nubbly5

Now that I've said that Daz, bet you they start popping out of the wood work..... but then maybe not (big fingers crossed).

Ooooh! Scary and must be a bit confusing for beginners. Is that your club or SQ as a whole?

Many of my clearwings have grey tails. Maybe they are not meant to but they do - especially the dark or double dark factors. What I do notice though is that they mostly have a neutral (whitish) tail quill. This is one of my more badly marked clearwings - note the grey tail. I have had others with stronger markings than this too but tend to cull them out. And just to show you the huge variation that can happen with this variety (even in the same family) this is his brother. AND just for looking at - a baby from a normal dark green/clearwing x my clearest clearwing. Looking at it currently I would say the wing markings will be middling. You can see them quite clearly already and they darken as the bird moults to adult feathers.

Yep, looks good! Once you know how to read the standard and which combinations to go together you just need to remember to enter the bird in it's highest variety, exactly as you have there! One thing to bear in mind is that different variety combinations, although an allowable combination, will have different abilities to compete against normal examples of that variety. As with the cinnamon spangle v's the normal spangle also with a white lacewing YF blue v's a normal YF blue. The cinnamon spangle will often get penalized for a lack of black markings (as described in the standard) and the white lacewing YF blue will get penalized for suffusion which becomes more evident on a white bird than with a normal YF blue. This should affect the choice you make to show or not show the bird. If it's a really strong bird, by rights (according to the standard) it should still beat a repectably lesser example of the variety even if it is cinnamon or what have you, but it might have to be quite a bit better for some judges even though in the standard 60% is based on type and only 40% is based on colour/markings (15% markings, 25% colour) although in reality it's not that straight forward! And, although I hate to say this, if I know someone is a fault judge rather than a style/type judge or if they are a bit hot on variety rather than type, I would choose not to enter a bird like this. AND it also depends on what the current goings on in the hobby is. It tends to go that when something is being debated strongly amoungst judges such as YF issues or flecking, judges seem to be a bit more heavy handed in penalizing that particular thing. Seen it here with opaline and cinnamon spangles and "the correct spangle marking", YF blues and now a bit with flecking.... human nature I guess.

The primary reason why I think #1 is a clearwing is if you look at the actual markings on the wing of both this bord and #2 and closely compare the 2, you will see that bird #1 the darker markings on the wing are actually MUCH more faded out (or diluted if you will) particularly toward the centre of each feather, than in #2 which looks almost like normal wing markings only greyer.

Well done! Nasty nasty show manager!!!!!!!

Donno how I've managed it but for 9 years of breeding now - never one feather duster.

Mmmmm had thought about doing that but preffered at this stage to see how the manual addition works (and coz the credit card is a little tired!!!). I have had experience with these sort of arrangements for piggeries so thought it might be worth a look later on. The main thing that concerns me is that with a dosatron or similar is that you still have water in the lines so starting dose may not be exacly when and at the concentration you really want (I'm assuming there is not a particularly high rate of fluid movement in the lines and that would allow diffusion of the medication into the water already in the lines). If I have a manual fill and drain system I know for sure and certain when and how much the birds are getting. Do you have experience with dosing pumps Daz? Can you advise as to their performance in a low pressure gravity fed system?

Hard way to learn! And it's very good to have a standard if you want to show birds. By The Way we are generally nicer over here As show manager if I pick up on a mis-classed bird at benching time I will generally reclass it for the exhibitor (even approach them if there are different options for the bird i.e. hen class etc) and usually if the judge picks up a problem and it does not disturb the judging order we will reclass it then as well. We write the new class on the cage sticker so the exhibitor can see. Nicer way for people to learn, especially Novice breeders/showers. But we ARE talking smaller shows I guess. The one thing we do not tolerate is split rings or any disqualifying points. I heard from Ian Hannington after Adelaide Nats, that they were generally ignoring split rings on birds in shows and judging them anyway, hence the embarrassment at Adelaide with the split ring left on a NSW bird. Things may have changed since then though I suppose .

