nubbly5

Thanks Richo - fingies crossed! Which blue did you mean the baby or the '08 adult? Either way the baby is a pretty good size and the adult is nice too (quite a long bird). I am hoping that the baby fulfills the promise he is showing now. Kaz - me too. Hopefully it'll grow out some more feather on the cap as it moults but it's just come out of the nest so I'm pretty stoked with the quailty at this young age. Thanks Liv - yep I'll be keeping a watchful eye on these two. If I remember, I'll post some pics up later - maybe a before and after comparison!

The most expensive bit were the drinkers at $4.40ea and we purchased 30, cistern was $40 plus $18 postage for the both the drinkers and the tank. We purchased these items from WA Poultry Equipment. They have a great range of poultry and other bird equipment and a good website but I did find that if I was going to purchase from the web, they put a $5 handling fee on every single item (10x drinkers was 1 item) and I thought that was a bit of a rip off but I was not charged a handling fee for my over the phone order. I also found that I got very good information about the products from talking to Geoff directly and his shipping was super fast. We used 15mm piping for a couple of reasons - price (fittings etc in this size are cheaper) and this size piping fitted through our wire mesh without need to cut any of it. Piping, fittings, valves and saddle mounts were all sourced locally from an irrigation supplier here in Bunbury. But we had to order the piping as it is not a super common size but waited less that 1 week for it. We bought the bits and pieces and then designed and put together the system ourselves. Hubby Grant & I tend to bounce ideas around for a bit and examine what we need (me from a bird perspective)and what will work (Grant from a mechanical perspective) and then put it all together. Sometimes we might need to modify things like in this instance we needed to tap the drinkers into the sleeve fittings to stop leakage around the screw part of the drinkers (as I explained above).

Thanks Renee I was actually really depressed about the birds pooping into the water bowls all the time and could only imagine it was not doing the health status of my birds any favours at all. After just one day some of the water bowls were full of pooh and the water was fouled so I was hoping this might help out there. Time will tell if it makes a difference or not. Thanks Glenn, Kaz and JB. Actually this was not as big a job as I have expected and to have it up and running for around $400 for everything including tank, drinks, pipe, fittings and even glue was doing okay I thought. One thing I would do if I were building from scratch again is design a system so that the piping need not be run through the aviary. Unfortunately our aviary is set up so that along either side of the shed we have fully opening/closing shutters which meant that we could only run the piping inside (read: Gina pannicked all night thinking that the glue might knock off some birds if they chewed it before it cured properly!!!).

You dont look very nubbly these days You have blossomed Ummm..... yeah..... well - and blossomed, and blossomed AND blossomed.... And anyway, who asked you for your opinion Kaz! You can just go away!!!

Hard one to explain really........ When I was a teenager I was pretty thin and well..... nobbly. My best friends older brother, trying to find the right word to describe my lankiness came out with "Well you are very..... um...... Nubbly" and that was that. Online I am always Nubbly (or Nubbly5 if the mood takes me).

Um nope, hoping not to need to do that....... I intend to work out how much water they go through each day. Pretty easy to do by turning off the inlet value, filling the tank with known quantity, and then measuring next day. Then only need to mix amount that is needed on a daily basis - UNLESS........ they drink so little that I have trouble filling the pipe lines with the amount needed (a real possibility), in which case the trusty bowls will go back into play for a bit.

Hi Daz All the '08 bird shots are my hopefuls (all black rings). I don't think I've got as strong a showing this year as last year but maybe the lacewing will have an opportunity, the blue is a nice bird but I think his immaturity might let him down against birds bred early in the year. For this reason I am very much looking forward to the new ring issue date - it'll fit perfectly with our breeding season. Thanks JB!

Well I went into the aviary this morning to check on how the drinkers were going and it all looks very good. Very little dripping (a little is needed to keep the drip on the end of the nipple so I was worried that we might be a bit damp this morning), water flowing well, no spring leaks and some of the birds are already working out the new system. I arranged the nipples where the old bowls used to be and left the bowl rings there for the birds to perch on while operating the nipples. So here are some pics. You can see the bowl rings positioned under the drinkers. This has given the birds a short cut way to learn where their water is now coming from. You can see here that a drip of water remains on the end of the nipple and this seems to do a great job of attracting the birds to where they need to drink from. We put valves on the end of each line to be able to drain the system when needed. This is the cistern in place. It needed to be placed high so that header pressure allowed the water to flow down into the piping. Two valves and couplings allow for the tank to be completely removed to be cleaned and there is enough room to take the lid off insitu and manually add medication when needed (i need a step ladder though :rofl:). High pressure inlet value can be turned off in this case. High pressue come into the tank on the right and exits under gravity on the left and into the aviary. The birds are already figuring out how to use the new drinkers! Someone trying to get in on the act!

