Finnie

As soon as I read the title of your topic, I knew right away that whatever your question was, the answer was going to be "There's always trouble!" Usually the trouble has to do with owning more birds than your spouse would prefer. In your situation, I think that it doesn't matter what the gender is of the odd one out. The large group of the other gender is going to fight over it. The nice thing about cocks is that if there aren't enough females to go around, they will be happy to buddy up with another male. But there will still be some posturing over which males get the females, and with only one female, I think it is likely to cause some trouble.

Hi, welcome to the forum. Where in Spain is Alicante?

BJ, she did say how old the budgie's chicks are. I'd say it's worth a try, because it is VERY difficult to hand feed a chick from hatching. Much harder than trying to hand feed an older chick. If the budgie mother can keep it alive for a week or two, then you could take over yourself if the ringneck chick became too much for a budgie.

Hi Babychat, Forum rules prohibit threads about support and maintenance of animals other than budgies. But there is a great forum for finches called FINCHforum, and they have experts on finches over there that can help you with your questions. No one on here seems to have the answers to your questions anyway. Sorry about that. But do try the FINCHforum. You will really like it.

The guy on the right here seems to have bluish grey feet. I have very few who actually have dark blue-grey feet like your opaline male. Most of mine either have pink feet or a pinkish color with a grey cast to it. Or else light grey. I once made a big chart that listed each bird and their foot color, along with their beak color and all their mutations and known splits. Most of them fit in with what you have said above, although there were some that didn't fit. An odd thing I noticed was that my spangles seemed to be the only ones with the really dark blue-grey feet, regardless of their other mutations. But I don't have enough spangles to draw any conclusions from that. And I haven't checked that chart in a long time to see whether anything changed, or what the new birds I've gotten since then have.

1/2 inch or 5/8 inch is recommended. I'm not sure what that is in centimeters.. I've gone as high as 3/4" before, but then a baby was able to get out of that, which I figure was because the baby was smaller at that age. So I don't put babies in that cage anymore. My guess is that your Benny will remember that bad experience, and not try it again. But to be on the safe side, you should check your bar space, and consider replacing the cage if it is wider than 5/8". Aren't bush budgies considered to be smaller? So maybe the bars are just too wide for him.

PJI's advice is good. For your pair in a breeding cage, one week isn't very long at all, so just be patient for a few more weeks and see what happens. There are some hens who seem to keep a thick crusty brown cere their whole lives. It makes it hard to tell when they are in good breeding condition, but I haven't had any problem breeding the ones I have like that. But it does seem like you should be able to tell by their behavior and their interest (or lack thereof) in the nest box if they are going into condition, even if their ceres aren't right.

Well, it's really hard to tell from the small photos. I zoomed my page in to make them bigger, but it's still a little unclear. I'd say the green one is a boy, but the other one is too hard to tell from that photo.

I was thinking the same thing as Hilly when I saw his bald shoulders. I have two budgies with similar patches, which I was told was a sign of the mother plucking. Mine are three years old now, and never did grow normal feathers in those spots, but otherwise they are fine. It's a good thing you have given him a low perch and a heat lamp. It looks like he is molting, too, which adds its own stress, so the warmth and extra nutrition from eggs will probably help a lot. Molting supplements and breeding supplements are good. You can buy "egg biscuit" at pet stores, but you can also make your own. If you search in the Food/Nutrition section of the forum, you will find lots of recipes for different things you can make. I'm sure there are several versions of homemade egg and biscuit recipes. In one of your other threads, you asked if he could be around 8 weeks old. I would have to say that if he experienced nutritional difficiencies in the nest, his growth could be stunted, and he wouldn't be as far advanced as his actual age. They sometimes do go into their first molt at 8 weeks, but it's a lot more common for it to happen between 3 and 5 months. His age is really only important for knowing when he's old enough to breed, which is usually around one year old. But in his case, I'd advise letting him get even older, since he has had a rough start. And also watching his progress, because if it's not actually a nutritional problem, but maybe some type of birth defect, you wouldn't want to pass that on to the chicks. But it sure sounds like he's a sweetie, and making great progress in taming, so maybe he's just destined to be a great pet. On the other hand, if he does grow up strong and healthy, that temperament could be a good thing to pass on to his chicks.

Well, once you buy in a blue bird and breed it to your wild types, the offspring are no longer considered bush budgies.

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

Sorry nobody answered your question sooner. After five days, the chick is probably healed by now, right? I would not have put anything on it, just watched it. But maybe other people would put ointment on. I think that would just make a mess, and the mother would try to pick it off. Do you have any idea what caused the cut?

Oh Funky, that is too bad! I thought your breeding cage was indoors?

BJ might mean clipping the food inside the cage,near the top. Setting it on the top of the cage would work if the cage top is flat enough, as long as they can reach through the bars to nibble at the treat. But I think you could probably clip the treat anywhere you want. The point is for them to enjoy a treat while you watch from nearby, so they associate you with the treat, but that you don't scare them away from eating it. It sounds like Gracie is further along in her progress than George, so you may need to back up a step or two for him. By the way, did you quarantine the two new birds before you introduced them to the cage?

Yeah, hawks are big, and could probably do some damage. One time my son was sitting near the window, and he looked up in time to see a hawk slam a smaller bird into the screen and window. And then fly off with its dead meal. Amazing. Of course, then we had to clean off the screen and window- gross! (Not to hijack Birdlove's thread, but the things wild birds can do if we put our pets outside is actually pertinent.) Also, when the sun shines in through our window glass, it is not beneficial to the birds. The glass filters out the necessary UV rays, so our birds aren't getting the full spectrum. The window needs to be open so that the sunlight is only blocked by the screen.

