Finnie

I'm seeing three different birds with brown ceres. But the one on the upper left is in too much shadow, so maybe that's really blue, and not brown. And judging by how close the baby bars are coming down to their ceres, I think they are much too young to be hens in the creamy brown stage of breeding condition. So, I'd also like to know if those ceres are really a pinky purple color. But I really think the spangle cobalt on the right looks like a hen. (An older hen, say at least 6 months old)

Yeah, I agree with BJ too. Up until I read the part where you said he has begun molting, I was thinking you could just make sure to take him out and feed him every day, and that might work. But a molt can be rough on a bird, even without him already having a problem and being underweight. And molting and breeding don't go well together. I think the safest thing to do is let the hen raise her clutch by herself. You can keep a spray of millet in the box for the hen to munch on, and oats and seeds make good nesting material that is also edible. Even with their cocks to feed them, my hens come out every morning to eat the fresh vegetables when I bring them, so keep giving her the spinach and egg food etc. When the chicks start hatching, just watch to see how well the hen feeds them. She might do fine on her own, but if their crops look emptyish, then you can help with supplemental feedings. You don't have to pull the chicks for hand raising if the hen can manage, but if there are a lot, and she seems to be having trouble, just taking one or two away can make a difference, and then she could cope with the rest. You will have to play that part by ear. If you can leave them with her until they are two weeks old, then you won't have to worry about doing night feedings with them.

It looks beautiful. Does it have a safety door area, so you don't lose any escapees when you go in? I can't help you with how many will fit in there. I've never had an aviary. But I'm sure there are other threads around here somewhere that people have asked that question, and have gotten an answer. I'm sure you've been told of the pitfalls of colony breeding. A lot of people choose to do it anyway, and that is your perogative if that's what you want to do. They say you can minimize the fighting and damage if you make sure to have at least two boxes for EACH pair you have in there. And to make sure there is plenty of space between boxes. You especially don't want the openings to be close together, so that each hen has to defend her door whenever the birds next door go in and out of their box. The boxes placed the highest up in the aviary will be the most sought after, and fought over, so it is a good idea to make sure that ALL of the boxes are at the same height. I think you will be limited in the number of pairs you can breed in there by the number of boxes that can fit, without being too close together. If you keep a few feet between boxes, and then find you can only fit say six boxes in there (I don't know that six will fit, that's just an example) you then could only have three pairs breeding in there. Don't make the mistake of thinking you can squeeze the boxes too close, or that you can just have one box per pair, with one or two extra. Funky, I don't have any experience with colony breeding. These are just things that I have read about it when people complain that they are having problems with their birds killing the chicks in other nests and such things. Most of the time when people talk about their experiences with colony breeding, they say it went well at first, and then after a while there was fighting and dead chicks. A few people say they never had any problems. Maybe those people were careful not to overcrowd, or else they were just lucky. You would do well to read the articles in the FAQ section that talk about colony breeding, so you can work to set it up as best as possible, and to be aware of what the dangers are. One thing I know from cage breeding- it's not all peaches and cream. Things happen and there will be dramas and issues to deal with. When you come up against a problem, you tweak your system and figure out a way to do it better the next time. And cage breeding is designed to minimize those problems, so with colony breeding, I imagine you are going to come up against a lot more issues. I hope your birds will be fine, and I hope you will be prepared to step in and rescue them if the colony breeding experiment starts to go bad. Good luck!

Oh, that opaline greywing dominant pied light green male is gorgeous!

Great that her mothering instincts kicked in! I usually feel like it's worth it to give a hen another chance, even when they do really poorly the first time around. It seems like the next time they do much better.

Oh, I'm so sorry you lost her this early. It's very nice that you gave her a good life while you could.

Thank you for your kind words, everyone. Yes, she does have quite a legacy of offspring, which there are a few I still have here. One of my other favorite hens is Pearl, who is Finnie's daughter. And there is a son, Angus, who was parent raised, and I never worked on taming him, but from the time he fledged, showed an extra friendly personality. He got to spend his "chldhood" living in my sale cage with some hand raised babies, and he quickly learned to copy them and tamed his own self. If they were landing on my hand, he didn't want to be left out, so he landed on my hand too. There is another one of Finnie's chicks from this fall who shows the same friendly personality, but that one is being sold to an 11 year old girl. And one of my long term breeding goals was to combine cinnamon, opaline and greywing all in one bird. Well, I have three of those now, and they are all granddaughters of Finnie. I've been super busy lately, but when I get a chance, I'll have to update an old thread of mine about that. The two new grand daughters from this fall are violets, and they are gorgeous!