Snapping pics of the new drinker system naturally led to budgie picture - can't help myself!!! So here are a couple snaps of 2 promising babies from the last of my '09 breeding season. Cin Op Grey Spangle and Normal Blue. I LOOOOVE the depth of mask on this bird. I was excited about the pairing and they have not disappointed. This little guy is quite a surprise as he is from 2x split fallows, usually the quality of my split fallows is not quite as good as my normal birds but he should be getting up there. The rest are a few snaps of some of my '08 show team in for prep - some looking a little scruffy but then they have 1 1/2 months to look their best :rofl: Reasonably happy with this fellow. His dad was 4th at last years Nationals but I don't think he is quite as good. I'm hoping this guy moults out fully but he might still be a bit immature.... bummer. I'm a bit disappointed with the mask on this cin grey green cock.....

Worked on the drinker system yesterday and finished it off today. At first fitting the nipple drinkers (even with drilled and tapped holes) leaked terribly from around the hole (not the drinker itself). Turns out that due to the small size of the PVC pipe and the acute angle between PVC and drinkers that the drinkers did not seal properly in the PVC when screwed in. Sooooooo, today we drilled and tapped sleeve fittings (which are much thicker than the PVC itself) fitted the drinkers into that and then glued them onto the pvc piping and bingo it all worked! Now we just need to fit just one more value to be able to turn off one flight which is often empty so we want to be able to turn it off. Will post some more pics tomorrow.

After having a little watch of the "Is it a girl or is it a boy" threads I have to say that I felt that in many cases the birds were often too young to tell 100% if they were boy or girl and to be honest photo's often make it lots harder. There are many babies in my lot that I have thought were one sex and turned out to be the other - usually thinking they were cocks but turned out to be hens but not always. And Even though I've only been breeding budgies myself for 9 yrs, my mother bred exhibition birds through the 70's & 80's so call that a 30yr experience line in sexing budgies....... I think the risk here is that we are all going to make a wrong call every now and then with those very young birds. Adults or older babies - no worries but those real young ones can catch you out.

Great job! Well done on some fantastic results. How did the birds go with the show prep routine and how did they pull up afterwards?

okay SW WA is going to be different to Brisbane but over the last 9 years I have found it way better to breed in 40 degree heat in a tin shed (some afternoon shade and water cooler on extreme days but nothing other than that) than in winter. In summer the small chicks seem to handle the heat much better than the cold and my breeding results are always better fertility wise too. So now, after some experiementing over the last 9 yrs my season runs from Sept - March with my last babies out by end of April. I have alredy used 80 of my 100 rings for this year (normally order more but due to ring date change) and even with some really hot spells the birds have bred extremely well. Winter not so good on the whole. I assume people will work out what works best for them in their area with the facilities that they have.

Black beaks won't get penalized but if the barheads are entered into a normal adult class instead of a UBC or nest feather class they will never compete against an fully feathered adult of any quality (well here anyway, although I would assume the same in any state). Just make sure you look after those babies well after the show, these are the birds that seem to suffer the most from showing and need careful care and attention when they return home. Spark, ensure they are feeding etc. How did they go By The Way?

Yay, cistern tank and nipple drinkers turned up on Thursday (well Wed actually but I had to pick them up from the PO). Amazing service as I had only ordered them on the Monday and they were sent that night by express post - so if anyone is looking for poultry/bird equipment I recommend giving WA Poultry Equipment a call (don't order over the internet as they stick a handling fee of $5 on every item but over the phone was great). So........ I have photo's of the cistern tank and drinkers so far. We have gone out and bought the joiners for the PVC piping but had to order 15mm PVC as no one place had enough stock. Cistern tank holds about 5L and will be plumbed straight to our high pressure water supply. This will then be plumbed into the PVC into which the drinkers are tapped straight into. The drinkers will screw straight into the PVC. They allow a small amount of water to hang at the bottom of the nipple (small metal rod) which attracts the birds to use the nipple in the first instance. From them they quickly learn how to use the drinkers - by nibbling on the nipple to allow more water to flow down it and into the birds beak. I imagine I will need to allow some time for change over to allow all the birds to learn where there water will come from as opposed to the open bowls which are a tad more obvious. Will post more pics as the project moves along.

