of time post up pics of all the different birds in different varieities - I might not get them all done before the big holiday though but I'll see how we go. I normally take pics of those birds that catch my eye but that is by no means a complete guide as to the quality of all my birds. So for the exercise AND so that I keep myself honest and not join the egohead brigade :fingerscrossed: here goes, a warts and all look at my normal green selection for this year. Obviously some are moulted, some ar moulting and some are still in nest feather - also some were going a bit nuts in the cage...... And just pointing out that for some reason almost ALL my normal greens this year are cocks. The only hen is a dumpy little split fallow thing..... sigh. And what's happened to spewbucket????? It's actually been working without a hitch even uploading mutliple files whilst we are shaped..... not that I'm complaining :cake:.

I doubt there would be more suffusion in an albino masking DF spangle. Albino removes body colour to nil (in most cases) and DF spangle reduces body colour to close to nil. Putting the albino gene on top of an already diluted body colour you would assume the albino to have less chance of suffusion if it were masking DF spangle. Only breeding will tell. Well 50% chance of Cinnamon Ino (Lacewings........?) - 25% cocks & 25% hens. Of which there is a 25% of them being DF spangle on top of that.

this quote in another thread got me thinking... are there any 'banned substances' in the hobby? I am sure that nubbly5, was not advising people to fill their birds with steroids or the like but just got me curious... Do we need a new catagory? GM or maybe even go the other way, Organic. Well banned substances in sports such as horse racing are generally based on performance enhancing products and pharmacuiticals. I'm not too sure why or how anyone in the budgerigar world would manage to buy or use performance enhancing products on their birds. You might be able to use cattle HGP's crushed down and added to soft food maybe, but it would be hard to purchase without owning cattle, expensive and potentially difficult to get a good result from seeing as the products are designed for cattle growth not budgie growth. Testosterone which used to be freely available in rural merchandise shops to stop pizzle rot in sheep has been withdrawn for many years after weightlifters and bidy builders discovered that they could purchase it and inject themselves (I presume that protected THEM against pizzle rot too ). What else could you use, antibiotics as a prophlactic treatment to limit any setbacks due to bacterial infections - we can use them now anyway. Making people buy or use GM free or go organic...... well surely we still have freedom of choice as to what food we buy. I would not like to be told by you or anyone that I HAD to use organic produce. I KNOW what the e.coli count on organic eggs is compared to cage grown and as far as food safety goes I KNOW what I would buy (this is no comment on welfare issues by the way - that's a separate arguement). And as far a GM crops are concerned - if we don't start looking logically at technological advances to feed people, more and more people will starve. The UK (one the biggest proponents of the GM free and organic produce movement) went from a net export of food products to a net importer - they cannot even feed their own population now! I'm not saying GM is the answer but if we always view technology as the enemy we will miss out on things that will help feed the world. My rant over.....

Yes it seems to be.

I picked up a scungy skyblue cock from Henry's Auction one year. got him home, thinking he was rubbish but used him anyway. This is one of the birds that has made a significant impact on my stud! Obviously the quality behind any of Henry's birds makes it worth trying them even if they look like ****!

Thanks for the article Daz but that even talks of gaps in knowledge about budgie nutrition. This take directly from the article itself: "Finally, to complicate matters even further, optimum dietary levels of a number of nutrients have not yet been determined for Budgerigars." Also Mat my comment is merely that there are too many variables even in the same nest. If you tried to publish a peer reviewed article using that as your evidence it would not be accepted as reasonable evidence.

Thanks JB , isnt it amazing that someone else can have the right words for what your thinking. If you take a normal nest of 4 young , they are all fed the same in that cabinet , But ! the resulting young can all be different in size . The only variable is in their genetic make up . Really Matt? What if one chick being a bit younger is not fed quite as much by it's parents as the others, or maybe the parents select out certain food first and deliver that to only one chick more often than the others? Maybe by chance one of the youngsters gets some food that is not good. There are too many variables in your test of genetics v's nutrition. You would somehow have to ensure that each chick is fed the same in regards to nutrients and quantity for it's life stage as well as ensuring that the nutritional specs were over what is required for maintainence. None the less if any animal is fed to it's optimum the limiting factor becomes it's genetic potential. So I definitely agree with the feeding them best quality and amount of food. BUT have we got any recent information on the actual nutrient requirements for growth of our current exhibition budgie? I know there is sketchy info about budgies in general but nothing done recently. This leads me to think that we don't really have a great handle on what our exhibition budgies ACTUALLY need or more like what actual quatities they need now a days.

Is this what is meant by "backlining"? Us Aussies don't have that much of an imagination when it comes to naming things. Backlining is just what it sounds like - putting lines on the backs of sheep. Generally meaning applying a lice treatment in lines......

A recent study in cattle production showed that poor nutrition in early age lead to poorer final weights and slower average growth through the life of the animal. So for cattle at least, the right nutrition ALLOWS the animal to reach it's genetic potential.

