nubbly5

32 in Perth tomorrow - not too bad! I'm not sure I'm looking forward to it that much - "All work and no play makes nubbly an evil tempered *****!". Holy **** dropped his tail, Holy **** still not fully moulted out - dregs of other things to take and a sh*t load of work hmmmmm......

Lucky Dave!!!!

I rinse them regularly so that they have no chance of going sour!

I have always included mung bean sprouts (well just sprouted seeds/beans) into my soft food. My birds love them and they provide a good protein source.

Oh noooooo! So sorry to hear about your loss. Buffy will be waiting for Greg and yourself at Rainbow Bridge (click here)

How long have they been in the box? Some can take several weeks to lay. Also could be what's known as an internal layer.

Thank Robyn - I had got it this time. Still can't really tell even from the expanded photo.

Looks like it might be..... maybe the starts of it. But it's a bit hard to tell from your picture. Does she have little holes in her cere or little holes or furrows going down her beak. If so then YES. A worse case looks like this but the small holes on the cere would be the general noticable starting point.

Check out this thread. http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/index....showtopic=28048 Birds can be both dominant pied AND opaline or dominant pied and cinnamon or dominant pied and any other variety that appears on different alleles.

Sooooooo cute, thanks GB and rip!

It's actually hard NOT to breed opalines these days as it's rare enough to come across cock birds who are not split for either opaline OR cinnamon OR both. I'm not 100% sure about the whole "why it's happened" but my guess is that it's to do with the markings/spots that have developed over the years on in opalines. I have always been told that using opalines improves spot size so maybe there is some truth to the fact and opaline actually do carry more melanin generally which would also affect other parts of the bird including the mantle. Because people concentrate on size and type rather than variety AND because in show bird opalines, mantles are rarely even considered, this variety has changed from it's original form. I HAVE seen 1 or 2 clear mantled opalines but generally only on pet birds.

Kaz have a closer look at that second bird......... it looks like a cock with a browning cere - a cock with issues in other words.

Just caught up with your thread again and sorry to hear about the baby losses - welcome to the WONDERFUL world of breeding show budgies!!! Hope all the rest of your pairs breed nicely for you.

I'm skipping these Nats, Kaz. I won't have any birds at the selections and I personally will be in France & Germany having some long service leave - wheee hah! Floating around the canals in a self drive canal cruizer! Like I said before I'll be thinking of you guys - not :raincloud: Anyways all these little guys are 2010 rings - the ring change could not have been better for us really. I bred very few 2009 ringers and most of those were BES & clearwings so am more than happy to skip this year and pick it back up again next year! It's a bit of a long wait though!

Here is an update from the G&G stud. We are on our last round - we only have 12 of the 24 cabinets still in circulation with one or two more to come off line this week. Still very happy with what is coming out of the breeding program. The third round of my beautiful normal light green x normal dark green gave me 2 more dark greens, making 5 in total most of which look to have the same style as their 10th place Nats dad. I was hoping this normal light green cock and his brother would found/continue my normal/normal line after purchasing a bird I was assured was normal/normal but alas (after 3 years mind you) out has popped opalines AND worst of all cinnamon - not what I wanted..... Here are 2 of his latest chickies. Have managed to breed about 9 dominant pieds (not that they are a variety I'll be concentrating on - but I'll use them as normals) and this little guy is showing some promise. I though someone had given him a nip on the cere but after a couple of weeks of it remaining the same I think it actually might be the pied out cere effect. This little fellow is a really substantial little thing with the widest head on it. It's size is slightly unexpected as it's siblings are not quite that size. Last but not least is this really nice little cinnamon opaline sky hen. She harks back to my very first nationals rep and looks like she might hold promise too. Here are some familar faces from previous posts. THEN: NOW: THEN: NOW: THEN: NOW: THEN: NOW: I was hoping that Holy S*%t might strut his stuff at the state show but it was touch and go really as he is not QUITE fully moulted out yet. Still he came up presentably after a bucket wash on the weekend. But I walked into the aviary this afternoon only to see that he'd dropped both tail feathers - bummer. His brother Holy Cr*p is nowhere near moulted out and although I'm sure he'll eventaully be the better bird, looks terrible right now. Nicely though I have a couple more brothers and 1 sister from the same pairing also looking pretty nice, plus 2 more hatchees from the pairs last round.

Although this is slightly embarrasing, I think nubbly is the nicest of them....... no favouritism either! :rofl:

Looks greywing to me.

All I can say is "f-ing hard". Greys and grey greens tend to hide dark factors really well. You can sometimes get a HINT of it by comparing light, dark and double dark factors together but often you just can't tell either. I have had a couple of birds that you NEVER EVER consider to carry a dark factor pop out a dark green chick. Best way i have found to figure it out is with breeding results. Sorry, not much help there.

Young birds often chew each others tails and climbing on wire can also make them ratty. If they are not really in a moult you can make them look fresh and new by dipping the tail (not the budgie) into boiling or just boiled water. If the shaft is broken just leave it to moult out normally and then new tail should be unratty - for a while at least.

Yes I get these. These birds are never fine feathered smaller examples they are always buff feathered. There was a (mutavi I think) study looking at tailess wonders which saw the top of the list was PBFD (circovirus) NOT FM (polyoma virus), second was pulpitis (infection of the feather pulp). Looking at it critically, due to the affected birds ALWAYS being buff feathered I would consider pulpitis to be more of a problem than we realise due to large open feather folicles. When we pull feathers we damage folicles, allowing infection to set in. Here is the link: http://www.budgerigars.co.uk/diseases/feather.html

That's why they have clear definitions of hobby/business as it's much more common for hobbies to run at a loss or for people to be able to claim that they run at a loss. But I guess if the ATO saw lots of cash regularly coming into your accounts from an "unknown" source they might decide to audit and determine if your hobby is indeed your business. The best guideline really is if your hobby supports you and you do not have to find any other source of income (or not much anyway) - if that's the case the according to the ATO it's a business.

If you are making a net loss on your birds - very good luck to you convincing the Tax dept that it is a business as opposed to a hobby - UNTIL you start making dollars that is THEN they are happy to call it a business. I went down this track with our dogs - depends on how much income you derive directly from your birds. There are strict limits in tax law even for production animals let alone pets. The VAST majority of us would be hobbyists and not business people. Geez sorry Matt - Nubbly AGAIN has not read the posts properly - What Matt said.

Not unless you've got the thought to be extinct recessive grey. Otherwise greys are a dominant variety and you need a grey to get one.

My aviary IS all in one - bit hard for quarantine but easy to treat as one whole flock!

Noooooooooo! I'm so sorry for your loss. Thankyou Liv for posting the details of your mops and their lives with you.