Yeah, I can't wait for more pics of them either. It's going to be another gorgeous clutch of yours, Robyn!

Well, the mother is definitely a spangle, but whether she's a normal one or a greywing one is hard to tell from that photo. Very likely normal. If all the males are greywings, then she has to be a normal black wing in order to produce a black winged chick. So you can expect more chicks with black wing markings in the future. If that never happens, then Speckles may have just been a darkly marked greywing.

No need to apologize, Jono. But I'll just move this to the "off topic" section. Good luck with your search!

10 days is too young. The norm is to wait unti as late as three weeks, but I found that by that age they were too close to fledging to bond with me or take to the formula. So I think two weeks is a good age.

Seriously, your name is Diana, too?! This is too much of a coincidence! Yes, tame budgies breed just fine. One of my best fathers was a hand fed chick, and is so far the only bird that I've ever gotten to talk. (Well, he just said a few words when he was new in his quarantine cage, and once he got moved in with the rest of the flock, he quit.) But he still likes me and comes over to the bars for attention, even when he's in a breeding cage. Doesn't stop him, he's given me 18 chicks so far, and counting. (He has eggs at the moment.) -Diana from Michigan (aka Finnie)

I agree with Nerwen on their age- pretty young. If they were much older, the iris rings would be whiter and more distinct. If you think Bravo is a little older, it can't be by much. They vary a little at when they reach their first molt, and how long it takes them to grow up, so even clutch mates can look "older" and "younger" than each other. They don't look like they're on their second molt to me. I've found that the first molt can go in fits and starts, and last a month or two. So six months for the older two seems about right. I think the others are even younger, because some of them still have bars down to their ceres. Yes, I would say Bravo is mauve. Possibly violet factored, but it's not supposed to be easy to see violet on a mauve. Your questions are not dumb at all.

Just curious as to how long you waited to see if the hen would feed the chick. Maybe she just needed more time. I agree with Hilly that if you are going to keep the parents and chick in the aviary, you need to at least remove the nosey hen. And if you can't remove all the rest of the birds, you might end up needing to remove each new nosey hen, one at a time, because I think other hens is what poses the most danger.

Hi Roseydoo, You keep tacking your questions onto the ends of other people's threads, and ancient ones, at that. I have moved your question and Robyn's answer out of Daz' thread on Breeding calendars, and put it in with this one. That's why it appears twice, above. When you want to ask a question of your own, please start your own topic. If you want to add comments in other people's threads, that is fine, but try to make it pertinent to what the other person is talking about, and not hijack their topic. Thanks, Finnie P.S., I hope you are able to solve your mouse problem.

Hi, welcome to the forum! You can post photos right here in this thread, too. We would love it! I used to live near Kalamazoo, so we are practically neighbors! (Assuming there is no other Muskegon than in Michigan, lol.) I think it's great that you are reading up and learning what to do before you find yourself with eggs and chicks and unforseen problems. There are quite a few problems that can crop up, so when you are prepared for what can happen, it is easier to deal with it. Are George and Gracie show or pet type budgies? (The seller would have called them English or American.) If they are pet types, then you won't have to worry much about whether they will breed for you when the time comes. Sometimes the show types can be a little trickier and require more coddling. To tell a grey factor budgie from an olive green, check to see whether the tail is blue or black. Grey factor will have black tail, olive green will have blue. The cheek patches on the two are different, as well. There are a lot of good bird product websites in the U.S. If you want something specific, just Google the name of it, and several sites should come up. Some of my favorite sites are New Hampshire Bird Supply, Foy's Pigeons, Glamgouldians.com and ladygouldianfinch.com. When you are ready to buy leg rings, try L&M leg bands. I don't think you can order straight from their website yet, just through mail and telephone. But the lady who answers the phone is nice and very helpful. They will warm up to toys and veggies after they settle in for a while. I think show types are known for not being very playful. It can take a long time for them to decide to try veggies. Just keep trying them, and vary the way you serve them. One way is to make a "perch" out of a carrot or stick of sweet potato. Eventually they will chew on it, and discover that it is edible. (Not the same one, you of course have to replace the veggies before they go bad.) Oh, and after reading the ingredients labels on a lot of bags of seed, I prefer to give my budgies a good mix for finches, not budgies. The budgie mixes always seem to have a lot of added junk, that the birds just kick out of the way and waste. Finch mixes are usually just seeds, and they have a larger variety of what seeds they contain. Good luck. NIce to have you here. Hope you enjoy your foray into the world of bird breeding. You realize that budgies are just the beginning, right? Beware of the slippery slope!

Hm, when you say the vet could tell by looking into the eyes, was she using an opthalmoscope thingy? Maybe she could see some kind of structure inside the eye to indicate old age? Because I thought that once a budgie becomes an adult, you can no longer tell its age by its eyes. (We all look for lack of iris rings to tell the babies.) The oldest budgie I have is at least 7. His age is unknown, because the people I got him from found him loose in their front yard, and that was 7 years ago. I've had him one year. He doesn't look any different than my other budgies, except he's a little "rough" looking, and molts hit him hard. My next oldest is 4, and he's starting to look a little rough to me too. So I apparently can't tell the difference between a 4 year old and a 7 year old. Maybe someone will come along who has had one live into their teens, and they might know if they go through any "old age stages". Mabye she's as young as 5, and you and the lovebird will have her around for quite a while yet.