nubbly5

Sorry GB my bad for shortening them. Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV) KD Powder is a water acidifyer sold by Dr Rob Marshall

Clearwings are "meant", according to the standard, to have "neutral" tails (and neutral explained to me as fingernail coloured/whitish)- usually determined by the tail quill. In reality many many clearwings are bred that do NOT meet the standard and many people find it confusing to tell between a badly marked clearwing and a greywing. From what I've seen, badly marked clearwings have hazy but still grey wing markings and often have strong grey tails so are difficult to tell apart. And judges still get it wrong and still like to learn so the debate is great.

Howdy Clearwing! I'm looking forward to seeing some ripper Clearwing pics I can drool over!

Good to know...........pays to google words we arent familiar with eh ?what about "code words" like this one ME MJ/Kg: 13.3% in Deks ingredient list ? Is it sinister or not ? No that just means megajules of metabolisable energy/kilo. Standard test used to determine the available energy from the feed. But remember that it's a standard lab test so doesn't relate exactly to what the different animals can truely utilize - gives a standard comparison though.

lasalocid sodium - THIS ingredient listed in the both the turkey starters that you found Kaz is an infeed anticoccidial. I would not go NEAR that product with a barge pole as far as my birds were concerned.

WARNING: DO NOT USE CHICKEN STARTER to feed your birds unless you know 100% what it contains. MOST pelleted chick starter has infeed anticoccidials to help young chicks through a very susceptable time in their life. Infeed anticoccidials suitable for chicks are known to cause poor hatchability in breeding poultry and deaths in horses & dogs (at high rates). You need to be 100% sure that no infeed anticoccidials are added to the pellets before you consider using the feed for your birds. Turkey starter is probably better as turkeys are pretty sensitive and I know that the anticoccidials used in chicken starters were not added to turkey starter for this reason. Also be mindful that these sorts of products are developed for the animals they are marketted for and are generally formulated around the minimum nutritional requirements for THAT animal. You ALSO need to know that feedmills use a LEAST COST ration system. That means that ingredients can and often do change, depending on their current local price and availablility, so long as the minimum specs are still met.

Hi Nikola They both appear to be Dominant Pieds. The green looks to be a boy and the blue a girl but did you use the flash for the photo's as that will change how it looks in real life. Green also looks to be a dark green the blue is a skyblue.

Why on earth would you be in trouble?! Everyone has a different take on things and if we can't learn and grow from each other then we will go nowhere. I would hate to think that anyone felt like they would be in trouble for sharing what they know or think about the different aspects of budgie-ing. I just like to try and get people to think outside the box a bit. We are all good at parrotting each other but how often do we actually sit and critically think about the different points of view or how what we do actually affects the whole picture. Whether you agree with them or not is completely beside the point but you can pick little gems of information from each and every person. Oh and GB - I recognise this little fellow! Now I wonder where I've seen HIM before......... And I breed right through summer and have for the last 4 years or so. They seem to cope really well and breeding results are fabulous this year. I doxy them immediately before they go in. The only other treatments they get are cocci prevention maybe 2x a year when the weather dictates that it's a good idea. I had not run a canker treatment for 3-4 years but have just run one through the aviary birds as I was a touch suspicious. I won't run another unless I need to. I can't run ACV or KD powder as we run bore water and it is reasonably acidic already. When you add too much acid to birds diets they have trouble absorbing certain nutrients and can become very thin. I found THAT out the hard way - but since water testing and removing ACV all is good. This system seems to work well for me but I will occasionally try other things too on the whole though - if it ain't broke I don't try to fix it.

I give Triple C for a few days IF I see pooey bums OR in the winter if rain has got into the aviary. Cocci is a primary infection and if you have an outbreak you pretty much know about it sooner than later ... I haven't had a mass outbreak - touch wood! Careful here Renee. Cocci is not just a primary infection. Oocysts are around all the time no matter how clean your aviary is. Cocci is also often considered a secondary infection if your birds health levels are down AND if you get a proper outbreak you will "know" about it when a substantial number of birds have already died. Cocci ocycts (eggs) need to sporolate to be infective to the bird and they only do this when temps are over 20 degrees and there is available moisture. At the change of the season here in WA when it is warm and damp it's a good plan to do a preventative treatment. In other areas I guess if you have warm wet weather for a a few days or more, preventative treatments should definitely be considered. Triple C is an antibiotic and will treat secondary infections that often go along with Cocci but will not treat the coccidia itself. And the comments about overmedicating and immune systems. I agree in principal but am torn two ways a little on this - Splat and macka - "the birds natural immune system"??????? And what the *** would THAT be after we jam them into a small aviary environment and breed poor immune systems with poor immune systems just because they might win shows? We have CHANGED these birds and we keep them in an evironment that it TOTALLY unnatural when you compare them to their wild ancestors. I struggle to understand the complete non medication regime in this situation. Not overdone so as to build bugs that are resistant to treatment as well as animals that are not exposed to bugs so have little natural ability to rally their own defenses but at some stage you have to provide some support for the conditions that we maintain our birds in. And don't think I'm having a go at bird keeping itself or the choices we make based on the hobby that we pursue but we also need to acknowledge this as a fact.

