nubbly5

50% chance Lacewing Hens, 50% chance Cinnamon/Lacewing Cocks 50% chance green (yellow)/blue (white) and 50% chance blue (white) I think.........

Hey dek, just looking at that bird again...... is he actually a cinnamon? On the photo, his markings look suspiciously like they are black coloured rather than brown. Might just be the way the photo makes him look though but against the lacewing with proper cinnamon markings he looks lke he has normal markings.....

As Liv siad eye problems can be a sign of psittacosis. SOMETIMES it can just be a feather in the eye which grows into the eye and trimming and antibiotic treatment (sometimes just trimming alone) can resolve the issue but usually does not depress the bird enough that you would notice a reduction in movement/activity. SOME birds seem to be born (hatched) with a genetic eye problem (I have not read of found out what it might be but I SUSPECT it could be inturned eye lashes but they are so small and fine it's hard to tell) - these birds I cull as they do tend to breed in families and I've had little success treating such birds even with significant vet intervention. With a bird that didn't show any issues before AND is less active than before I would be suspicious of psittacosis if you have not done a psittacosis treatment recently. Might pay to find out or do something about this as IF it is psittacosis, it can cause significant and fast deaths.

Pretty sure this is a really good example of a double factor golden face. In the single factor the yellow suffusion is very pronounced producing that really sea green colour on blue birds. In the double factor the body suffusion is extremely reduced and produces what is generally considered to be the most attractive of all the YF forms - strong golden face colour with little body colour suffusion. In normal birds you would see less of the suffusion on the body but because this bird is pied it is more noticable on the white protions of the body.

The mottled cheek patch is also a dead giveaway!

Other thing too Anne is that as much as you wanted to save this little fellow - taking him home (even with very careful quarantine) runs the risk of spreading whatever he has to your birds too. Probably better that you didn't take him home - as awful as that might sound.

Yep spot on LBB. He's a pretty little thing too.

okay Shannon will do but I won't be home until the weekend so will send photo's after that.

do you want me to see what birds are there and send you pics?

Well it LOOKS like a clearwing - an incredibly clear clearwing at that. BUT the cheek patch (violet & white not just plain violet) and the white on his rump tells me it's also spangle as GB has said - very very very attractive budgie that. I've always wondered how clear a clearwing spangle would end up being. It's not a cinnamon as it's feet are blue and not pink.

Dean it's going to be very dependant on your location and different for everyone. As much as Kaz says don't pair to your own schedule I kinda do because........ I have an uninsulated shed that gets mighty cold AND after nine years my results in winter SUCK bigtime. I noted that my birds fertility and hatchability increased around September so for the last 3 years I have put my birds down then. I do have birds going crazy right now but will not bother with the terrible results to try and breed them at the moment. However from talking with lots of different people - that few degrees warmer that you can get with insulation and a heater makes a difference but for me breeding through summer is much more productive so that's what I do. It's just been trial and error, finding the right time for my birds to breed at their best. I do still only choose birds that are in condition though........ you are on a hiding to nowhere if you try and breed birds that are not in breeding condition - yours don't sound like that though

Quite a few clearwings Shannon but the best of the culls are already spoken for. I'm not too sure what's left but I can have a look and take some pics for you if there is anything worthwhile. Also put aside the lacewing hen that came 12th in the Nationals for our club auction in September. No other Lacewings though.

Thanks Dean Ooooh, I wonder what the budgie population in Canada is like. Hopefully they have some nice clearwings over there for you!

oh no........... I am so sorry to hear about your precious Twitter

A word of advice. If you are trying to breed a line of albino's you might want to breed a few albino's to start and then upgrade you birds by breeding strong splits. If I were in the same boat I would put my best albino to best albino (like you suggested with the first hen and your Allan Rowe cock - nice score By The Way and Allan Rowe has used some VERY POWERFUL birds in his stud in the past, so he should breed on good quality) for 1 round then split those birds and put your cock to your very best normal hen and breed some nice splits and albie hens, put your albie hen to either your best split cock to breed some more albies and splits OR preferably put her to the best grey cock you can lay your mits on and breed some top quality splits. It does become somewhat of a numbers game and to keep a good line going you actually need more birds than you think as there will always be some that don't breed well for you. So aim for numbers first, then upgrade the features.

