Finnie

This is why I won't even join Facebook. (Not to protect an aviary- I don't have one) But because I sell my birds on line, and I don't want my Website name connected on line to my real name, cuz people can google your name and find your address. Everyone I've sold a bird to has been a nice person, but I don't tell them where I live until I feel comfortable first. I've been told I can make up a fake name on FB, but I just don't want to deal with it. I'll be glad to see you back around here, Nubbly. What little time I can manage to steal to come on here myself.

Funky, you are right, some experienced breeders who have a great cock that they need to use over several hens will move him back and forth between cages. I would leave that until you are a little more experienced. It's not much help to you anyway, if the cock isn't super wonderful. You would just end up with a lot of chicks who are brothers and sisters, and who you can't breed to each other later.

In order for you to get any ino chicks (which you have) the male must be carrying it, so your male is split to ino. If only the mother had the ino gene, then you would get male chicks split for albino, but no visuals. Since both of your parents have the ino gene, then your ino chicks can be any gender, and you will have to tell by the color of their ceres. Some people can tell very early, and other people have to wait until it's more obvious. Green is dominant over blue, so if you don't see any green in the parents, they do not have it, and neither will the chicks. Perhaps the green on the chick's wings is a stain. When you get your computer working again, try to post a photos of it for us. With blue based parents, the only way I can figure you can get any yellow at all would be if one parent was a double factor yf1. If that was the case, then ALL of the chicks would be single factor yf1, and they would all have to have yellow. So a photo of the green you are seeing might clear this up.

Try the link in my signature to see if it will help you with Photobucket. Photos can be added from on line photo hosting websites, not straight from your computer. Hope this helps. If not, let us know where your trouble is coming from, and maybe we can help.

For a large group in an aviary, I think you are better off having extra males, not extra females. It's the females that will fight over males, if they don't each have a mate available, but the males will buddy up with same sex, and not care if there are enough females. However, if you have a lot of males and only a few hens, that's not good either. In a large cage kept in a house, I would try to even it out, since with smaller numbers, they have less choices of who to make best friends with. And not to overcrowd. Hens especially get crabby when they are crowded. For breeding, yes, only one male and one female in each breeding cage.

Both males.

I'm sorry Budgieperson, I'm technically challenged- I don't know what a hyperlink is.

Well, Robyn, your male bird that had the iodine issue is what I was thinking of when I read the beginning of SunshinE's question. Sunshine, I think he's a boy, and that he has developed some kind of health issue. It could be iodine deficiency like Robyn's, or it could be testicular cancer or hormone imbalance. I'm pretty sure there are threads around here somewhere that could help you, if you do a search.

As soon as I give a pair a box, I always tap on the side of the box and open it for a quick peek twice every day, morning and night. This gets them used to my routine, so that when there are chicks to check on, the parents already know that I will be poking around at those times. It's okay if the hen stays in the box. The tapping is to give her a warning, and usually they will fly out before I get the door open. I open the door slowly, in case they are still in there, and I make sure they don't fly out towards me instead of the cage. It's a good idea to shoo the hen out of the box anyway, because one of the things you want to be checking for is that the hen isn't egg bound. I like to make sure she can fly and move normally, and while she's out, I make sure she looks healthy, and check for signs of egg bum, if an egg is due. Other people on here have mentioned having hens who defend their chicks or eggs, and won't leave the box, and who bite like heck. The only one I ever had that did that was actually quite gentle to my hand. I think she was making a token effort at defence.

This is what I was thinking, too. If you had a drain, wouldn't that be an inlet for mice or snakes to find their way in? Well, if you kept it plugged like Dillster suggested, when you weren't hosing it down, then I guess they wouldn't, would they? Don't forget, that even with a concrete floor, you birds can still get coccidiosis in wet weather. But I think the concrete would be easier to clean, to minimize the danger.

Three chicks is great news, Funky! I hope you will post some photos soon. Baby chicks are fun to watch as they develop. It all happens so fast.

Hi Bad Hair Day. I think you might be misunderstanding the green-yellowface-blue series. Yellowface is only dominant to blue. It is recessive to green. All three lay on the same locus of the chromosome, so a bird can only have two copies, and they can be any two of the following: Green, Goldenface, yellowface mutant two, yellowface mutant one, or blue. So if a green bird also has a yellowface gene, then it is green/yellowface (green split to yellowface) and is a green bird. Green is completely dominant to yellowface, so you cannot see both mutations at once. But it is possible for some yellowfaces to be very dark and look like greens, so maybe that is what Lion has. I think Jodie has the mutations of the 5 chicks right, except to remove the word "clearflight" from the first dominant pied chick (the sky blue), and I think that one of the two yellowfaces is a regular greywing, but the other one is a dilute. I think both of the yellowface chicks are cobalts, not violets, although violet can be hard to distinguish in photos. Good job, Jodie. Another interesting thing I notice, is that they all appear to be boys. The normal greywing sky blue is the only one I see that looks like it could potentially be a girl.

