Finnie

It seems like the second hen should have 3 chicks by now. Do you know how many eggs she laid? If you can figure it out, I would wait until the last egg is a week overdue (4 weeks after it was laid), and then take down the box so you can look in it better. Probably throw away the old eggs, clean out the box, and let her try again, if she seems healthy and fit enough. Good luck. Sounds like the other nest is doing well! Oh, and is there any way you can attach the box so it is easier to check next time? That might help you to help the hen, if she needs it.

Ah, some finch guys! I am on the FINCHforum, myself. What kinds of finches do you two keep?

Lol, well I know that BJ likes to stir things up. If it wasn't for him, there'd be no life around here! So I'm just helping him keep this thread going.

Yeah, but I miss the old friends. Like you. Hey, your profile doesn't say "resident comedian" anymore!

I have no experience with aviaries, to help you with, so I have no idea if 5 cocks and 1 hen is a good combination. I have always read that too many cocks will fight over the lone female, and pester her with mating advances. But yours seem to be working it out okay. (I would never do that combination in one of my large indoor flight cages.) HOWEVER, you mentioned that one of your birds has French molt. I would be concerned about that contaminating the nest box. It is a virus that kills chicks, or if they survive, it can cause them to have permanent feather damage. For this reason, my opinion would be to remove the hen and one cock to a breeding cage, in a separate area from the aviary. (And hope that the hen isn't already a carrier of the French molt virus.) As she seems friendly with all three of the cocks who feed her, I'm sure it won't matter which one you choose. If she does lay and produce chicks, it's already possible that you can get some from each of the fathers. But if there is a father that you would prefer to have chicks from, choose him, and maybe he will get to have more influence on any eggs that get fertilized next. This would be a fun clutch to watch feather up. I also agree with what Robyn has said. Only let her raise a clutch if you WANT to breed. If not, you might consider removing any seed dishes that resemble a nesting place, and replacing them with some other type of feeder. And then just throw away any eggs she lays. Good luck! Let us know what happens.

Yes, he is a boy, and a recessive pied. He's also some sort of greywing. That may be harder to figure out, since he has so few markings, and I noticed his cheek patches are pied out. You won't be able to judge how pale or bright they are. But if his sky blue body color parts are very dark and bright, then he may be a clearwing or a full body greywing. If his blue areas are washed out looking, he may be a regular greywing or a dilute. (But from those photos, I think we can rule out dilute. ) Very gorgeous!

Hi Tim, welcome to the forum! What other kinds of birds do you have?

I like your new breeding box. I was thinking the same as you when I saw your first one, that there wasn't two perches for them to fly back and forth for their courtship dance. I think the entrance hole you've made will be fine. I would take care, though, when you do nest checks, to just lift one corner of the lid until you know the hen has left the box and gone back into the cage, because with the whole ceiling off, it would be very easy for her to fly out. That kind of lid can be very tricky. You'll also want to make sure you don't drop it in on top of eggs and chicks. By the way Jimmy, technically we have a rule on our forum that we are not supposed to post links to or advertise competing websites. HOWEVER... seeing as how all the other mods and admins who used to police that kind of thing have left us to go over to said competing forum, I am not going to remove your link. I think it's a moot point. Besides, if Facebook is going to kill BBC, it's going to happen with or without us acknowledging its existence.

I know it doesn't look like so much nesting material that could hide an egg, but maybe that's what happened. You just coudn't see the fourth one. Then when she laid the fifth one, she got them all back together again. Other explanation would be that the fourth egg stayed inside her tract too long, and then came out when the fifth one was ready. But the timing for the fifth egg was what it should have been right?

Glad she's doing better.

I think you could be right. I had three cinnamon yellowface hens before, and you could tell it easily, but on one of them, it was harder to see until after she molted. What color is the quill of her tail feathers?

Well, you can call it whatever you want, but if you use words that already have a different meaning, you won't be living in the same reality as everybody else. Type 2 yellowface means something specific, and neither half of this bird is it.

