Finnie

Hey, Prince Charming, I have deleted your post, because it is against BBC rules to advertise or link to competing budgie forums. Sorry. We have that information right here in our FAQs http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/faqs/index.php?action=artikel&cat=5&id=322&artlang=en

I've always heard from the Aussie members on this forum that gum leaves and branches are an excellent form of greens for budgies, as Robyn has pointed out. Foraging basically refers to having to hunt and search for food as opposed to having it handed to them on a platter. It gives them something to occupy their mind. There is a large market for "foraging toys", which require a bird to figure out a puzzle or chew through cardboard in order to get a treat. Many of the larger bird species are prone to boredom and self destructive behavior if they do not have enough mental stimulation.

It's nice that you would like him to have a good view. but I don't think that's really necessary for a budgie. As Prince Charming mentioned, seeing the other birds can cause him to identify with them as fellow birds, although I think that since he gets more interaction with you, that might not really be a problem. But it is usually not recommended to have the cage by a window, if there is a chance of overheating from the sun or getting a chill if the window has air leaks. Since he seems to be picking up the calls of the outside birds, I think it would be a good idea to cut off his view of them. You will have a better chance of teaching him to talk if he isn't preferring to learn their language. Oh, and if someone is taking a year to make any progress taming their bird, then they are not putting enough effort into it. The more time that goes by allowing the bird to remain untame just cements it in as his preference over being tame. It's good to be patient, but you can't leave it up to the bird, you have to be the one pushing the progress to the next level. Look around for Training posts on the forum for ones written by BJ (BirdJunky) He has given a lot of good tips on taming and training.

Have a look here, and you can also google it, and find more forum discussions: http://wiki.medpedia.com/Milk_Thistle

You probably cannot tell for sure whether a budgie is DF violet unless you test breed it, and find that it always throws violet factored offspring. The test mate would of course, have to be NON violet factored, or else it will throw off your results, leaving you still uncertain. I don't remember what dark factors Kramer and Hedwig have. But if they can throw sky blue and cobalt offspring, then you will have a hard time telling whether the chicks are SF violet skies or cobalts, or DF violet skies or SF violet cobalts. Here is a color plate from Genetics for Budgerigar Breeders by Taylor and Warner, 1961, that illustrates the subtle differences and similarities that the dark factor and violet factor can cause: You may have to zoom in your page in order to read the small print at the bottom. This is copyrighted, and I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post it here, but I have given it proper credit, so I think I'm covered.

French Molt can have a wide range of how severely it affects chicks. It can range from killing young chicks in the nest, to causing permanent feather damage, to just causing temporary feather damage that molts out.. It can also cause no symptoms, if it is mild and the birds own immune system fights it off. (I learned this from doing a lot of reading about it on line.) From what I understand, if your chicks feathered up just fine before any symptoms appeared, then it will probably affect them more lightly, and they have a good chance to be fine. Do you have photos of them? It sounds like there is a chance that they have lost feathers due to some other reason? I wish you good luck with them.

I know I'm reading this a little late, but if you could post photos of your birds actual ceres and beaks, we might be able to tell you if it looks like scaley face. The spot on Ivermectin usually clears the scaley face right up, although sometimes it takes a second application. If you used up all that the vet gave you, I would think the scaley face ought to be gone by now. So maybe it is something else.

It sounds like you have a great plan. I think you are lucky to live next to parents that you have a good relationship with. Family is important.

I agree.

Yes, I have the same problem. My numbers are creeping up, so I should sell off the ones I don't have plans for. Or I should decrease the scope of my plans. But that's hard to do when I look at them and think about all their potential. I got drastic and sold over 20 of mine last year, including my creamino hen. Then I decided I wanted to try to breed lacewings, and I needed some sort of ino hen, and I could have kicked myself for selling that one. I ended up actually going out and buying another creamino hen!

This forum is a great resource, true. But I agree with what Hilly said. You are the one who took the time to do your homework and set yourself up for success. So many times people come on here and ask a lot of questions, but you can tell they don't listen to the answers or read the FAQs articles we recommend. Those are the same ones who come back months later with a whole mess of problems. It's much more encouraging when we get people like you who care and make it their business to learn all about breeding, and then they do a great job of it. And I remember my own first clutch, and all the encouragement the members on here gave me then. Congrats on your first fledglings!

I think that when they are living outdoors, they get triggered to breed in the spring when the days get longer. If indoors, under artificial lighting conditions, you can adjust the lighting and breed them any time of year. I'm in the U.S., but our Aussie members on the forum have mentioned in the past that sometimes it is too cold to breed in the winter, and usually too hot in the summer, although some have been able to manage it during those times. Sounds like spring and fall are the most common.

Hi! Welcome to the forum. You will find lots of information about keeping and breeding budgies in the FAQs section. Enjoy!