Love the candling shots! Well done! I really love to see the very first stages of egg development. Sometimes early on at the veins and blob stage you can actually see the tiny heart of the embryo beating away. Now the excitement of seeing what colour the babies turn out to be.

Clearwing - strongly marked but still a clearwing. These guys are often confused with greywings actually.

Bingo! And if an auction gets a reputation for just offering rubbish birds, there won't be any serious buyers turn up anyway. A whole hall full of people trying to sell rubbish to each other just isn't going to help anyone. Mind you the "pretty bird" brigade still operates in these circles too so if you put in a rubbish violet or something more in the blue range, it'll often still bid well. You can tell who the real breeders are by what they purchase too. Good features in a grey green snapped up for a bargain = breeder who knows where they are going. Tiny little blue bird heavily competed for = breeders still stuck in "pretty bird" land. This is "Nubbly's simplified scale of show breeders". A bit of a generalisation of course. AND not a judgement on pet budgie breeders either I think that if you choose to do that, that's great but I think that breeding good show budgies takes so much effort and dedication that trying to be all things to all people is a hiding to nowhere. Hence a lot of us show breeders often have trouble moving our culls as it limits your selling market to other show breeders on the whole. Are there many Budgie clubs in Indiana, Finnie? Or in the US generally?

I wasnt too happy about that either............wont encourage others to be offering birds next auction, will it ? I anticipate that the $5 fee for unsold birds will not be repeated next year ... I would be surprised if it wasn't repeated Renee. When it comes down to it a club has to run functions at least at break even. Without bird entries to cover the cost, the cost has to be recovered comehow whether people sell birds or not. What I anticipate is either NO written auction or far fewer birds. Way too many birds was the issue. We initially had 40-50 birds lined up and then suddenly that was not going to be enough so everyone was asked if they would like to put in more. The more ended up being about double that - too many and too many elderly offerings. Also the fee tends to keep some people from putting in complete rubbish so it keeps sellers honest and helps buyers get a better selection. Just like the minimum reserve at normal auctions, you still pay 10% or $5 if the bird is passed in........ makes you think a bit more about what you are going to offer for sale (or it should!!!!!). Personally I would never pay even $50 for 4-5 year old bird no matter how good it looked as the chances are it's not going to breed for you - especially when you consider the change in environment that it has to adapt too. Some birds take 12 months to get over that and breed happily and with an old bird you just can't afford to give it 12 months to settle. Nor would I put in anything I did not consider was worth paying $50 for - myself. If I think a bird is worth that, THEN I put it in. The removal of the $5 fee is a big backwards step for buyers AND the club.

The ANBC standard also has a pictorial of the standard for show budgies and a description of the standard of excellence for each variety. To be honest the length of 240mm is often exceeded with the top show budgies of today. But what Kaz says...... it takes way more than just length and Splats pics are a good indication. Usually culled show budgies have legrings and more feather than your average backyard budgie but may well not be all that long. Richo - here is a link to the results page for the ANBC Nationals. There are pics of winners to have a look at - http://www.anbc.iinet.net.au/anbc_show.htm

Bummer! I hope Bubbles rebonds with you a bit again. They sure are cute together in the pictures though.

As with GB's comments she's not a clearwing. Dominant pied removes markings from the flights leaving them the same colour as the ground colour. A yellow face, skyblue, dominant pied cutie though! Does Bubbles like her?

