Finnie

I'm sorry you're not feeling well, GB. I hope you get better soon.

Amen to that!

This has me wondering, if an albino chick is also opaline, will it still have the white down? Or for that matter, do non-opaline albino chicks have grey down? (In other words, does the albino gene affect the down color?)

Hmm... seems my comments were taken as criticism, instead of how they were intended to compliment a good teacher. Sorry if I was ambiguous

A dog (chews it)

i dont agree i think bottom one is a cock to purple for hen but two well acurate people say hens so i would belive them really not me but i still think blue one cock This is what I thought, too, before I looked at people's responses. I thought the white around the nostrils looked more like reflection from the window or flash. I only know how to tell the difference based on Kaz's teachings, so I thought Kaz was going to say "we need a better picture with no flash" or something to that effect.

Hi! I can't help with breeding questions, but I did want to jump in and say:

Well, we couldn't get her to do the nibbling hair thing for the camera, but we got some shots of her eating millet from my hand: "> "> I don't care how she eats, as long as she eats! She likes to go inside the food cup to eat "> I think she'll do.

Ohhh, I see..... kind of like watching the olympics at all hours, if you want to see it live!

I too am sleep deprived due to the ashes (2.30am ) Sleep deprivation is budges can be displayed as behaviour issues. It can also stimulate breeding behaviour, as less daylight hours = spring/summer = breeding. Can you move him into another room while the ashes is on? (Being 82/5, we should have them out tonight, so you don't have long for this test) Please explain "ashes"? I'm confused, sorry

Ha Ha! Maesie, you are right! The constant dilemma of how to rearrange the perches so nothing below gets pooped on! That's a good idea to try to make it so she can eat without her back to us. i've just added a 3rd food dish, as I didn't want to freak her out by reaching all the way to the back for that other one, and I wanted to make sure she had fresh seed. And I 'm very happy to report that she is eating more, and moving around and exploring a lot. And my son showed me how she will nibble at his hair if he puts his head near the bars! I tried it, and sure enough, she actually came to cling on the front of the cage and nibble my hair, and my eyebrows! If she's that friendly already, I'm excited about her taming possibilities! Am going now to try to get pictures of the nibbling... Well, camera battery is dead, will have to wait until tomorrow

Thank you, Elly. I guess I'm just over-watching her because I recently lost Nigel, and I think if I'd been more observant, I might have noticed something that could have headed it off with him. Kellys seems to be doing much better as today progresses, and right now my family is telling me that she is eating at this moment! I will be checking out the faqs, because when I've looked over them before, it wasn't with a specific question in mind. Some things can be read over and over, and you learn a little bit more each time

Hi kilgh, Elly and Hamish have put it in better words than I could have. And by the way, welcome to the forum. I'm sorry it's because of a sad reason :sadsorry:

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Well, I'm still keeping an eye of Kelly. This morning there was only a small amount of millet husks underneath the sprig, and most of it's seeds are still intact. I blew and blew on the seed cup, and was finally able to dislodge 1 husk. There are a couple of poops in different spots, so that's good, but they are neither good poops nor bad poops. Somewhere in between. And she must have slept with a poop between her foot and body, because there is a black smear stuck to one foot, and a matching smear stuck to her chest. I'll be watching to see if she preens those off. Oh, and there's a little bit of yellow staining around her vent, but nothing stuck there. There are 2 doors i can close between her and the birds in the other room, to keep them from hearing each other and calling back and forth, but I'm leaving them open, because she seems to perk up when she hears them. I called the pet store to see what kind of food they feed, and it is a seed pellet mix similar to mine, but a different brand. I might go buy some of this other brand, but she had only been in the store 1 day before I bought her, so she might not have even eaten any of their food. The manager of the store didn't know what the birds eat before they get to the store, but he offered to email to someone higher up in the corporate chain to try to find out. He called back to say that the vendors keep their birds on an all seed diet, but he didn't know what seeds were in the mix. I'm guessing that my seed/ pellet mix probably has some of the same seeds, so Kelly will probably be fine with it, once she settles down and actually eats. The manager seemed very knowledgeable. He said he owns birds, too. He did suggest I might want to try a supplement called Ornibac (sp?) that you put on the food and it makes it more palatable and gives them a bit of a boost. Of course, she would have to eat the food, for it to help, but it might be a good idea once she settles in and eats, to help her replenish herself. Also, there is a bird fair tomorrow in Indianapolis, that I discovered while I was online searching for bird breeders. I am planning to go and see what it is like. Supposedly they will have every kind of pet bird imaginable represented, and supplies and who knows what else. I'm hoping to meet local bird enthusiasts and get lots of advice, and hopefully find good deals on nest boxes, breeding cabinets, etc. They hold 3 of these a year, and I just happened to find out right in time! Maybe someone there will be selling ornabac, or something similar, or can tell me if it's worth the bother. I am aware of an avian vet about half an hour away from me, but maybe at the fair I can find referrals to someone else, that might be closer, just in case. Sorry for the long post, hope you read it anyway! Here is one of the pictures I deleted last night: ">

That she is an artist!