Hi Noddy, I fixed your photo. I usually use the "Direct Link" code option from Photobucket. He looks like a dominant pied yellow face mutant one grey. To make one like him, you would need one or both birds that were dominant pied and grey. For the yf1, you will need one bird that is yf1 and one bird that is blue. None of these are sex linked genes, so it won't matter which parent has which. I take it this is not your own bird? Because this bird can make more like himself with any female, as long as she is blue or split to blue.

It sounds like they all had plum eyes, so then, yeah, all cinnamon. It is also possible that the two who look greywing could be cinnamon greywings. In that case, both parents must be split to greywing. BUT, I would just wait to decide, because it could just be the photos or the pin feathers that are making me see the grey. They could be regular cinnamons after all. When I've had cinnamon grewying chicks, the only way I knew they had cinnamon was because of the plum eyes at hatching, and who the parents were. Otherwise, they look like regular greywings, only slightly paler. So time will tell. Pet types seem to carry a lot of surprises. I think that's because we pet breeders like to mix and match and make all kinds of combinations. The show breeders tend to try to keep their lines pure, I think. About the yellowface and goldenface: These are basically "yellow removing" genes. So when they get doubled up, they remove more yellow than if the bird is single factor. So a yellowface or goldenface bird that is split to blue will usually have more yellow seeping into the body color, and one that is not split to blue (say it's goldenface/yellowface) will have a bluer body. The differences can be very subtle, and I believe it takes someone with a lot of experience to be able to look at a bird and say "Yup, that's what that is". (I am not that person. ) Plus, there is also that difference between individuals that you mentioned. That's always in there messing things up!

Thank you Finnie I will wait and keep an eye on sams cere and post more pics Do you think in about 4 weeks? Sure, that ought to be enough time. Or wait until the pin feathers smooth all away. When her cere turns brown, it will be obvious. You will know for sure then.

Hi Cashie, welcome! I have some finches too, and some Bourke's parakeets, which I guess they've decided aren't actually neophemas now.

Great that they are eating! I've never had a cockatiel, but it does make sense that a bigger bird would eat more.

She looks like a hen, but since "she" might be a recessive pied, and male recessive pieds keep a pinkish cere for life (with or without white nostril rings) I wouldn't be too hasty to decide quite yet. The tail has grown back, and there are a few pin feathers, so if she were a hen, I would expect her cere to have started turning tan by now as well. I would wait until she finishes her molt, and if she still doesn't have a brown cere, post more photos on here and ask again.

I don't know if way back when some of the mutations were new, they might have been shorter lived. Sometimes when a mutation is just getting started, there is a lot of inbreeding due to the small gene pool they had to work with. But most of the budgie mutations have been around so long and are so common, that that is not an issue with them anymore. There also used to be a theory that the violet factor gene had a lethal element to it, so that any double factor violet egg would not survive or hatch. So they said that the double factor violet budgie would be impossible to produce. But that has since been proven wrong. Violet is quite prevalent now, and there doesn't seem to be any lethality attached to it.

It's probably from the active cultures such as lactobacillus in the yogurt. They do say those are good for your digestion. I imagine it would be good for birds and mice, too.

They are definitely cute- how fun! I agree about the sand paper. It's not good for them. Just something pet stores can make a little money from if they can sell it to everybody. I line the bottom of my cages with newspaper. I have another tip for you. The way you have your two perches going, it looks like all your birds will be able to do is hop up and down from the one to the other. For maximum flying, you could shorten them so that they run from front to back of the cage. Put one on the left and one on the right, and then the babies can fly back and forth across the width of the cage. I love picking names! When we got our first two, my daughter named the first one Patrick. So then we had to find another Irish name for the other. (Sean). Then when we got two more budgies, we looked up two more Irish names. And so on, and so on. I don't always use Irish names anymore, but if I find myself stuck for ideas, I do go back to the Irish list. Let us know what you come up with!

This sounds like a condition called twirling or stargazing. But I suppose in such a young chick, there could be any number of problems that would cause it to not look right. Can you give it a heat lamp, maybe isolate it from the others? Did the breeder tell you how old it was, or for how long it had been eating on its own after they stopped hand feedig it? Maybe it wasn't fully weaned yet.

Just because it is husking the seed, doesn't mean it isn't still spitting it back out. I think I read that the Megabac disease damages their throat so that they can't swallow the food, which is why they waste away. I'll have to see if I can re-find the article where I read that. Maybe if the other ones are doing fine in the aviary, they don't have the same problem. If they developed a problem, though, I would take them out to a hospital cage at the first sign. Like you said, maybe if you catch it in time, you could save them. (But you still wouldn't know what it was you needed to save them from, so that's where testing comes in.) As for a wormer, I believe Ivermectin works on intestinal worms as well as external parasites, such as scaly face mites.