nubbly5

Just for comparison....... What do you think this bird is? Very purple cere but if you look carefully white around the nostrils. A few months later the same bird and it's definitely a hen. So Kate - more nice clear pics for us to look at please and maybe we will get it right.....

Sorry GB I have no idea if a flea bomb will have the same effect. This year I used defender 3L indoor surface spray - 3 month treatment. Bought from Bunnings. Purchased F10SC from the Nationals in Adelaide and have used it for the last 2 years but Virkon-S I used to buy through my local agricultural store (had to get them to order it in). I will buy F10SC again if I can get hold of some more - very economical and good anti-viral activity. Chlorhexidine is a common ingredient for industrial disinfectants under a few different brands.

I found AIL does not last long enough to deal with red mites as they hatch. Hence the longer acting surface spray which is also a synthetic pyrethroid like AIL but longer lasting. What is Ivometine? Are you meaning Ivermectin as in what's in Ivomec? Do you actually use this as a surface treatment? Chlorhexidine is a garden variety disinfectant and works well as an antibacterial but I'm not 100% convinced it's the best anti-viral agent out there. I used to use Virkon-S but have been using......ummm FS10 (something like that anyway). I check out how good these things are against Parvo virus which is a pretty resiliant virus. If it does Parvo well then I figure it's probably going to to Polyoma virus well too (but that could be complete rubbish in reality Polyoma may well be more resiliant than even Parvo virus).

Typical ring registrar But how are you going to ensure that all members will get their rings exactly on the 1st September or will you not post them out until that date?

Great going Shannon. Looking forward to seeing chickie pics soon too!

I breed from Sept through to march and then have 6 months break - well the birds - not me All at once not staggered, as I like to have birds doing similar things at sinilar times for fostering reasons. GB the surface spray thing happened over some time and was a kind of progressive trial for me. I had a HUGE outbreak of blood mite and no matter what I did to treat the birds, the little buggers just kept coming back. After doing some reading up about the blood mites I realized that they live and lay their eggs off the bird in cracks and holes in the breeding cabinet and nest box. I started by spraying just with ordinary old fly spray with the chicks out of the box and then tentatively put them back in. That seemed fine for the chicks but the damn mites only died if you sprayed them directly and the fly spray didn't last long enough to kill the hatching baby mites. So I thought that surface spray might just work okay. Firstly I used the household surface spray cans. As I was in the middle of my breeding season I had chicks eggs etc all in boxes so first I took the box within the nest box out and sprayed and waited for it to dry. Put the chicks back - no problem. But mites were still in the box (within the nest box - box) so I held my hand over the next lot of chicks and sprayed - no problem with chicks at all even with wet surface spray inside the nest box and good result on mites. So now I use the professional pack every year prior to the start of breeding and spray all the cabinets and nest boxes inside after having done my disinfecting, paying particular attention to the joins in the boxes. I do leave it to dry though so that the birds don't get exposure to the wet surface spray but honestly when I sprayed directly in the box with chicks in it (hand over the chicks though) there was no affect on the chicks anyway. I have done this now for the last 3 years, and along with Ivermectin spot on treatment, have absolutely no signs of those horrible blood mites and no issue with the birds at all. This year I also surfaced sprayed all my perches in the flights and left them to dry before reintroducing birds as I was not 100% convinced that nasty red blood mites were not hiding in the joins between the perchs and the support timber.

Hmmm. cracker biscuit, runny budgie egg, caviar... I mean, sounds fantastic!!! you beat me to it nubbs snh snh snh...... soft boiled - but you'd need a really small spoon and tiny tiny toast soldiers

For some of us near enough to 1 week from posting is not unexpected. We only get post 3x per week.

Thats a bummer. Do you have to be away lots still? My poor husband has the job of feeding, watering and ringing birds when I'm away with work - the poor sod is paranoid and his main aim is not to have anything die while I'm away....... but it happens often enough as he just doesn't see things happening like hens getting off chicks or not them not being fed properly even though it's been probably 8 years now...... sigh.

eeeerrrmmm - not exactly. Notice I didn't take close up photos But looking way cleaner now. All boxes scrubbed out and disinfected plus 2/3 have been surface sprayed. Now just to surface spray the last 6 boxes so that those nasty little blood mites have NO chance of survival and then to add the kitty litter and pine to the cabinets and the pine shavings to the boxes and were off and running. YAY!

I think the delivery date to the states is often a bit before the official ring issue date so that gives state ring stewards time to divide into club orders and then club ring stewards have time to send rings out for the 1st of September. I know that the rings have already arrived in WA to the WABC ring steward and they will posted out to club stewards towards the end of the month. Too slow, Kaz beat me to it.

Yep malamite cabinets. Easy to clean but HEAVY. I use warm soapy water with scourer to remove any stuck on poo or stuff, then wipe with a clean sponge so that not too much moisture left to cause chipboard underneath to swell. Find these easier to work with than wire cages and they look nicer too.

She's sitting on it.... I don't know my birds have a high sex drive maybe it's somthing I feed them?? She still won't really miss it. Best to remove it if it's infertile so she doesn't think she has to sit for 18 days to make it hatch. She'll probably lay a few more every couple of days too.

First your boy budies and now your girl budgies too...... what ARE whispering to them ...... mini egg on toast....... sorry couldn't help that. It'll be infertile with no boys around - you can just pop it in the bin. The hen won't miss it.