Well it really depends on the bird. I have birds I have taken to shows every month for a few months and then used them for breeding with no problems but others which are either more stressy or have copped some ill health in the meantime don't do as much, of course birds drop tails at times etc too. Mind you I pull my birds out of the flight maybe a day or two before the show, wash them if I need to and clean up any pin feathers, pull spots etc. Remebering these are just club table shows and not large regional shows. Different entirely when I prep for the National Selections. I select my birds about 2 months prior, bucket wash each and every one of them and move them into my show team flight. Moving and washing them normally prompts them into a moult which leaves them in lovely condition right at the right time. Then I spray these birds as often as I can (daily is preference) with water, apple cider vinegar and glycerine until their feathers start to condition up and the water runs off. Once they get to this stage I don't worry if I miss a day or so spraying but will occasionally still give them a spray to keep them preening well (spreading their natural oils through their feathers). I spray and then either put them straight back into the flight if it's warm or if it's cooler I'll put them in a show box in the sun so the black of the box produces a nice warm environment for the bird. Over this period I have not had one bird that has not handled this routine with ease. In your position with two shows close together like that, I would see no issues in running them all on as if you were still prepping for the one show. It's all about the bird though, and if one is not handling the routine, put it out to rest and recoup. I have to say though, I have had little trouble so long as the birds have a chance to eat and drink and are generally healthy.

Yep as melbourne said! Read from bottom up so if you have as you said: Spangle Opaline Cinnamonwing Shyblue Hen (I'm assuming skYblue hen - unless she is very shy ): Spangle is 14 Opaline is 9 (often clubs will also have something like a 9a for Opaline AOSV (any other standard variety) this can be cinnamon, greywing, blackeyed self and clearwing but is usually only ever cinnamon opalines due to the relative strengths of the varieties concerned) Cinnamonwing is 7 Blue is 2 So take the biggest number 14 - you put her in the Spangle class BUT seeing as she is also a hen she COULD be entered into a Hens ASV/ASC (any standard colour/any standard variety). Thinking about the relative merits of putting a CINNAMON spangle up against normally marked spangles - if the hen were strong enough AND the club had a hens class, I would probably put her there instead. If she had the black markings and was a strong example of a spangle then I would put her in the spangle class (just to confuse the issue some more :glare: ). The only thing you have to be careful of is the allowable variety combinations such as a dominant pied lacewing - ordinarily you would think as Dom Pied is the higher numbered class you might put the bird there BUT if you look at the standard you will see that lacewing and dom pied are not an allowable combination SO there is nowhere to show a bird such as this UNLESS the club you show at has a NSV/NSC class (non standard variety/non standard colour).

Yep hopefully they will not go into a moult. Sometimes even a little change can send them off.... (little buggers). How far away is the show? (or did I miss that from the last few posts?). Just saw it - Saturday week. I would keep them to the same routine as before without putting them into a main flight for 2 reasons: possibility of moulting starting (and you said tails are already a worry) and keeping their feathers in nice condition.

My 2 cents. So long as they are in healthy condition from the last show (and personally I would give them a day off from handling etc so they can fill up on seed and rest), I would spray them once a day until a couple days before the show again to keep their feathers in top condition and promote good preening. I always use boiling (well - just boiled at any rate) water in the spray bottle with a tiny touch of Apple Cider Vinegar and a tiny touch of Gylcerine. Using a fine mist spray the water cools more than enough before contacting the birds. Obviously don't spray right up close or with a solid jet! IF your birds are in good show condition anyway, the water should virtually run off them as the condition in the feather helps prevent wetting so they should not be the soggy stressed out messes that they might have been when you first started spraying. Make sure you do this early in the day so they dry quickly and don't spray at all if it's cold and miserable.

Well, things have progressed somewhat (and my credit card got a bit of a thrashing!). I discussed at length with a poultry equipment supplier about what I want to do and have come up with what is sounding like a great system. Plumbed in low pressure cistern tank (this takes high pressure water in like a toilet cistern) and allows low pressure water to gravity fill the water lines in the aviary. PVC piping (good and budgie proof) and plastic nipple drinkers that screw straight into tapped PVC. I was a bit concerned about having plastic nipple drinkers due to how destructive we all know budgies are but these are apparently hardened for use with rabbits so my bet is that they would be WAY stronger chewers than budgies! The other thing that I will incorporate it a valve to stop water coming into the cistern so that I can fill this manually if my birds need medicating. Hopefully by the time I get to do another doxy treatment I will know approximately how much water is used per day. Also want to have a value on the other side of the cistern and 2 quick clip attachments so that I can remove and clean the tank when needed AND probably a valve at the end of the pvc so that I can drain the water lines too. I will take some photos of the drinkers and tank when they arrive and some as we get to and put in the drinking lines.

