nubbly5

Nope you are right. Just in the other photo he looks like a cobalt but yep definitely grey.... sorry.

Pair 3 - cock looks cobalt or maybe mauve (that can look a bit grey) not grey..............? Really like pair 4. Ooooh so exciting pairing up.

Hey GB Just some advice. Having gone through the motions myself, can I suggest you trim down the varieties you are going to breed. The issue being that for almost all of these recessive or sex linked recessive varieties you need super normal variety budgies to cross back to to produce splits. I breed lacewing, fallow and clearwings (and playing with a few blackeyed selfs) and have found that with a 200-300 birds stud I run very very short on good substantial normals to the point where I am having to dedicate a lot of time and effort to breeding or sourcing good outcrosses. Personally I would concentrate on one or two of you favourites initially and then if your stud handles that branch out into a third. Just a suggestion though of course.

I find the plucked feathers grow back too quickly and you have to do it regularly whereas the trimmed feathers last most of the breeding season unless the birds go into a moult (and if they do that then they tend to go out of breeding condition if they do that anyway). GB - I found the reference I was talking about. http://www.budgerigars.co.uk/diseases/repro.html

There is an old article on the internet somewhere (maybe english information) that had trial results from trimmed v's untrimmed birds. Trimmed birds had significantly higher fertile eggs numbers than untrimmed birds. After reading that I have always trimmed feathers from around the vent.

I have learnt: About Greywings and YF mutations That there are people as nuts as me out there That sharing information is good for everyone (including our birds)

They don't look spangle. Looking at the coloured tail feathers no spangle marking is evident. They look like rec pieds with light markings - grey wing rec pieds look right to me but not knowing anything about the DEC's I'm interested to hear about the "Penguin Recessives".

***! Poor you and poor bird. You have tried so hard to keep her going too............

Budgies are whats called non-obligate drinkers - they are not "obligated" to drink each day like other birds such as pigeons etc. Thats not to say they will not drink daily if given the chance it's just that they have adapted to life in a hot dry arid country so they CAN go without water for reasonable periods if needed. This also means that sometimes, if you have medicated water and they don't like it, they can go without for a substantial time and some may miss out on the medication and only drink again when clean water is provided. That's what makes water medicating budgies a bit tricky sometimes. That's partly the reason why doxy treatments last for 45 days. The assumption is that by then even the most stubborn non drinkers will have had to consume some of the medication

When I saw her picture just now I thought dilute only due to the heavier than standard body colour. BES are actually cinnamon dilutes, creating a clear even ground colour without body colour suffusion. She could be a BES but she would be considered too heavily suffused. On looking at picture again I would definietly say dilute.

Standard calls for 10-20% markings for rec pied. This girl is very heavily marked maybe 80%. Do you find that in rec pieds hens tend towards heavier markings than cock birds?

As I have said many times previously. Oral Ivermectin for Sheep is not suitable for use on birds, it needs to be diluted for oral use and as you can read above cannot be diluted with water. It is NOT designed to be used topically (on the skin) so use of this product as a spot on is probably not going to be as effective as Pour-On that IS designed to be used topically. If you are going to use an Ivermectin Spot-On treatment for your birds the treatment to use is the Ivomec (or other generic) Cattle Pour-On treatment - one drop or so in the back of the neck. Although you can easily purchase Ivomec Pour-On for cattle from a rural merchandise store without a vet perscription, using it for birds IS an off-label use so technically the only person that can recommend use of this product in this manner is your vet. If you want to use an oral treatment there are water soluble Ivermectins available for bird treatment via vets. S-76 is one product available with ivermectin for oral treatment of birds I think Rob Marshall has it but others might clarify.

MIMS will do the trick! Very good luck with your exams Chryso! Have you had any yet? And WHY are you on here aren't you supposed to be studying?

Is your hen still with us Paul?

glad I'm not the only bad typer

Never seen selamectin use in cattle at least here is Australia. As Chryo says Ivermectin has been around a long while now, vets have determined it's use is safe for birds. I doubt that, having found a safe cheap and easy way to treat birds using Ivermectin, other compounds have been tested by either chemical companies or vets. None the less selamectin is in the same family of chemicals as Ivermectin and could possibly work - bags not being the first to try it out though........ Have heard of someone trying out a cattle spot-on from the organophosphate family of chemicals and wiping out almost their entire stud as they had heard that cattle pour-ons where what you use on budgies!!!!! I guess this is why technically vets are the only ones legally allowed to use chemicals off-label.

From the photo father look to be an opaline spangle (something else too maybe). If so she HAS to be opaline - no other options for an opaline cock to normal hen pairing.

A.I.L. is made by vetafarm and I think you can buy it directly from them....... on-line or by phone. Or some pet shops sell AIL or similar. Oh and I made a typo it's aviaN Insect Liquidator not aviaL - sorry.....