Wednesday, November 28 was a sad day here. I lost Finnie, my first ever hen to egg binding. She was four years old, and this was going to be her last clutch. When the chicks were almost fledged, she started to lay a second round, and to prevent that, I took her box away and put her back into the larger cage with the other hens. I figured she would lay an egg or two off the perch and then quit. I wish I could have seen that there was a problem before it was too late. But I found her too late. RIP, Finnie, mother of 24, grandmother of 11, and my favorite hen.

Ah, now I have found the thread about the wing. I don't think it looks like a bad clip job, apart from the fact that they only did one wing? It looks to me like the left wing we can see here is beginning to re-grow new flight feathers, and somthing or someone has chewed at the new feather coming in, making it look gnarly. Since he's molting and growing new feathers, maybe that right wing was clipped after all, and has just grown in its new flights quicker. Although I think it would be odd for one wing to grow at a different rate than the other. I honestly think that violet looks like a boy, too. But the light from the window is making way too much glare.

Does he have any other symptoms? Because it is actually a good sign if he is sleeping on one foot. Sleeping on two feet means they are not well enough to balance properly. In the absence of other signs of sickness, I would just let him enjoy the heat, and coddle him a little through the molt. Also, if you decide to take him to a vet, you will be wasting your money if you take him to a regular vet. You have to make sure you find one that is an actual certified Avian Veterinarian.

Sorry. Somehow I thought you meant you had bought in an unrelated blue bird to mix in with the wild types. I think you are right about using the term "wild type". From what I understand about other species of birds, and even fish, "wild type" means that it is the original, normal color, without any mutations, regardless of its line of parentage.

Yes, Photobucket is worldwide. When you copy the IMG code from your photo on Photobucket, then in your thread, click on the image icon, (which is a tiny picture of a tree, but heck if I can make that out. It just looks like a green square! ) When you click on that, it gives you a space to right click and paste your img code into. I used to just past the img code right into the text, but since the forum upgrade, that option doesn't seem to work anymore.

It's the same guy here. So the standards for pink feet don't only apply to specific mutations it seems. That is weird!! It's like he changed feet from one photo to the next.

They are really gorgeous, Robyn!!

Sorry, roseydoo, SarahC has already stated that it turned out to be a hen once it grew up more. Interesting.

Turning out very nice!

I don't think the dilute light green bird is a hen. At least, if it is old enough to have finished its first molt, then it's cere would either be whiter, or have a brownish hint to it.. Even when a hen's brown crusty cere peels off to reveal the white/blue color underneath, there is usually still some trace left. To me this looks like a male, but maybe a different angle and lighting of photo would tell a different story... Do you have a photo of its back? It looks like it is some sort of pied, and possibly even spangle.

It's been a couple of weeks. How did this turn out?

I think your blue one is a cobalt, not a grey.

Hey Dave! Glad to see you starting a breeding journal again. I know what you mean about time constraints. I don't seem to get around to keeping up with everything on the forum lately, but I will be looking forward to your updates and seeing how your breeding season is going.

A lot of our member on here are from Perth, and I believe there are three clubs in that area.

I have some white trays that have gotten stained from carrots, and I have not been able to get that off, even with bleach. I really do like the black trays better.

As long as it is whole grain rice, I think it should be fine. White rice has all the nutrition removed from it, so that would be like feeding junk food.

I agree with Nerwen about the behavior. A tame bird will bite less than a non tame one, regardless of gender. And just because boys usually bite gentler, doesn't mean all boys will. Plus, there have been a LOT of people who swore their hen was a male based on it's displaying male courting behavior during its adolescence. I've found that hens will often act like males for a while as they are growing up. Do you have other pictures of them posted somewhere else? Cuz I'm not seeing how Nerwen knows about a poor wing clip job.

Nerwen, maybe Nowbudgies means that the violet color is light because of the cinnamon washing it out. So there could still be a dark factor in play. Nowbudgies, do you know if the cock is split to blue?