Finnie

I have heard of someone whose budgie developed problems perching, and it turned out to be a tumor near the hip, that was affecting the nerves. Just thought I'd throw that out as something you might check into.

If I had a chick like that in one of my nests, I would say it was undetermined. Since it has such a pinky purple color to it, I would lean to thinking boy. But I've had some that were like this, and the white area grew and grew until it became obvious it was a girl. I have also had ones similar to this that I thought were girls, and they ended up as boys. I would guess that it is very young, otherwise the gender would be more obvious. It's definitely cute, though! The throat spots are interesting. Does this bird have normal markings on its back?

Not sure what you mean by this? From this pair, the only opalines will be females.

While I think it's good to not hover and stress out your hen, I like to do twice daily checks, morning and night, from the day I attach the nest box, whether or not there are any eggs. I feel this gets the hen accustomed to a routine, so that you don't upset her later, when you check the chicks. One thing I look for on these checks, is to make sure the hen can move and fly like normal, and isn't egg bound. If she looks fine, then I wouldn't worry about a swollen vent. And I agree, don't constantly check on her. You don't want her to think that every time you enter the room you are going to harass her.

Hi Robyn, Flip has a good idea. You might even want to try it out by putting the two week old chick into her nest a day or two before you expect the eggs to hatch, just to see if the hen will accept and feed the older chick. That way, if she doesn't, you can still go to plan B when the eggs start to hatch. I think the mother who has the two week old chicks might likely take on a newly hatched one. I did that with a foster mother, and she did fine, but I can't remember if her chicks had quite reached the two week stage. But a lot of my hens lay 8 or 9 eggs, and they are feeding two week olds when the last ones hatch, and they somehow figure out how to feed the tiny ones the right crop milk, not all full of whole seeds. I also think there is a good chance the hen will be a better mother the second time around. I've had that happen too. If you take on hand rearing a chick from hatching, be prepared that the lack of sleep will drive you crazy by the time you can let the chick sleep all night without a feeding. When I did it, the way I found out they could sleep five hours was because I got to the point that I just COULD. NOT. MAKE. MYSELF get up when that alarm went off!! Then I felt that I had coddled them longer than they needed, since they were fine.

**BUMP!** I decided to pin this topic, because it is my "go to" thread whenever anybody asks me how to tame their bird. And today I had a hard time finding it. I hope everyone is okay with that.

Internet explorer Yikes. you use that. try out firefox Yeah, I know. I catch a lot of flack from my kids, but IE has all my bookmarks and I am familiar with it. I don't like Firefox or Google Chrome. Plus, my computer is bad with those as well. We have gotten a backup drive, and my husband plans to save all our stuff to that and then wipe our computer clean and start it over.

Hi Butters720. Welcome to the forum! How much day light is your pair getting? As it is fall down there in Oz, you may need to add artificial lighting, to trick them into believing it is spring. They should have 12 or more hours of light. Also, what is their diet like? You may want to slowly introduce more fresh foods, so that they feel like they will have enough food supply for raising a clutch. If their food supply is scarce, they either won't go into breeding condition, or they may choose to raise only a small clutch, leaving any surplus chicks that hatch to starve.

Elle, it's okay to resurrect ancient threads if you have a comment that is pertinent to the old thread. But please stop asking new questions of your own at the end. Questions of your own need to be put in a new thread you start yourself, in the proper area of the forum. Also, keep in mind, when you are reading the old threads, that some of those people might not be around the forum any more, so they probably won't respond to your questions. If you want to know about wing clipping, go ahead and start a new topic. I'm not going to split this one off. Cheers, Finnie

Hi elle. This needs to be in your own thread. I'm splitting it off.

It's most likely she's a 2012 bird. Can you read the year on the ring? It should be printed sideways, with a symbol, and the numbers 12.

No he isn't. They explore with their beak, and they often bite something before they step onto it to make sure it is safe to go on. But it can evolve into a bad habit if he gets a fun reaction to his biting, so try not to yelp or flinch. Only reward with the millet (or other treat) when he is behaving nicely, and not biting, Three months old is too old for hand feeding. Can you explain what you mean? You are not starving him in between and forcing to eat only from your hand, are you?

You can take off the nesting box. You (and they) are not ready yet. It takes more than one day to read up and learn what you need to know before you proceed.

It's internet explorer version 10. This started happening when they upgraded me. I started getting all kinds of funky problems, but most other websites don't interfere with my typing, only this one. (Lol, and yes, my whole computer is lousy. It needs to be refurbished.)

Yes. The last photo.

