nubbly5

Don't panic too much. Often with a large bunch of eggs you find that the last few don't hatch coz of all the other babies there. Also on occasion I have had the need to foster in emergencies (especially late in the season when most of my boxes are already shut down) and have had pairs raising seven and eight without any issue. Just make sure you give them a break afterwards.

Cute birdie Cosmo!!!! He is so gorgeous.

IMO alot of the problem we face (and this is the same for many different domesticated species) has been caused by taking a free ranging bird that is not over exposed to high levels of disease causing cocci, virus', bacteria due to their unconfined living arrangements and expected them to thrive in a confined living environment. As soon as you confine animals and concentrate the pathogens into a smaller area you increase the challenge on the animals and often their immune systems cannot cope, this is true for cattle, sheep, chickens, etc, etc, etc. Keeping the area clean is made difficult by the ability for these pathogens to survive well in the environment (cocci for example) and even the cleanest of aviaries will have a bacterial, cocci and virus load. We have changed the entire system of living for these animals and therefore we are no longer dealing with a "natural" anything. Routine anitibiotic, anticoccidial etc treatments become a necessity in these circumstances, just to allow the animals some breathing room without overwhelming them with pathogens. Obviously if we can breed birds with a robust immune system that can cope with these burdens (and therefore reduce the need for as many treatments) that's great but remember that not so long ago these birds did not need to deal with such a high challenge to their immune system by being in constant contact with high levels of pathogens.

Hello and welcome! Your birds and pictures are wonderful - very very cute!

Some interesting information on budgerigar nutritional requirements. http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/reprint/121/11_Suppl/S186.pdf In poultry production it was found that lysine, methionine and tryptophan were the most limiting factors in regards to growth and production. I have a strong suspicion that the same is the case for budgerigars.

I read this as basically treat for everything and don't bother with the gram stain and the parasite test...... you are treating for worms anyway and a gram stain will tell you if there are gram positive or gram negative bacteria but not WHAT the actual bacteria are. Bacterial cultures will help determine this but the outlay for a vet to do this is IMO, not worth the cost considering you are treating for the diseases anyway.Just make sure, after you blast the birds with all these treatments that you give it a good dose of probiotics. Trichomonasis is the disease caused by trichomonads.

Of course!

Hahahahaha too late for many on this forum!!!!! I started (or re-started) with 2 double breeding cabinets on the back verandah and a small prefab double aviary, graduated to a 3x3m shed as a breeding room with 2x 3x6m flights and now have a 6x12m shed purpose built with a 3x6m bird room housing 24 cabinets and 6 corner holding cages and 6x (1.5x 6m) flights (one divided in half to form a baby flight and a show team flight). But I swear I'm not additcted (Gina twitches slightly)........

Lacewing (as Pearce said) is a sexlinked variety. It's a variety in it's own right but it's considered to be the close association of cinnamon and ino genes. Try and find some information about "crossover" of the cinnamon and ino genes to find out more if you are interested.

Might well be french moult....... in which case seeing as they are already older and are only losing flights now, they should all regrow well enough for them to fly but it will take about 6-8 weeks for the flight feathers to come back through. Relax! A good way to check is to look at the feathers that are falling out and check to see if the end of the quill (part that goes into the skin) is pinched in. Often you will see some dark dried blood int he quill too but this is more obvious in chicks that get french moult earlier. If it is french moult it'll be best to stop breeding this season and give your birds up to six months off to stop them shedding virus. I have never had chick stress moult, even when I've mistakenly weaned them too early and they had not learned to feed themselves and lost HEAPS of weight before I realized and started crop feeding them. Just keep them in a nappy cage, keep feeding and watering them well and forget about them for a while. I think you will find they make a full recovery! And as far as the cock is concerned I've had all sorts. Some of them on the second round destroy any egg in sight (I personally think it's to do with the not wanting other chicks than his around and the natural instinct to destroy eggs if they are not his going a bit astray and making them attack their own eggs too). Had hens completely kill, eat and destroy a nest of young chicks and egss when she went out of condition during the round and everything in between. I find it best to take the hen out and leave the cock with the older chicks rather than moving the lot of them as then he will generally keep feeding them whereas moving them often upsets that arrangement. The ones that get into the nest with the hen I find very frustrating as they ALWAYS seem to be less careful with the chicks and eggs. I generally try not to use these birds as parents and will foster out the eggs if I REALLY want to use the bird for some reason.

Sorry to hear that JB! Hope Len pulls through.

Well as far as birds go, you are off on the right track. The TCB you picked up is a really tidy hen too! I give you fair warning though, breeding exhibition budgies is pretty addictive!!!!!!

Unlikely it's a fallow UNLESS is a fallow combined with some other variety. I have bred some cinnamon fallows that look almost EXACTLY like lacewings but their markings were still very distinct. I have also bred som lacewings that were so poorly marked that i could often get away with benching them as albino's without judges picking up on it (unless they knew about the cheek patch ).

She may also be a poorly marked YF white Lacewing. Does she have evidence of a lilac coloured cheek patch? Albinos normally have a white cheek patch but if there are faint markings, some body colour all combined with a lilac cheek patch she may be a lacewing with poor markings.