Coz spangles are a dominant variety when you use them you know if a chick is spangle or not so they are easier to use than some other varieties. Still, they are often not ideal so a good line of normals is fairly handy. It's a great idea focusing on a couple of particular varieties like that too. Good luck finding some nice stock birds and remember that a good bird is a good bird regardless of colour and variety and if they have the features you need they will be of use no matter what variety they are.

Welcome humble! Definitely a little "she" budgie and as Dean says she's a recessive pied cinnamon green hen (she might be grey green or olive green looking at the colour of the green patch on her). There is quite a bit of information under the genetics and mutations heading with lots of pics of different varieties of birds. Look for "Pictures of Members Recessive Pieds" something like that anyway. There are examples of other varieties there too and a description of the standards that apply to the show birds in the different varieties.

Great idea! What varieties have you selected?

:boogie: Sorry if that turned out to be a lecture of sorts...... :rofl: I would just hate someone to give up coz they think they can't get there! Hey (just carrying on my lecturing tendencies ), sometimes it's better to buy an average bird from a good stud with good birds behind it than to look for that good bird from an average stud. More often than not I've found the average birds with better stock behind breed on quality whereas good birds without the strong birds behind them often don't. I have found this repeatedly.

I would say 2 girls but like above, the flash could be affecting the colours. And sorry to ask if it's a dumb question but a white recessive pied?....... do you mean white with blue patches??? Only going by the photo above which yes, is only the head, I can't see any rec pied bar head markings on the bird at all.

Thanks Guys! Kaz I have 24 cabinets. Linda I started with a couple of pairs bought from the local pet shop. My first babies, 3 of, were rung in 2000 (gold rings) and they were puny. It's taken me this long to get this far with a lot of trials and fails along the way. But hey it's so worth it when you look from one year to the next and you can see an overall improvement in your birds. Plus I COULD afford to some degree to be a "checkbook" breeder but I can't bring myself to pay huge money for something that might just die without me having a chance to make use of it. So I tend to just buy the odd one here and there to add a feature that I need or more often the lesser varieties now, so I'm even more pleased that the improvement in my birds is generally in MY birds. The big blues family now has 6 & 7 generations of G&G breeding. You know, the biggest improvement for me came when I increased the room I had so that I could keep young birds on for longer instead of selling what I thought were just average birds that turned out to be lovely. Flight space, flight space, flight space. Anyway to make you feel better I've dug out some photo's that would be from maybe 2003-2004 and you can see where I was then so it's definitely achievable for anyone with half an eye. If you don't feel you have developed a strong eye for budgies just ask someone who you respect from your club to come help you pair up and cull out. Lots of people will help out. This guy and his sister represented the best I had bred in 2002. They were nice enough but you can definitely seen more feather since then. What you can't see really see is an overall increase in size as well. You can see the average quality was nothing like it is now. And you can see that improvement can be reasonably quick (2003 - 2009) for such a large and overall change in the bird quality. The lovely thing about budgies is that the generation length is 12 months so each year if you are heading in the right direction there should be an incremental improvement (you might not notice it for a couple of years but you will see it).