I had been thinking along the lines of fighting, but come to think of it, I have seen a lot of times when one bird, and it's usually my hens, will just pull on the tail of another nearby bird, just for the heck of it. Maybe this one just developed a bad habit, where she liked to pull on wings.

Wow, Rashu. You're just not getting much response to this. Sorry about that. I think that because both the cinnamon wing gene and the greywing gene reduce the amount of melanin, then the markings on the flight feathers would get lightened up a whole lot, and yes, they might look almost clear. I once read that if you combine cinnamon and greywing and also add in opaline, then it makes a bird with no wing markings at all. I have been trying to breed such a bird for a couple of years now, and I have produced two. I am a little disappointed to report that they both do still have faint grey wing markings. In fact, the only reason I am sure that they are a combination of cinnamon and greywing is because they were born with plum eyes. Have you asked the breeder of this bird if he knows what color eyes she was born with? (Don't be surprised if it wasn't something he checked on when she hatched.) She could be a dilute with no cinnamon at all, and I don't think there is any way to know the difference from photos, if that is what your are trying to base your purchase decision on.

Hi Birdlove, welcome to the forum. Sorry I didn't see this sooner, I might not have been so surprised when you posted in my thread. It's really great to see photos of Allen. That's a really great cage you have for him. Did you notice that your username is almost the same as our other birdluv?

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!! Just yesterday I was outside weeding, and it made me think of your parents' blueberry farm business, and I wondered how Allen was doing!! I am so glad to hear that you still have him, and that you still love him. By the way, when I mentioned Blondie and Dagwood above, Blondie was your Allen.

I would not put a new male into the cage with the mother and the chicks. If you are really sure that the mother is not feeding them, and you have an experienced father that you think would take over and feed them, that could be a possibility. BUT, I would remove the mother first, and be ready to keep an eye on the new male, to make sure he is kind to the chicks. It is possible that he might not go into the box to feed them, so if they are old enough, and it sounds like they might be, then you can remove the nest, and put the chicks into a shelter on the floor of the cage. Put seed and millet in there with the chicks, and if they venture out and beg from the new male, then he may be inspired to feed them. If not, then at three weeks and beyond, the chicks may be old enough to learn to eat on their own. You can try to give them supplemental hand feedings of formula, but I have found that by that age, they refuse to take it. But I have had chicks that age who refused to eat formula, and who's "foster dad" didn't really pick up on feeding them either. I thought they would starve, but they were close enough to weaning, that they learned to eat on their own. At least with the presence of a "foster dad", they can watch him eat, and learn to copy him. I think that if you put a new male in with the mother, they will become interested in raising a family of their own together, and the old chicks may be in jeopardy, since they will now be seen as intruders. It's been 6 days since you posted this question. What did you end up doing, and how are the chicks taking it? Good luck, Finnie

Well, if it turned out to be a treat they loved, then it would make a very useful training aid. Sparingly, of course, because over use might make it less special, and less effective. Bird Junky uses pound cake for training. A tiny bit's probably not going to hurt.

Thank you for the nice compliments. I couldn't get Photobucket to upload any more for me yesterday, so I didn't add these photos, but here is my newest addition, a Rosy Bourke Parakeet: I won't know if it's a boy or girl until I get the results back from the DNA test, but his/ her name will be either Pixel or Pixie.

Hi Lion. How sure are you about those parents? Because a green bird can't be split to both yellowface and blue. They sure are gorgeous chicks, though.

What's common here in the U.S. is different than what's common over there in Australia, but here, the Dark Eyed Clear is in all the pet stores. There are no DF spangles in pet stores, but I did know a breeder who had one. Well, and it is different in different parts of the US, too. I used to say there were no single factor spangles in our stores, but then one day I was doing the rounds, and I found three stores that had one or two each! Maybe if I keep saying there are no DFs, I will make some appear. If your white hen doesn't have iris rings, then my bet is she's a dark eyed clear, since her eyes are black. But I did once have a lutino male whose eyes were so dark, that I didn't believe he was lutino. Until a buch of red eyed chicks hatched.

Hi JB! Long time, no see! I think I had you in mind when I said I miss the funny ones.

Rashu, you are right that cinnamons have pink feet. But I have plenty of greywings with no cinnamon at all that also have pink feet. Recessive pieds, inos, and the other pieds can also have pink feet. Anything that reduces their melanin can make their feet pink.