I get where you are coming from too GB but I guess there are just some show bred birds that don't really fit anywhere. Some like cinnamon grey green split BES are a prime example - grey is not wanted in show BES, they are generally small compared to other show stock AND they are cinnamon grey green, even the people I have lined up waiting for a hand tamable baby don't want these guys - neither do I unfortunately so they become some of the ones I class as rubbish as with the ones you just don't want to admit having bred - which do pop out here and there. And splat I know where you are coming from. I took 7 birds to our clubs last written auction, 5 or 6 of which were very young '09 hens of good breeding. Only one attracted a bid - one of the better ones admittedly. This I found really surprising as most of these girls would have grown on and were from good breeding (my lacewings predominantly) AND people always go on about not being ale to get good young stock hens. We ended up paying $5 for every passed in bird so guess who is not going to be offering reasonable stock hens in this manner again (not that i really mind supporting the club either to be honest BUT....) and too bad if anyone comes whinging to me in the future that they can't get reasonable hens. Anyway, I'm sure macka has a range of culls, some of which will be useful to other breeders and some that just are not (for whatever reason). He is a lucky fellow to be able to sell them at all in my opinion. Maybe his idea of rubbish is similar to mine?..................

I get where you are coming from Macka. Some people over here have been lucky enough to have cornered the market at the local pet shops (and I'm talking local local - not Perth) but as I said, they HAVE to supply regularly. In my opinion if you HAVE to supply and you can't then you either take out breeding stock or you lose your market. For me that makes it hard. I'm not here to breed birds for petshops and to do that means using facilities that would otherwise go into breeding what I am interested in breeding - show birds so why would I do that. I have older birds that I've had no success with breeding from them - I would not even DREAM of selling those on to anyone who wants to breed from them and who wants old aviary birds often in greys and grey greens - no-one. I DO have a few people waiting for just weaned babies for pets because I have provided some previously and they have become beloved, very tame pets and the word got around a bit but trying to decide what baby is suitable for hand taming but is not all that useful in my breeding program is a drag. Luckily now I am also in a better position with my stud generally to be able to sell lesser birds that would still benefit someone else's breeding program but the real rubbish (especially in colours backyardies don't want) ....... well - you are lucky that you can sell them is all I can say! And GB in my definition of what my stud is and also the usefulness of that bird to someone else's program - some birds are definitely rubbish the trouble is that they are often not the pretty colours that non-show breeders invariably want!

Cirrus is moulting through and through... he even has shorter feathers in his cap from the old ones dropping out and the new ones coming in :rofl: Probably so few have made it this far that most people wouldn't really know if the moult or not. Is that his first moult? I can see brighter yellow feathers in his cap so was wondering if he is changing to adult??? feather duster feathers??? What do you feed him now that obviously supports his feather growth so well? Is it the same as before or have you adapted his diet?

Nicely done Finnie! Cheek patches are part of the puzzle of determining colour/mutation. That's why I'll often coment on a cheek patch colour when trying to determine photographs of mutations shown in this forum. You just have to remember that there can be natural variations too - so it's a useful guide but needs to be used as part of the puzzle. Just a couple of things - for Lacewings, the cheek patches generally come out so pale a violet that it's better to describe it as lilac. Suffused and dilute are the same thing so you would expect cheek patches to be the same. BES are lightened even more than normal dilute by both the cinnamon that usually present as well as selecting for less and less body colour.

Wow how old is Cirrus now Liv?

Well it depends on your opinion of too close. If it were me I'd give the brother to sister pairing a go and keep an eye on what comes out. If there are any deteramental results - dwarfs, straw feather, popping hips - don't put them together again. If the results are okay then re-pair the chicks to the right coloured outcrosses and then use THOSE 1/2 brothers and sisters together. Hey but that's just me

Down here in we have a very small number of places to sell cull budgies. A couple of club breeders supply young stock to our local shop but they have to supply regularly. Prices are reasonable but there is a lot of competition to sell what with club people AND backyarders. I will sell selectively from home but usually to known club people. Having bred quite a number of registered puppies in my time as well, I can genuinely say that you can make as good a judgement of a prospective home as you like and still get it wrong. Even being as careful as possible choosing homes, we have still had to rescue and rehome one gorgeous hound boy who did nothing wrong other than land in a bad home. With budgies and pet shops it's only a hope that they are well looked after. It's so far out of our control.

I breed brother to sister, mother to son, father to daughter if I see the need to try and fix features within my stud. The issue you have is that you are concentrating genetic material. What the end plan is, is to produce a family of birds that bear similar features and breed true i.e. that breed on likes of themselves. What the risk is, is that you are also concentrating unseen maybe deteramental features as well. You can concentrate fertility as much as you can concentrate infertility but you often don't know what it is you are concentrating if you can't see it.