Its kinda a hard answer as it is not particularly straight forward. All states have selection processes and then all the selected birds are held together in the care of the states chosen carers (I think each state does similar anyway). So all birds from all competitors are held together and then shipped together to the state at which the competition is held. They are held seperately in holding cages but within the same room. Usually there is a vet on call if there are any issues arising on the weekend. Then the birds are returned home again and picked up by their owners who usually institue a quarantine program. In years past WA used to even bring back purchased auction birds within the same carry cages as the state team but the policy has been put in place that only the team birds travel in the team travel cage - a very sensible change.

Oral ivermectin will not treat feather lice as it requires that the lice feed on blood or body fluids (in which the ivermectin is present) and lice only feed on feather particles. The spot-on Ivermectin contacts them directly and kills them that way. Your best bet (seeing as you already have the oral ivermectin) is to use Avial Insect Liquidator (vetafarm) or a similar synthetic pyrethroid spray treatment for birds. This will treat lice and blood mites on the birds. You just spray it all over the bird.

Lice are host specific. They might crawl onto you but they will not survive off their host for too long. Host specific means bird lice live on birds, people lice live on people, sheep lice live on sheep, cattle lice live on cattle and so forth but they don't swap hosts.

Out of the 2 the cinnamon is definitely the better bird for her (better bird all around actually). Look at the grey and above the cere you can see that his feathering is not great. He doesn't go out sideways from the cere really, he goes more or less straight up and over the top of his head. The cinnamon has much more width over the cere and looks to have better back skull (but it's bit hard to tell on the grey from the photo) - he is more rounded from the top of his skull down to his shoulders. His stance is not quite as good as the hen but then she will compensate for that and he is not terrible he just doesn't follow through strongly behind the perch and tends to drop his tail straight down. The mask of both birds is okay and better than the hen so in that department it's an improvement. His spot is a bit smaller than I'd like but the hen is quite good so still an okay match. He is flecked and so is she so that MIGHT get you unstuck with flecking but probably still worth the punt. Also it's hard to gauge relative size coz I'm only really going by the show box BUT cinnamon looks to be bigger than the hen so that's good too. You really need to strive for bird length these days along with the pretty "*****" face with strong directional feather. I don't think it's a bad match and to be honest I think you would be hard pressed to buy a cock bird that is much better than the cinnamon without spending good dollars. If you are going to wait then look for a bird with buff feather (heavier, longer and often rougher feathering), as both the hen and the cinnamon have quite fine feather (this is common with cinnamon birds) who is longer than she with a deeper mask. OMG I can't even say "*****" without it being auto consored - coloquial name for a cute pet cat that is..........

I'm in but still battling this horrible cold....... blurg...... pox on Dave Ganzer. I'm really not sure why he needed to give me a hello kiss when he knew he was sick as a dog!!!!! BUT it was fantastic to catch up with everyone. I LOVE going to the Nats, you seem to be able to get away from the politics an just enjoy everyone's company. Had great chats with Pete Glassenbury, Ian Hannington, Bob Bourke, Jim Fletcher, Allan Baxter etc etc etc etc etc etc. So much fun. AND coz I didn't have any real formal things to do (except on Sunday night I was aked to hand over the trophies to those awarding them to the 1st place winner (sort of like an unusual tag team) and that was easy enough to hide my slightly pissy state so long as I got the classes right) I was really able to relax and get into the weekend - just fabulous! Seeing the birds is ALWAYS mint and for those starting into breeding exhibition birds I fully recommend you getting to a Nationals to have a look at what you are aiming for. Don't be overwhelmed either. When I asked Ian Hannington how did he breed such a magnificent cinnamonwing he said, "If you been in it as long as I have, something has to pop out sometime". And to some degree he is right too. Many people seem to buy their way in with expensive top class stock and do well for a few years but its those that continue on selecting out their best and occasionally buying in good outcrosses that seem to be there every year. Henry George's birds are quite recognisable as his birds now. I can ramble on about the Nats but I feel my mind is kinda clouded by snot and it's going to become a jumbled mess....... >cough, blurg< Oh just about the birds...... apart from airport transfers etc, the venue at which they were housed was very nicely temperature controlled. I think Tassies know it's damn cold where they live and have it figured out. My birds came back to a way colder bird room at night and didn't look too happy about it

Oh yeah and I forgot the Coccivet - Vetafarm - for coccidiosis treatment and prevention same as Pearce.

okay Linda Looks like no-one else is willing to give this a shot so I'll give it a bash. I find her a little on the small side and to be quite short in the mask. She has reasonable feather over the cere and eyes for a hen but less blow that I'd like to see. I think this is because she looks quite fine feathered. In shot 2 I would say she looks a little heavy (boaty) in the body but shot 3 gives her a nice outline with good deportment and nice follow through past the perch. Having said all of that I would consider her to be a handy stock bird to breed with as she is nicely balanced (apart from the short mask) and a nice type to go on with. To correct her faults I would choose a buff feathered cock with lots of blow and good directional feather AND if you can get it in the one bird, more length.