Finnie

That's a good point about the cere, Jenny. I was leaning towards recessive pied, too. But I wasn't sure how much variation a clearflight pied could have. If it has no iris rings, then I would say it must be recessive pied.

Dalmatia is my favorite! I would love to have a budgie with Dalmatian spots.

Oh dear. I guess you better keep working on the aviary.

You're welcome.

Budgie_Mad, budgies will start incubating any where from the 1st egg up to the 3rd egg. They will continue to lay as many eggs as they want, although I've never had any lay more eggs after the first chick hatches. There are other types of birds that lay all their eggs first, and then start to incubate, but budgies don't do that. Wait until the first egg is about a week old, and then you can candle. The best way is to leave the eggs where they are, and postion a small flashlight behind them, shining towards you. If the egg looks pink or has veins, it's fertile. If it's yellow, it's either not fertile, or else it has been layed too recently to have developed veins yet. If one is fertile, most likely they all will be, but that doesn't mean they will all hatch.

Birds are fun!

Well, you at least have the genders right. If you are planning to breed them, then I wouldn't worry about how they make friends until you are ready to separate them into breeding cages with boxes. It's usually giving them a nest box that stimulates them into breeding, so the two males would probably turn to females at that point, instead of each other.

Could you post a photo of what it looks like?

Yup, hen. I will say, Bourke's parakeets are a gentle species, and shouldn't be housed with budgies, as budgies are aggressive, and can hurt the Bourke's. It's probably just as well to make the hen sleep in a separate cage. Maybe she and the male budgie would be happy to live with each other, away from the other birds. (?)

What a lovely set up for your birds! They all look so happy and healthy. I especially like the two greens in this photo:

He's so cool! Did I hear him say "Where's Tiffany?" Oh, he gets so much clearer towards the last minute. That's awesome.

What a gorgeous opaline light green, with a nice clear mantle! And yes, your older male is a dominant pied light green.

Here's an idea, JB: Get an indoor budgie in a cage, and then your wife will be motivated for you to finish the aviary, so the bird can move outside!

That's right, an ino cock will only produce ino daughters. All the hens will be inos. Creamino cock X normal violet hen will produce: If the yellow face cock is split to blue, you will get 50% yellowface and 50% blue. If not, you will get all yellowface chicks. All the males will be normal split to ino, all the hens will be inos. Violet factor will depend on whether the hen is single or double factor, and whether or not the male also has violet factor. Since violet factor shows up best on a cobalt bird, that will also depend on how many dark factors the creamino cock is masking. You never know what else the cock could be masking, and if both birds are split to recessive genes, there could be surprises. In another month or two, it will be like Christmas at your house, Budgie_Mad!

I like this last one, too. It gives you a nice breeding room and a nice flight.

I agree. No need to mess around with sprays, when one drop of ivermectin on the back of the neck will do the trick.

Hi, welcome to the forum. I'm sorry you lost your cockatiel. It's really cool that he lived 23 years! Have fun looking around the forum. There are lots of topics about taming more than one budgie. Look in the Budgie Bonding and Taming section,.

Lol, don't count your budgies before they hatch!

You will find that patience is the name of the game. So just prepare yourself for a lot of waiting.

It's okay to post in this thread. It's nice to be able to compare similar problems. I'm sure it's very cute to see your two males being such good friends. But also frustrating, too, when you want them to bond with the females. Probably the first thing to do is to make sure you have their sexes correct. Getting them wrong can be very easy to do, so that might be a simple solution to your problem. But if you are sure of their sexes, the only way to get them to pair up with the females might be to separate each pair into its own cage. I have found that eventually, they will make friends with their cage mate, even if they preferred a different budgie before.

Hi! Welcome to the forum! I hope you enjoy sharing breeding experiences with us on here.

Very nice variety of budgies!

Sounds like you will be having it all worked out soon.

There is a disease called megabac, where one of the symptoms is that the bird picks up food and then drops it without eating it. They look as thought they are eating constantly, but they really aren't. But like BJ said, it's hard to say what's wrong without much information. You might want to take them to an avian vet for testing. Is the other pair still in quarantine, or in the aviary with your other birds?

Yes, handling them daily like you are is a good idea. Once they are getting their pin feathers in, you can take them out for about 10 to 20 minutes at a time, for socializing, but probably not more than once or twice a day. Be prepared though, that as soon as they fledge from the nest box and can fly, they usually won't stand for the cuddling anymore, and will panic when you try to catch them. It is at this stage that I usually just leave them alone in the breeding cage with their parents for as long as possible, so the parents can teach them to eat by example. I lose a little ground with the babies, but I don't want to take them away from the parents until I am sure they are independent and can eat on their own. I also don't want to freak them all out by trying to catch up the flighted babies. They go bonkers when I try. Once they are independent from their parents enough to leave the breeding cage and go in a kindy cage, and I know by then that they have fully mastered the use of their wings, I will clip their wings, so that they are handleable again. Then spending about 20 minutes per day with each chick gives them a great head start for when they go home with their owners. The problem with this method, is that with so many chicks, it's just not practical to do all of this for each one. (And it gets VERY tiresome!) So I would charge more for the ones I have worked with, and if there is a waiting list, it helps to have them choose which chick they want, and only work with those. This is also one reason why I switched to hand raising some of the babies from two weeks of age on, because that gets WAY better taming results, and is a little more efficient. But of course, hand raising is still a lot of work, so I charge even more for those babies. And there is a more limited supply of them.