Yup definitely feather plucked and there were a couple in the nest badly plucked (pretty bald) coz I work away and hubby....well he feeds them and I thank him for that but...... sick birds, feather plucking, etc, all that goes unoticed There was also a dark green cock that Renee bought from the same nest who also looked very rough and scruffy. You can see the little bits of down sticking up on the back - sure sign of healed feather plucked birds. If I'm home things get sorted out but otherwise...... on the positive side, most of my sick birds are self culling Oh and yes she is probably moulting into adult feathers too. Here is a picture of the brother before he went (on the right).

AOSV class is a reasonably new one, to take into account the few rarer varieties included within it. At the moment the AOSV class is only an exhibition class at the Nationals (similar to exhibition sports at the olympics), it often takes a few years for the class to become well enough established to include it as a full competition class in the Nationals. At this stage it is not compulsory for the host state to run an exhibition class it is entirely up to them. I believe there was discussion whether or not to hold the exhibition AOSV class this year or not. The issue being that as this class is made up of several varieties, generally the only variety that got selected (due to it being generally stronger) was the suffused yellow/white (dilute). So there was no ability for the general public to acutally see the other varieties of saddleback, dark eyed clear and darkwing. In time I assume this will change. The same process took place with the crests as well, they were an exhibition class for a while before being adopted as a competition class.

Sorry splat - I wouldn't use the sky. To me you are going backwards here with the head feather and facial features. He does not have the directional feather of the hen nor the head and mask width of her. Or the amount of feather generally. Spangle has already proven to throw magnificent babies so my first choice would be there regardless. This is a great way to start a stud based on a strong family line and the hen is a ripper anyway so would be an interesting mix. Second choice would be the second violet although he looks a little dumpy (maybe just the photo) the hen has beautiful posture and should help counter that AND he has lovely feather a big wide head and mask - yes a teeny bit flecked so you may have to watch that. Have you used him before?

Dr Nat a YF clearwing is definitely shown in the YF class. YF blues still tend to show creamy yellow suffusion on a white ground (just with the normals the blue body and black wing markings hide it to some degree) so you would have the double whammy of visuable YF suffusion and the size discrepancy of the clearwing making competitng in the YF class with this bird very difficult. At the present time it's a very very rare clearwing that can compete for size and head qualities with the normal YF class. None the less they would be an attractive bird. So long as the club has an AOV or (in our case) an NSV/NSC (non standard varitey/non standard colour). And although I've never seen such a class NOT offered I believe that it's not compulsary for a show to have this class - well not here anyway. And in WA a bird judged in NSV/NSC cannot go up for major awards anyway. Is that the same in SQ Daz? Or can a non standard variety bird win a best in show or best colour award in SQ?

Gorgeous! That spangle family are really quality birds, the yellow DF and the cin sky op hen - to die for!

LOL Man you could have had sooooo much fun with that one. Very strong of you not to sell her some toilet paper for her cat. 8) Can you mate a cockatiel that is from the same parents but from different clutches? answer: You could try but you might kill it......... (sorry, couldn't help that one - I know I have a filthy mind ). Actually doesn't all this make you think that the average IQ of the human race is sinking faster than the titanic did.

How exciting! The start of the breeding season is always full of anticipation. The bigger egg may well be a double yolker. Do you candle the eggs to find out?

Very cute! I'm going with Opaline, Rec pied, Spangle, Cobalt (or MAYBE violet). Genetically there is a possibility it's a cock as the hen is an opaline spangle and if cock is split opaline there is the chance for opaline cock babies (although it kinda looks like a she at this early stage). I would have said hen is dark green rather than light green violet making colbalt more likely than violet sky. Opaline as the head markings are not the real barring of a normal but the striations of an opaline. Spangle markings are just evident. Not cinnamon - head markings are black and spangles appear grey rather than brown (although it's hard to tell 100% for sure in the photo).

Yes I have had a couple of these in the time I've been breeding lacewings (oddly both blue) and generally class it as a badly marked lacewing. Cheek patches tend to give it away (pale violet cheek patch) which this one seems to have. Albino's & Lute's have a white cheek patch. So I would guess a dark factor blue lacewing (giving the body suffusion) with crappy markings (i.e. no or very faint cinnamon markings). I am of the belief that this has to do with the cinnamon/ino relationship as the two genes are known to sometimes cross over and also to cross back being very closely associated to each other. This bird looks to already be in adult feather so you may well not see any further markings on it's wings anyway.

We're just here to help You friendly WA garden variety show manager........