okay down to my last pairs selected today. Mainly fallows and blackeyed selfs plus a couple of other randoms. The fallows are really really hard for me and I've struggled with this variety for quite a number of years. I think 90% of the problem is that I started off with 2 birds both of which were nice enough but without super normals it's a really hard variety to improve. Last year I was lucky enough to be given an amazing cock that had the chance of being split fallow, unfortunately he wasn't and the other unfortunate thing was that he was cinnamon. Now cinnamon fallows are almost impossible to tell from Lacewings and seeing as I breed Lacewings too, having cinnamon fallows is a hiding to nowhere so...... Pair 16 - Normal Grey Green/Lacewing Cock x Cinnamon Opaline Grey Hen - okay not a fallow pairing but my final lacewing pairing. This hen was selected for the Nats this year in Opaline AOSV and is from a bird I've paired up later down the page. Her big blue father has bred solid quality budgies for me for the last 3 years. The cock bird is actually a lovely bird with good background and complements the hen quite well - although he is looking a bit overawed here. Pair 17 Normal Cobalt/Fallow Cock x Normal Dark Green/Fallow Hen - The hen is the mother of the 6th place Nats fallow this year. The cock bird is bred from a very solid fallow x normal pairing. With these birds I find I have to go off their parentage more than their visual looks (coz often they don't have any really!!!). And yes it's a split to split pairing so any normal birds (unless they are super quality which is not really likely) will most likely be wastage as i won't know if they are normal or split for fallow. Pair 18 - Normal Grey Green/Fallow/Cinnamon Cock x Green Fallow Hen - this is where the cinnamon becomes a real bugger. This cock bird is the some of the cinnamon split hen shown below (Pair 19) and is split for cinnamon which means I really can only keep normal hens and know there is no cinnamon. Knowing his breeding though, it's worth it to take the punt. Fallow hen is typically the small weedy non-feathered things that I manage to pump out in this variety....... sigh. Still it's a fallow and that's hard enough. Pair 19 - Green Fallow Cock x Cinnamon Grey Green/Fallow Hen - yep breeding those split cinnamons again but with a hen this strong can you blame me?..... This boy was the 6th place fallow at the Nats this year. Pair 20 - Normal Light Green/Fallow Cock x Cinnamon Grey Green/Fallow Hen - and again! The hen here is the full sister to the one above. Cock bird looks pretty rough at the moment but he is quite long and his Light Green mother was one of my better normal hens so I'm giving him a whirl. Pair 21 - Normal Skyblue Cock x YF Cinnamon Grey Hen - the hen looks horrible in the picture but had spent the last 10 minutes going nuts in the cage to the bemusement of the poor cock bird who was just trying to chat her up and couldn't understand why she wouldn't pay attention to him. Still is a quite nice hen really and this boy is a very nice normal/normal and I would love to see more YF in my aviary as I have very little and mostly in grey birds. Pair 22 - Yellow Blackeye Self (Grey) Cock x Yellow Blackeyed Self Hen - this is an amazing BE hen that I bought at auction. Personally I can't understand anyone EVER selling her EVER. She is as good as some of the normal hens that I have and is bigger that half of them (look at her height to the top of the show cage!!!). The BE cock is a grey so that's not great but I have found that they make useful stock birds and he is one of my better ones with little suffusion. After breeding these guys for a couple of year I find it reasonably easy to tell the greys from the normals thankfully (although our state judges seem to have a hard time of it ). Pair 23 - Yellow Blackeyed Self Cock x Yellow Blackeyed Self Hen - I had this cock paired to the hen above last season so am happy to pair him to another hen this year. I have a couple of other BE hens to use but they are a bit heavily suffused for my liking and although this girl is not ideal either, she is a better choice. Plus he shows suffusion as well so I wanted to go with less rather than more even if I have to sacrifice a touch of quality. This hen would have gone to the nats this year but she was incorrectly identified as being a grey. Pair 24 - Normal Skyblue/Cinnamon/Opaline Cock x Normal Grey Green Hen - last but not least. This fellow is the father of a fair few of my really nice birds. He is getting on now '05 but I'll give him another go this year again as he is too valuable to not use. The cinnamon opaline hen in Pair 16 is just an example of what he breeds and the grey cock below (who has won best in show awards) is his son and the Skyblue, also below, is his daughter. The hen I have chosen for him I LOVE and think they compliment each other very nicely. Extra Pair - Normal Grey Cock x Normal Skyblue Hen - half brother to half sister pairing - this cock bird has won best in show awards and was selected as grey reserve for the Nats last year. I think he is an awesome bird although he can tend to sit short on the perch sometimes. His half sister sure does not do that and I am hoping to put these 2 down later on in the season as she is only a red ring and at this stage is too young IMO.

Gee I wonder who said that?

No I don't think so Shannon. Is she an opaline? If so probably part of the reason for poor markings (opalines often end up smudgy with a big thumb print in th side of the wing) so pairing her to a normal is the right way to go plus you want to take advantage of her length and add some directional feather and feather on the top end. The cock you have chosen is better than the LW cock IMO but I would be looking for more feather still especially directional feather, top and blow.

okay Kirsty Firstly it's better if you can give us a whole body photo of the bird perching (to gauge deportment and see wing carriage etc) plus something showing his face front on (to guage directional feather and head width) but I tell you what I see to start with. He has reasonable backskull and the mask although a bit short still looks balanced on the bird and not so obviously short as it would be glaring. He has even spots but they are tiny, his mask is a bit cleft and he looks to have not a lot of feather generally or directional feather (usually their eyes disappear). He also has an incursion of the zebra markings into the body colour feathering at the shoulder (this fault is cropping up more and more these days). Other than that I can't tell if he is long or short as in a photo I need a of reference against the back of a standard show cage and coz I can't see further down I can't tell if his deportment is good bad or ugly and how he carries his tail. What do have in mind for this fellow?