I'm sorry for your rough start. If the other chicks are active and clean, then I would chalk it up to there being some kind of issue with the first chick, but not the others. I would keep checking them twice a day to make sure they stay clean. I have read that dried food on the face can suffocate them, and that could be from a messy feeding mother. I've also read that if dried poo gets stuck to their vent, it can prevent further elimination of waste, which would be toxic. But I couldn't tell you why the parents would keep the other chicks clean and not that one. Unless they somehow knew it wasn't a viable chick to begin with.

Hi Mike, nice to see you back! If you want access to your old password, you can send Kaz a PM. It'll probaby go to her email inbox, and then she can help you out. I don't have access to that information myself.

Hi Finnie I'll stick with my explanation Its shorter & easier to read... It may be chimerism but that don't stop it being called a type 2 yellow face......B.J. WOW BJ, I don't want to argue with you, but you sound like the young people these days. Who cares what is right and wrong, as long as it is short and easy to read! They come on here and ask our advice, and if our answer isn't short and easy to read, they skip it and ask for "better" answers. If it's too long, they can't be bothered with it. The problem with genetics is that by nature it is complicated. When you try to explain it with short cuts, it leads to misunderstandings and the wrong use of terms. So a lot of times the answers to genetic questions are going to be long ones. The short truth is, half of Twinzy is a green bird and half of him is a blue bird. There is no yellowface gene involved anywhere at all. (okay, his green half could be split to it.)

BJ, it is believed that half siders come about due to the fusion of two separate embryos, very very early in their development. What results is in actuality two separate birds combined in one, with separate dna. I think the term they use is "Chimera". We had a topic about this some years back. I will go see if I can dig it up. Edit: I searched Chimera on the forum, and there were a few threads that came up, which mentioned that half siders are tetragametic chimeras. But they didn't really have much information, so I googled "tetragametic chimerism" and found this, and many other links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)#Tetragametic_chimerism

There is a book by Dr. Terry Martin called A Guide to Colour Mutations and Genetics in Parrots. It has a chapter on Establishing New Mutations. In that chapter, he talks about how new mutations are sometimes lost because the breeder's first instinct is to inbreed, in order to get more birds with the new trait. He says that is a mistake, and leads to weakness and infertility in the new lines. He says that the first pairing should be an outcross (mated to an unrelated bird) in order to produce birds that are split to the "new" mutation. Then those birds can be bred from in order to get more visuals, and to produce some breeding stock that isn't quite so closely related. It also mentions breeding the "new mutation bird" to two different mates, and then using the half siblings from those pairings to each other. The book lists out step by step how to go about it. Since your friend doesn't have any birds related to this one, then they will, of course, have to go the route of outcrossing, at least at first. You also want to establish what the mode of inheritance is. If it is a dominant trait, that just showed up randomly in this bird, then some of its offspring should appear with it. If not, then it is probably a recessive trait, and then you can assume all of the offspring are split to it. Unless it is a sex-linked trait, in which case all of her sons will be split to it, but none of her daughters. In that case, some of the sons daughters will show the trait. If you can't find this book, I'm sure there are other places on genetics that have written about this. Dog breeders and livestock breeders come to mind. It is a project for someone who has a lot of room to breed all these birds and keep all of their offspring. I wish her good luck with it.

Any one of your males could be the father, in a colony breeding situation. One clutch could have multiple fathers. The one male split to lacewing who has only produced lutino lacewings in the past can still produce a white one if he is split to blue. When a bird is split to something, it doesn't always come out in expected percentages. So just because he hasn't produced a blue based bird yet doesn't mean he won't in the future. In the same way, your other male who is split to cinnamon could still be split to ino as well, and you just haven't discovered it yet. How many female offspring has that male split to cinnamon given you so far? If he is split to both cinnamon and ino, the rate of crossover is about 3%. So percentage wise, if he were split to both, you could expect roughly 48.5% of his HEN chicks to be cinnamon. 48.5% would be inos, 1.5% would be normals, and 1.5% would be lacewings. So if he has given you lots of normal hens, then you are probably right that he isn't also split to cinnamon. However, with colony breeding, there isn't really a way to know for sure how the genes are spreading around through your flock. So some things you might never work out unless you test breed in a cage situation.