BEETROOT!!!!!!!!!! the two clearwings I bought from you in January that are in the aviary have the reddest faces fromt he fresh beetroot. Yep, beetroot too....... leaves, roots and all. Only well adjusted budgies from my place

Sorry for the head explosion! In regards to the pinched in part - yes, you can see her eyes more easily and she does not have width (or directional feather) above the cere. You really want to have some feather that at least goes horizontally across the top of the cere to give that look of heavy brows. Some people call it saddle bags, others directional feather. It basically means that when you look front on to the bird you don't see what is called a "keyhole" effect where the bird looks like it comes in towards the eyes/cere and then goes out at the top again, you want width all the way up.... sorry I don't know how else to describe it. One day I'll get to and post some pics on this. As far as the grey is concerned, abosolutely right. Give him a go, most likely he will be single factor grey anyway but if over a couple of rounds (with reasonable chick numbers), all he throws is grey you can assume he is DF grey. None the less he is a beautiful bird and well worth using on a lovely hen like the dom pied. AND even if he is DF grey you will know that all the chick from this pairing are single factor grey and will therefore have a good chance of throwing blue when they are paired. And yes, maybe blue, maybe YF, maybe dom pied, maybe normals, etc etc. Should be an interesting pairing in quality and variety. I just noticed that you don't breed for showing but from the qulaity of the birds in the pics I sort of assumed that you did! I'm really very impressed with the quality of birds you have. They would compete well in any Novice competitions over here!!!

Heeheehee, my birds LOOOOOOVE corn, and apple and orange and spinach and........

Yep that's true in a way. Grey gene modifies normal colours so a blue with the dominant grey gene will be grey and a green with the dominant grey gene will be grey green. They are still blue and green series birds though. And yes, a single factor grey bird to a normal will breed 50% chance grey and 50% chance blue. Just to complicate things though.... there WAS (maybe still is) a recessive grey gene too but it is so rare (if not extinct) that it would be safe to assume that pretty much all our grey or grey green birds have the dominant version of the grey gene.

Great question! From my perspective (and given that I'm only looking at photo's) I would not use the albino purely on a bird quality perspective. The Albino hen is quite a bit narrower in the head and much more pinched in at the cere so from that point the violet hen is better. As for the breeding with grey. Grey is a dominant gene so a visual grey bird can have either one or two grey genes so pairing him with a violet you could get...... If the cock is single factor grey: 50% single factor grey 50% blue If the cock is double factor grey: 100% sinlge factor grey You do have the dark factor and the violet in there too so depending on what the grey is (because you can have light, medium and dark greys too) but assuming he has no dark factor and no violet: 50% chance dark factor 50% chance non dark factor Of course if the grey is single dark factor and the hen is also single dark factor you will get (remember though that it's often harder to determine dark factor in greys): 25% chance double dak factor (mauve or dark grey) 50% chance of single dark factor (cobalt or medium grey) 25% chance of non dark factor (sky or light grey) Exactly the same with the violet factor. So assuming that the grey bird has no violet and the hen is single factor violet. 50% chance violet factor 50% chance non violet If she were double factor violet then: 100% chance for single factor violet Same with the yellow face too but we know the cock is YF and the hen is not (well unless hen is double factor YF which end up as a white face but this is very unlikely). 50% chance YF 50% chance non YF Hope that is clear enough........... clear as mud. Oops for got the dom pied part....... Dominant gene too so your chances are: 50% dom pied 50% normal AND I forgot about the opaline too...... (sigh, it's one of those mornings) Cock is normal hen is opaline, opaline is a sex linked gene so is expressed on the X chromosone only. Hen is XY (opposite way around to mammals), Cock is XX so an oplaine hen has only one opaline gene expressed as XopY. Cock is normal but as opaline is recessive to normal he could be split for opaline (XnXop) or not (XnXn). So if he is a straight normal (not split) the breeding expectations are: 50% normal hens - all hens will be normal 50% normal split for opaline cocks - all cocks will be split for opaline If the cock bird is split for opaline (XnXop) then the expectations are: 25% normal hens 25% opaline hens 25% normal split for opaline cocks 25% opaline cocks

Bummer! She is very nice.

Love your YF Opaline Grey hen. Your breeding?

Wow, now THAT IS interesting. I can definitely see that the rest of the bird where it has not moulted out is white. But some of the pin feathers look like they are still white too...... More photos of before and as they progress please.

Sorry if I'm off the mark here coz I've come in on the tail end of the conversation on opalines and now it's gone to cameras BUT......... did we decide if Emma's TBC girl was opaline or not coz it definitely is an opaline. Emma, there are some easy ways to tell if it's opaline or not even if the mutation washes body colour. Many breeders put opaline through TBC as it clears the body colour that bit more, reducing suffusion so you will commonly find it in this mutation. So some ways to easliy tell opaline from normals: Tail colour flash is a givaway, opalines have it, normals do not. Even with no body colour such as lacewings the opalines will have a yellow colour flash through the cinnamon tail where the normals will only have plain cinnamon tail. Cinnamon Opaline Light Green Cinnamon Normal Light Green Barring on head is defined on normals and very fine and less defined on opalines. Just about all the opalines these days do NOT have the clear V mantle as described in books and standard. Opaline Green (Yellow) Fallow Normal Green (Yellow) Fallow Side by side the comparison on the barred markings is a bit easier too. Sorry about the focus on the cage bars For comparison a normal TBC and an Opaline TBC (both Grey Greens). You can see that the suffusion on the normal TBC is somewhat stronger than that of the Oplaine. Normal Opaline

Fantastic Liv and 007! You won't know what to do with all the space - to start with Then more breeding boxes and holding cages get added...... (speaking from personal experience). You set up is definitely going to be a budgie Hilton. Really looking forward to seeing the progression with flights etc.

Yeah, my thoughts are to slip it into my normal lines and then hopefully sometime down the track a really super fallow will pop out somewhere. As it is at least I know this bird is not split for cinnamon so it'll be useful elsewhere too.