I agree with Jenny. Also, you can get more answers about your birds genetics if you have more than two chicks, but these two at least tell you some things. Opaline: if the first chick is indeed a male, then that tells you the mother is opaline. So her DF spangle is masking that, and every chick you ever get from this pair will be opaline. Greywing: Since the father is greywing, the normal chick tells you that the mother is NOT greywing, and the dilute chick tells you that she is split to dilute. (Is the father dilute, or is he some other greywing? He must at least be split to dilute. Photos would help.) Dark factor: If the father is truly sky blue, then the dark factor chick tells you that the mother has at least one dark factor. The sky blue chick proves that it is only one dark factor, and not two. So you know she's cobalt, not mauve. Violet factor: some sky blues can be violet factored, and you might miss it. So it's not quite possible to tell which parent that came from. Look for a darker blue sheen around the father's neck, but being greywing, that could be washed out, and not visible. Most likely, the violet comes from the mother. Very nice chicks, by the way.

It may be a pattern that he is learning. Birds are creatures of habit, and he may have learned that biting in the evening brings him some kind of reward. So he may be trying to make it his new routine. You may have to watch him diligently to see what happens just before, and just after, the bite. Ignoring the biting is a good way to extinguish the behavior. But if you are inadvertently rewarding him for it, he will do it more and more. For instance, if he wants you to leave him alone, and biting gets you to back off, then he will learn to become a bully. If he wants to be out of his cage, then if you can teach him that biting gets him "jail time", then you have a chance of stopping it, if he can make the connection. Good luck!

Hi Emily. So sorry that you lost Charlie. It sounds like you have found a good breeder for your next bird. Even good breeders from time to time will have chicks born with problems, or that are not viable. But from your story about the man demanding that the store take the two birds, it sounds like he wasn't the type to take proper care of his birds, or to do right by the ones he knows have problems. I'm sure he knew he wouldn't be able to make any money off those two, so he didn't want to keep them and deal with them himself. When you get your two new birds, we would love to see pictures of them!

First of all, there is a bit of a debate over the terminology. When most people use the term English, they mean Show or Exhibition types. And for the smaller, pet types, for some reason people like to call those "Americans", which is just horrible, seeing as they are an Australian bird! The term "Pet type" is much better suited to the smaller version of budgies. But I am not sure if you mean to differentiate between the larger types that get shown and do not get shown, or whether you mean to differentiate between the larger types and the smaller types. Your question seems to pertain to the particular stresses of transporting budgies to the actual shows. I know Australia is a big country, but do they really have a 10 hour flight to get to a show? Secondly, I do believe there are differences in fertility, clutch size, parenting ability, activity and life span, with the pet types being superior in all of these. Show type budgies dominate in the areas of size, calmness, and ability to win prizes. (PS, on this forum, my enter button doesn't work, so sorry for typing in one long paragraph.)

Have split this to a thread of its own. Hi elle, welcome to the forum. Robyn and L__J have given you good advice. The best way to learn to breed budgies is to read, read, and read some more. There is a wealth of information on this forum, and as you absorb it, you will think of specific questions to ask us, which we will do our best to answer. I think it's great that you are learning before the problems present themselves. (Sorry about the italics, I can't turn them off!)

For your chick's mutations, it is a little early to tell, but I can see a pied, a spangle, and a normal green.

Hey, Birdlove, I was able to get some photos of Dagwood, but I don't really think it will tell us anything about Allen. I can't see his back feathers well enough to know whether they are chewed or not. I got to thinking maybe it was because he was opaline, and his whole back looks like "soft focus" anyway. I did look at all my other budgies to see if it might just be a common thing that nobody notices. But I couldn't really tell. I can get close enough to my baby budgies to see that they do NOT have chewed back feathers, but that could be because they are too young to have done it yet. I really think Allen looks healthy, and in spite of the obvious chews on those feathers in the photo, his feather condition looks great.

It's going to take me some doing to get that close of a look at Dagwood's back, so it might be a while before I can let you know. I think I might have to try to get a photo and then zoom in, although it will be blurry, so.... Not to mention he doesn't like to turn his back.

Hi Owen, Can't help with bird sex BUT just wanted to alert people. I was able to access your car photo's by clicking on you link for birds pics. I'm not very computer literate but on photobucket. Unless you make a new file for your pictures you want to upload to BBC, or any other site, it seems whatever pictures are in the file you upload can be seen by clicking the foreward arrows that link your pics. Just in case there are private pics in that file I only upload pics to p/bucket by putting whatever pics I want shown into a new file first. Hope this makes sense to everyone as it could protect your privacy, if like me you don't realise it's not just the one picture but the whole file that's accessable. Nice car by the way. Hope this is okay to add this here. This is really confusing, after adding above post I tried the link again and only got the 2 birds pics?? Previously could see early holden, plus many pics of car parts etc that was obviously a restoration project???????? Can anyone explain this! I see all the car photos still, in the first link. The second link is just a bird.

I've sent Emily a PM. Hopefully it will go to her email inbox, and spur her to come on the forum for an update. There is also the possibility that the outcome wasn't good, and she might not want to talk about it. Fingers crossed!