Lol, Robyn, LeoOlive resurrected a two year old thread! I wish Splat was still around. Here is another old thread where people chimed in about Chokos. It's not about them, but they were discussed: http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/index.php?showtopic=29487&st=0&p=352985&hl=chokosentry352985

An albino baby can only be a cock if its mother is an albino. The cock in the link appears to be a normal sky blue. I don't know why the hen had clear eggs. Probably not because of age, more likely due to not actually mating with the cock, or the cock is infertile. Maybe she can give them a rest and try again when the hen's cere starts to turn a light creamy tan. If she waits until the cere is chocolate brown, it may be past optimum timing. Also to look for signs of courtship between the two. Maybe this hen would prefer a different mate, if she's not hitting it off with this one? As for the photos, between this forum changing its procedures a while back, and photobucket constantly changing things, the photos can be a little inconsistent. I usually click on the option for "direct link" that Photobucket gives, and then paste that into the box that comes up when you click on the little photo inserting icon in the forum's toolbar. Oh, and welcome to the forum.

If it were me, I would not keep 5, I would keep 6. No matter how they decide to pair off in the end, with an odd number, someone will be left with no buddy, and that will cause him to try to horn in on the other relationships. That is exactly what you are seeing with Storm, Chichiri and Raest. Storm and Chichiri obviously wanted to mate, and Raest was getting in the way. His attacking Chichiri was probably from jealousy over Storm. (Male or female doesn't really matter if they have picked a "favorite", but it does sound like Chichiri may be a girl, vet notwithstanding.) Adding the new female most definitely has changed the hierarchy, the status quo. Before, you had four together, and it was working okay (Or was it? With 3 males and one hen, I would think you would have had fights prior to now, or at least a pestered hen.) The new hen would naturally get along with them all at first, until she gets her bearings. Don't expect that to last long. If it were me, I would try to have 3 males and 3 females. But if you had 2 females and 4 males, that should work okay too, because the 2 hens would choose their mates from among the guys, and then the two guys left over will normally be happy to buddy up with each other. (Budgies aren't actually gay, but the guys are usually willing to make do with whomever is available.) At least if you have an even number, and Raest has to remain separated, he can have one buddy to live with. That should make him happy. Probably your best bet is to start by posting photos of all your birds, so we can tell you for sure whether they are males or females, and then you can go from there. By The Way, how big of a cage do you have?

From reading people debating about grit, I have come to the conclusion that as long as the budgie is not gorging himself on it, it should be fine. There is some idea that if they aren't used to grit, they may go nuts when they are given some, and over fill their crop, thus causing compaction. Don't know about that, but if yours is eating it in moderation, I would assume he's okay. Yes, budgies are smaller, but they are still parrots.

Hi Selena, welcome to the forum. For a beginner grasp of budgie mutations, I'm going to recommend The Budgie Place. But keep in mind that it is not a perfect site. It won't help you become a budgie color expert, but everyone has to start out with small steps, and understand the basics, before they can handle more complicated details. But the Budgie Place at least has some simple information about the main budgie mutations. http://www.budgieplace.com/colorsguide.html

He's a nice looking bird. From that photo he looks like an opaline grey. His cheek patches look black. So your hen is a dilute, since she has black eyes. However, since you are colony breeding, you won't be able to know who the father is. She could mate with several males, and different eggs in her clutch could have different fathers. Guess you will just have to wait to see what outcomes the chicks are. Genetics are like a fun puzzle, but yes they can be confusing. Even more so when you colony breed, because nothing is certain.