Oh my GB, what an imagination you have!!!!!! Anyway THOSE sheep would be pretty chewy

Looks very BOY to me. See how the purple colour is being replaced with a nice deep blue? Hens don't show that deeper blue and if they have a blue cere it is a pale powder blue or whitish colour.

Did I say we sell hormone Growth Promotants

I am a sales representive in the animal health industry. I sell primarily production animal products dealing with farmers, vets, wholesalers and anyone in between. I've been looking after WA for my company for the past 16 years. We deal with dairy cattle, beef cattle, pigs, poultry and sheep - selling antibiotics, rumen modifiers, external paraciticides, livestock housing insect treatments and a few others. I give presentations, training sessions, attend trade displays, help to run registration and commercial trials, produce programs for pest and disease control and occasionally attend and diagnose complaints about product efficacy. I am away from home a substantial amount of time (for example my husband will be baching for 3 weeks this month!) and struggle to fit my hobbies and my family (sadly) into my lifestyle - hence no children for us.......... We see a lot of this sort of thing.

Just had a long yack with the resident pied expert and it seems like there is WAY more to this than meets the eye. Apparently you CAN have df dutch pied df Aussie banded pied AND df recessive pied all in one bird aaaaaarrrrgh...... my brains exploding! Good luck with the test mating Finnie - let us know what the results are. It'll help us all learn more about pieds .

Hi Fiona!

Yep Finnie, that's my understanding. Variegated pied - is the one that we typically see on the show bench here. It's described as "back, rump, brest, flanks and underparts to be a solid even shade throughout except that patches of ground colour can appear on any part(s) of the body." I think this is the Dutch Pied. The Aussie Banded Pied has lots of body colour and a nice ground colour band on the abdomen but from what I understand there has been substantial mix and matching of the 2 varieties over the years (here at least). This is typical of a variegated pied. Actually our Australian standard describes Australian Banded Pieds, Variegated Pieds, Dutch Pieds and Clearflight Pieds all in the dom pied section. With only one Recessive or Danish Pied. Looking at the genetics bible it comments that only 2 seperate dominant pied mutations have been identified in budgerigars....... The Dutch Pied and the Australian Banded Pied. I need to have a good yack to a pied genetics expert.......

any I have had have been the usual variety of dom pied to get DF's that look like that...............mostly clear wings and clear body colour except for darker colour patch over the rump. My expereince with these only. Hmmm that's the problem isn't it. The usual sort of dom pied (ones that are commonly shown) are considered to be a mix and match of dutch and banded and combinations of - adulterised doms in other words. The standard describes the differences but in actual fact we judge them together anyway and never really make any distinction between them so we all "grow up" in the show world believing that doms are doms are doms when in fact there are unique mutations of dom pied. I guess the only sure answer will be found from breeding results. It might well be that Phoebe is a combination of clearflight and dutch or banded and has thrown in a dutch pied or banded pied gene in there. But I have to say Finnie, this lot are extremely pretty, whatever the mutations and if you pair the parents to other birds next time you will get more information to clarify further what Phoebe and Bailey are.

Based on what sort of dom pied to begin with though Kaz? Not that I'm any pied expert mind so I could be talking out of you know where but I would imagine a df clearflighted pied might look different to a df dutch pied. Considering the combination of dutch dominant pied and recessive gives dark eyed clears but dominant banded pied and recessives gives the combo pieds that Neville describes, I would imagine that there is a range of pied-ness from little to lots depending on the original amount of pied in the pied - if that makes any sense......

I went into the same place last week during the middle of the day on Thursday. My lunch time entertainment. I could not believe the conditions the inside birds were being kept in. The outside birds were in the relative comfort of the aviary with roof sprinklers but the inside birds - it was truely horrible to see the suffering! The only fan in the place was pointed at the till with all the birds in the extreme heat with no escape, piled into small holding cages. Most were panting, eyes closed in serious discomfort. One in particular looked to be in it's last throws on the cage floor. Now had I seen the birds in such distress I would be doing something and quickly. Did the management look concerned? Only about me looking at the birds in horror. The other thing is all the poor birds that come here to board. They must have thought they had eneded up in the firey pits of ***. I walked out of there seriously depressed. This place needs to be closed down.

It was an interesting read though. I was surprised to see people tell him it was not possible to improve his American pet type budgies. Isn't that what all us showies have been doing anyway? sure he might have had a slow start and had to inbreed like crazy but surely he would have been able to improve the birds he had towards show standard. After all the so called English budgie is just a wild type (pet sized) budgie that has been selectively bred for years and years to favour size and feather structure.

Thanks to everyone for your kind comments about my birds. It's been fun sharing and seeing all your birds too. Shannon I'll end up with 180 from this season. Normally I buy 150 rings and just about get through them but this year I had to order another 30 and i've got 7 left and one nest still to ring. They have 4 babies at the moment and 4 good eggs still. We'll see how that goes fingers crossed. GB I love the little hen too. I had a cin op sky hen 2002 ring that won the SWBC young hens champ from Novice grade, beating some impressive open hens. I called her Superbudgie and this little lady reminds me very much of her. Hopefully she'll be better though .