Including you?!........ dirty birdie

Just keep giving us pics over time and eventually we'll get it. We need the sexing expert here........... "KKKKKAAAAAAAAAAZZZZZZZZ where are you!!!?"

Ummm violet breeding expectations not quite right..... 25% df violet, 50% sf violet and 25% normals.

2x single factor greys (both birds have one gene for grey and one for non-grey - grey being dominant means that the birds still appear grey but carry the non-grey gene as well) gives you the chance to breed 25% double factor grey, 50% single factor grey and 25% normal blue. Think about each parent bird donating one gene each for the grey factor. So if mum and dad both happen to donate a grey gene each - chick is double factor grey, if mum donates a non-grey gene and dad donates a grey gene then chicks are single factor grey and will appear grey (grey being dominant to non-grey), if mum and dad both donate non-grey genes then babies will be non-grey. The mauve happens due to the dark factor in the bird, irrespective of if the parents are grey or not. Both parents would have had to be carrying at least on dark factor gene but that is often hard to tell in greys. So both parents were single factor grey carrying at least one dark factor gene. Pretty simple genetic outcome. yep SJW beat me to it while I was typing.......

I have always had WAY better results in summer than winter. Mind you in the afternoon the aviary gets shade from 2 large trees, one on the southern side that overhangs and a huge one on the western side. It is also situated east west which you might think is horrible BUT down both sides of the flight area I have fully opening shutters so can catch any available breezes (sea breeze is Sw'ly so that works well). The breeding room part has mesh at the top joining the flight section (top right of the photo) and a double door (mesh and solid - to the left of the photo) which I leave open for air flow almost all year even if the shutters are fully closed due to inclement weather. Also have 2 whirly birds in room of the breeding room part. One day I'll do a photo expose of the whole setup for you. I run a small water cooler on days around the 38 degrees or more. I don't seem to have any problems with hatching etc during even the extreme heat whereas I have a lot of problems in winter with a huge 6x12m uninsulated shed trying to keep any heat in, hence breeding in summer. But even when we had a 3m x 3m gardern shed come birdie cooker I still had better results in summer.

The white around the nostrils of both say "female" to me. I'll call it as both girls.

yes apart from the split for blue part..........

Playing Devils Advocate here..... How many people get into breeding budgies with NO experience whatsoever? Having been in animals of almost every description since I could breath I can say that there are good and bad examples in every animal industry from birds to dogs to cattle. There are good budgies breeders and really crappy ones whose birds die regularly, who keep their birds in terrible conditions and think that's just fine or just don't know the difference. The same happens in dog breeding - we all slam pet shops but I can list a few registered dog breeders whose dogs must think they were born to some kind of ***!!! ...... (sigh)......the f-ing auto censor gets me every time....... "firey pits of ***" is what I mean here. It take all sorts and I'll support those pet shops who sell healthy happy animals run by people that care for their animals and their customers so that these guys survive to set the example and avoid those that don't, just as I'll avoid ever buying budgies from a breeder who I know has crappy conditions or whose birds I don't think are well cared for.

Well I'm getting excited but daunted by all the work that i have to do prior to Saturday...... sigh. The steps I have to set up for the breeding season are: 1. Empty out any remaining litter bedding etc from cabinets (I tend to shut down and leave the litter in the bottom of the cage - only empty out the nest boxes) 2. Full vacuum of all cabinets, nest boxes. 3. Warm soapy water wash of all cabinets and nest boxes. 4. Disinfectant spray - virkon S or similar anti-viral and antibacterial agent 5. Professional pack surface spray of all cabinets and nest boxes (use Mortien or similar 3 month active surface spray) 6. Add kitty litter to cabinet floors (have deep litter floors) 7. Add pine shavings to nest boxes 8. Add budgies So far I've got through steps 1 & 2 and am looking down the barrell of some hard slog to get through all that I need to before Saturday. But should manage okay, I hope. You can see the cabinet end of my breeding room with fronts off for easy access and the poor industrial vac that copped a flogging. And I'm not going to show the other side of my breeding room where the sink is piled up with containers ready for disinfecting.......

It doesn't matter if they KNOW they are related either - the constraints put on humans by culture and tradition do not exist for budgies. Brother, sister, mother, father whatever - all is fair game in budgie land. Female budgies, if they really want to breed, will nest virutally anywhere even on the floor of the cage - maybe not very succesfully but some will still try. You can still just take away the eggs a she lays or she may not even try but she still might. Some hens even without males present will try and lay eggs and nest anyway. But personally I would go with the 2 brothers or 2 other unrelated males. Male budgies are generally nicer and seem to bond more easily to people anyway.

Agree with SJW & Elly grey added on top. You generally describe a bird that has one copy of a recessive gene as split for as that recessive gene is hidden until there are 2 copies of that gene in a bird. Grey is a dominant gene that alters both blue AND green series birds added ON TOP of the blue genes a bird already has. A single factor grey bird will have 1 gene for grey AND 2 genes for blue (they appear on different alelles). A double factor grey will have 2 grey genes AND 2 blue genes. A single factor grey green will have 1 gene for grey AND 2 genes for green (or be green split for blue - still visual green). A double factor grey green will have 2 genes for grey AND 2 genes for green (or be green split for blue - still visual green). This is exactly the same for violet. So there are 2 outcomes possible for a grey x blue bird depending on if the grey is single factor or double factor grey. If the grey is double factor then you would get: 100% single factor grey chicks If the grey is single factor then you would get: 50% single factor grey chicks 50% normal blue chicks