Name: Gina Pets: Scarlett - our old German Shepherd - mistress of the house; Effi, Greebo, Tchorna, Enya, Sinner & Freeze our gorgeous whippets (read "children"); 1x 29yr old trotter named Lorry; 12 chickens, 11 sheep and 300 and something budgies. Greebo "the knob" is my avatar - seen here doing an upside down impersonation of Scratt (the rat critter on Ice Age). Favourite colour: Blue Astroliogical sign: Taurus Age: +30 age group Weakness: Short hot temper Stengths: Tenacious Favourite animal: Dog Favourite TV show: House Live: South West of Australia How long have been a BBC member: A teeny while Anything else: Our dogs are our lives, our children actually. We show, train and breed whippets and enjoy the sport of dog agility as much as (or maybe even more than) the exhibition budgie hobby.

Hi All I'm just going through the processes of converting my flights to an automatic watering system with low pressure drinkers attached to a cistern system. My first thought were to use nipple drinkers as I've had some experience with these is broiler chicken sheds and they seem like they would be a great option. Has anyone out there set up such a system and has anyone used nipple drinkers with budgies before. Can they operate them successfully? I used to use lixit (ball bearing drinkers) bottles and they seemed okay with them. Is there anything I should especially consider aside from values to turn cistern off for manually adding medications and a way to remove the cistern for periodic cleaning? I have considered an inline filter but not sure if nipple drinkers need this or not. Any advice gratefully received. Cheers Gina

I'd have to go with RIP on the first bird - dirty clearwing. Seen sooooo many over here that look just like it! Bird 2 - I'd only guess was a greywing Bird 3 - what other people say coz I've no idea Dean you'll have to come over here so I can give you some nice clearwings to smuggle back

And from RIP's comments most varities can mask darkwing.

I can see the backyard as a maze of aviaries some time in the very near future! New bird room, flights etc - looks like you are getting serious with those budgies!

Gee, you can buy a budgie and never know what is really there!!!!! Well done Kaz was that an educated guess or have you seen/had some experience with darkwings before?

I like that Cinnamon hen in the middle there Kaz. Very nice indeed. She seems to have a decent head and mask. A bit bloodied right now since the Mum bit her above the cere to get her out of the nestbox. She is lovely!

Well I have found using normals to be just fine apart from a tendancy for some suffusion to creep in. Using Cinnamons dilutes out the body colour and keeps the suffusion at bay but sometimes you can lose the strong buttercup yellow colouring that is needed. Personally I have been happy using either normals or cinnamons (either normal or opaline) but seeing as I have very strong cinnamons I tend to use those more. I am trying to keep to normals rather than opalines these days as my wing markings have sufferred a bit with the damn thumb patch marking.

Yes, it was a bit of a mystery to me when they popped up. Apparently they are from a family of clearwings that have been bred clearwing to clearwing for a long time but whose to say there was not a dilute stuck in there somewhere - might have to ask the breeder I originally got them from. On talking to a couple of people who have been breeding CW a lot longer than me, the discussion sort of ended up being around the fact that you cannot have a dilute clearwing (only a clearwing split for dilute) but over time it seems that the diluted body colour characteristic of the dilute has "contaminated" the clearwing. They consider them to be quite definitely clearwings (not dilutes). Many clearwing breeders now see these coloured birds. Henry George calls the "limes". John Mulley considers them to be a combination of cw and dilute characteristics in a cw bird. I being a relative newbie at CW's have not much idea really One other comment I heard by the by, was that there seems to be quite a lot of different body colour forms of the clearwing....... obviously that was I "I heard it from someone, who heard it from someone else" sort of comment so who knows. All I know is that I'll be doing a lot of chatting to a few CW breeders in Tassie this year!

Spangle markings will actually reduce the cinnamon markings, washing out the "lacewing" markings. And if the lacewing spangle is recognisably a spangle then as it is not an allowable combination with lacewing it can't be shown. Have a look in the standard. Lacewing can only be shown as a normal or opaline, spangle can only be shown as a greywing, cinnamonwing, opaline, fallow or yellow face. You can use a good normal, opaline, cinnamon or cinnamon opaline which should give you some good scope. Better if you can make it a dark factor to try and intensify the yellow colouring that's good too. The only concern with opalines is that often as a lacewing you can really notice the clear yellow thumbprint shaped patch in the middle of their wing.

Yep really does sound like (and look like) Lacewing is a cock. And from other photo's looks to be opaline to me so yes Lacewing hen babies and if the cock is indeed opaline then lacewing opaline hen babies - opaline also being a sex linked gene. I try and steer clear of lacewing/spangle pairing as the spangle lacewing combo is not an allowable one on the showbench. Although some of the spangles are so strong these days it's tempting to put them in sometimes. At least you know the spangle is a dominant gene so the babies will either show spangle or not and will not hide them in the split form.