Between new lighting in my bird room, and my husband's new camera, I got some photos recently that I actually thought turned out pretty good. So I'll share a few. Top: Angus, Finnie's recessive pied boy, and bottom: Daniel, the son of my Mystery bird, from 2011 This is one of my favorite boys. I hand fed two boys last fall that I called Blondie and Dagwood. Blondie got sold, but I kept Dagwood. He is great. Even grown up and in with all the other boys, he still comes to me and lands on my hand. okay, we seem to have a problem with Photobucket here. (Besides that they changed themselves again, and it's harder to navigate. ) My upload size setting got increased without my knowledge, and it is not letting me change it back to 480x640. So I hope the auto-resize is working, and I apologize for the giant photos. It's either that, or I just give up. Seriously, now they are giving me tiny ones?! All right, back to giant. Teagan and Donovan Dugan and Finnie. This will be Finnie's last clutch. She has two eggs so far. I'm pretty sure Dugan is a dilute, so barring any cinnamon or recessive pied, he should be a better match for sorting Finnie's genes out than Flynn was last year. There was too much cinnamon and recessive pied in last year's clutch. Dugan came from a pet store, so fingers crossed he's not split to stuff. This is Flower, molting. Two of Flower's clutchmates, Kenneth and Bambi The future of my lacewing line, baby Adrian. I plan to breed him to Flower when he grows up, to get males split to both ino and cinnamon. I could start my lacewing line right now with Bambi, if I hadn't gotten stupid last spring and sold my creamino chick, Popcorn. So mad at myself. But at the time I just didn't think I should try to work on lacewings, and I needed to reduce my numbers. Here's my Mystery boy! He's waiting his turn to get bred to a cinnamon hen who I hope is not split to greywing. That's to test him for cinnamon, and hope that the greywing doesn't get in the way. Next is Quinn, son of Teagan, above, and Kevin, one of my spangles. He's how I figured out that Kevin is split to dilute, and Teagan is split to yellow face mutant two. He had a twin brother, Flynn, but Flynn got sold. This is Seaweed and Thumper, who are both split to recessive pied. I'm hoping they will give me yf2 sky blue recessive pied spangles, just like the one Neville won Budgie of the Month with, back in Oct. 2010. I loved that bird, and I've been working on breeding one of my own, ever since. (Thumper is a sister to Flower and Bambi, in case you're noticing a trend here. ) This is my long awaited "Goal #1" bird, a sky blue cinnamon opaline greywing. I have a thread about that somewhere, that I need to update, if I get the chance. Now I want to try to make one in cobalt or violet. This girl's name is Winnie. She's a daughter of Quinn, and a grand-daughter of Finnie. And here's my beautiful Dagwood, again, with Winford on his right. Winford is Winnie's future mate. He is a cobalt opaline greywing, split to cinnamon. That's it for the budgies this time around. I'll leave you with one of my new Gouldian Finches, Pinhead Pete. (Hee hee, he went through a really heavy molt after I got him )

Wow. I think this may be a sign of the times. The British Budgie forum got closed down about a year ago, and I've seen a couple of different new forums that those people tried to start up, and by the looks of them, they are slow as well. I'm not on Facebook, but I have heard that there is a Show Budgie group on there. I wonder if that's where everybody's gone to. Like Nubbly and Birdluv have already mentioned, sometimes we get busy with real life, and don't have as much time to spend in the virtual world. I'm quite guilty, myself. I've had a lot to juggle lately, and BBC was one of the first things that got dropped. I got a chance to log on a couple of weeks ago, but didn't have time to look around much. Even today, I don't really have the time to be on here. But last night before bed, I was trying to hurry with some housekeeping on my own website, which included checking if my links were still working. When I checked the link to here, this thread jumped out at me, in the "In Memorium section." I felt really bad, and it kept me awake a lot of the night. (By The Way Dillster, I got a chuckle out of the placement of this thread in the Memorials section, and we don't just go around deleting people for speaking their mind. You'd have to be a serious trouble maker to even get a warning, and even the ones where we've had to do that, have gotten plenty of chances to keep their accounts. I've never seen it go beyond warnings.) Matt, I think that upgrading the forum might be an attempt to freshen it up and get new members, but I suspect it has the opposite effect. I know there were some people who dropped out after the Oct 2010 upgrade, when the changes made it dificult for some to navigate around here. This last upgrade is really not to my liking, but I really haven't had the time to try to get used to it. Maybe I will. But yeah, I would say that most of the people I made friends with when I first joined in '09 are long gone. It's not the same without some of their humor. (I might make attempts, but I am known as being humorly challenged.) okay, enough of that. I came on today to do a photo thread, to try to help a little. Upload to Photobucket is finally ready, so off I go.