Yes, that is how her droppings look so far. And all in 1 spot where she sat all this time. Birdluv, I hope you're right, because the seeds in the dish all look whole, but maybe they're not. Well, I havent' covered her up yet, and from my computer in the next room, I just heard the wonderful, familiar sound of crunching millet and seeds falling outside the cage. Goes to look closer... Yay! Yay! She's tearing into her millet! She's got about 1 1/2 inches of that, and when it's gone, maybe she will turn to the seed. I did see her crouching on the seed cup a while ago. I have it up high, at the back, so she can still hide while she eats. That's when I looked and thought the seeds looked whole. Trouble is, I don't want to upset her by hovering, so I couldn't get a close enough look back there. Well, if she's scarfing millet, she'll be okay for the night, so tomorrow's a new day, and I expect she will be more settled. Sorry for worrying, just because she hit the magic 24 hour mark, and I had it in my mind that that was bad. Thanks for your encouragement, guys!

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I'm so frustrated! I just spent half an hour making this post, with pictures, and in one accidental keystroke deleted the whole thing! So the short version is, I've had Kelly 24 hours now. Most of this time she was in statue mode, and about 3 hours ago she switched to escape artist/acrobat mode. Does this mean that since she is moving around now, she will also start to eat? I need to cover her up for the night soon, but I wish there was some evidence that she has eaten. Will she be okay for another night?

Sorry about the photo size. I thought I had photo bucket set to bring things in sized correctly. I will have to go check on that.

It's only been 5 days since my Nigel died, but I thought I better start looking for another bird to even up my numbers, because I now have a hen without a buddy. (The others make her jealous, since they are paired up nicely and won't share with her.) And since she has a minimum lonely period of 30 days before she can meet her new friend, I figured the sooner I start looking, the better. Especially since I was planning to be picky and only buy a new bird if it was another sky blue greywing male. The reason I needed that specific mutation, (why I bought Nigel in the first place) is because I had a 2 generation plan to breed a yf2 sky blue greywing like this: http://i563.photobucket.com/albums/ss79/dw...rd/scan0001.jpg Ever since I bought this book, I've wanted a bird like that. I already had Finnie, my violet greywing hen, and Colleen, my yf2 skyblue normal hen, and a couple of boys, but it would take several generations and some inbreeding in order to take what I had and make this. So I bought Nigel, and my 2 year plan became to breed him to Colleen to get a yf2 male who would be split to greywing, and then when it grew up, to breed it to Finnie and hope for my long awaited yf2 skyblue greywing normal budgie. It was a good plan, because I wanted to try my hand at breeding, and it gave me a goal. (And an excuse to get my husband to let me have more birds.) (Yes, I know, it would be a lot easier just to buy this color bird, but until yesterday, I have never seen one at any of the pet stores around here.) In my search to find another bird like Nigel, I contacted every store, and searched all over online, but no one had a blue greywing male. That's okay, I figured, I don't mind waiting. Sooner or later I will find one. Well, you know what is coming! My daughter and I were eating out for dinner last evening. (It was my birthday ) And we were near one of the stores that had told me they didn't have what I was looking for, so I hadn't gone there in person. So I suggested we should go there afterward to see if the store had been wrong. (They usually are, especially if you are looking for a boy!) Well, you can guess what I found when we got there! Introducing..... Kelly! "> So, now I have a new, and even better plan- Since Kelly and Phoebe are both girls, I will need some boys for them. And since my other four birds are all already over 12 months old, I no longer have to wait for baby birds to grow up- I can breed them now! Finnie and Patrick (dark green dom pied) are already in love with each other, so I can get some green babies from them that will be split for blue and greywing. Then if one is a boy, he can grow up and pair with Kelly, and voila, more yf2 greywings, of various shades, as well as some greywing greens and maybe some normal greens and blues. I like this plan better than my old one. And as for my other pair of adults, Colleen and Sean, I don't really care what I get, but one of their boys can be for Phoebe. The only hitch in this plan (other than trying to predict the future) is that until I do get some baby boy budgies, Phoebe and Kelly will either have to room separately and be lonely, or they will have to learn to like each other (after quarantine, of course.) In the store, I saw that Kelly was a bully. She had a poor little boy on the ground and she was stepping on his back! Phoebe herself is a hen who likes to make the dolphin noise a lot. I don't have high hopes for them hitting it off. Bring on the baby boy budgies!!! "> I better add some pictures of the rest of the flock so I don't get mobbed by picture deprived readers: This is pair one, Finnie and Patrick. This is pair two, Colleen and Sean and here's Phoebe:"> And more of my beautiful new girl (not the best, she's still nervous and didn't like the camera):"> ">

36 !!!!!!!

It made me look back at Anne 101's post!

Hi, welcome to the forum. Happy birthday!