Finnie

Natural branches in the U.S. that I have used successfully include maple and birch, redwood, pear. Stay away from Mulberry, as it has a laxative effect. I also like to have a variety of man made perch textures. Calcium and cement perches are good. They like to chew those, so it can be a nutrient supplement and a beak conditioner as well. As long as you don't put them in the spot where your birds want to sit the most, even rough texture perches are safe for their feet. (They can spend most of their time on the wooden perches, so a little time spent on rough ones is fine.) I often put plastic perches with a sand coating right in front of the drinkers. That way the birds aren't sitting there all day long, but they do land on them briefly when they drink, so it is a nice compromise to get them wearing down their nails tiny bits at a time. I don't like to trim black nails, either! But actually, with my budgies, their nails never do need trimming.

It takes about 10 days for an egg to develop and be laid. When you observed your previous hen lay an egg 5 days after mating, you most likely just didn't see the mating that took place 10 days prior to the laying.

Glad to have you back, Jodie! To tell between grey and mauve, we usually look at cheek patch and tail color. Since her tail is pied out, that leaves only cheek patch. A grey ought to have silver grey, dark cheek patches, whereas a mauve ought to have the regular violet color, darkened up quite a bit. So a very dark purply/blue. It's a little hard for me to be able to tell in the photos. What do you think her cheek patches look like? You are right about the opaline, and probably about the yf2 as well. My yf2s aren't usually that pale, so maybe you have a combination of two of the yellow face mutations. Combinations of the different yellow face mutations can affect how much yellow bleeds into the rest of the body, so that is a possibility for you.

Hi, welcome to the forum. It's great that you are taking the time to look up the best way to construct these boxes. The person who advised you to NOT make doubles and triples is the correct person! If you look around on the forum for threads about colony breeding, you will find out that breeding more than one pair of budgies in the same enclosure can be fraught with problems. Some of the ways they advise to get around these problems is to make sure that each breeding box is at least two feet apart. Therefore, connecting them together as in a double or triple box prevents you from having that kind of distance. I'll try to find some links to some colony breeding threads for you. On a side note, the person who advised having the compartments arranged vertically is even doubly wrong, because budgies (most birds) prefer to be higher up. So there is always competition for the highest box in an aviary. None of the birds would want to choose a nest directly below another bird's nest. The usual advice is to not only space the boxes two feet apart, but to place them all at the same hight so that they all have the same advantage as far as that goes. Good luck with your box making endeavours. I think there are also threads on here about box style. Personally, I like boxes that have the door on the back, not the top. With two pieces of wood, so that the lower piece stays put to hold in the bedding and the chicks, while the top piece can be raised up a smidge for peeking in. But that is because I hang my boxes on the outside of the cage. I suppose in an aviary, there would not be access to the back of the box if it were attached to the wall. Here is a link to the FAQs page about colony breeding: http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/faqs/index.php?action=artikel&cat=8&id=146&artlang=en Here is a link to a pinned thread about colony breeding: http://forums.budgie...showtopic=28294 Hope these are helpful to you.

I agree with Robyn, although being from the U.S., I really couldn't advise about breeding conditions in Melbourne. I do know that putting them outside during the winter won't bring them into condition faster, you would need spring to come for that. It sounds like where you have them, with artificial light and heat would work better for winter breeding than outdoors would. But like Robyn said, having them in an outdoor flgiht would allow them to go into condition naturally when the seasons are right.

You are allowed to put up larger photos. I can't see the top bird real well to identify whether it's green or yellowface. And I can't tell whether the wings are black or some other shade. But it does appear to be opaline, at least I can see that much. The middle bird looks like an opaline olive green male. So then I'm assuming the bottom one must be a hen. It looks like opaline yellow face cobalt. Maybe yf2, but it's hard to tell from that photo. Their chicks will all be opalines. They will all be green, unless the male is split to yellowface or blue, in which case you will get some yellowface chicks. If both birds are split to blue, then you could get blue chicks.

Hi Rockii, welcome to the forum. I see you haven't got any responses to this, and it's been about three weeks. Sorry about that. It sounds like putting them back into the flights for a while will be a good idea. Their photos don't really look like they were in breeding condition. You might want to just wait a while, and when their ceres look better, then try to pair them up again. You don't have to apologize for questions and photos, that's what we are here for, and we love looking at photos of people's birds and aviaries anyway. I can move this to the breeding section for you.

Hi tasbreeder, welcome!

I'm leaning towards female. But yes, if it's still a baby, then you have to wait to see. okay, I see that you have two topics going on this same question, so I have merged them. That's why that second photo appears twice. If the bird is nine months old, then I would say male. If you don't know why the other bird died, then I would not put another bird in with the current one. S/he may be carrying something. You should quarantine any new birds you buy anyway, so you could get one now and keep it in a separate cage for a month. Use the quarantine period to make sure that both of them are healthy before introducing them to each other.

You can do some things to shake her up and give her the idea that she doesn't want babies at this time. But those things don't necessarily work. Still, it does't hurt to try them, and it's better for her if you can get her to stop. Give her longer nights and shorter days. Move her to a strange cage in a strange location, and/or rearrange the cage she is in. Take away anything she could conceivably lay eggs in, including feed cups and newspaper flooring. Taking away any newspaper also stops her from having something to shred for bedding. (Also take away any shredding toys she may have, since those will fuel her "make a nest" instincts. Decrease the quality of her diet. But not too much, since she has been depleting her nutritional reserves, and needs good food. Definitely keep giving her calcium-she needs it! But a super-abundant diet is one of the triggers that it is time to raise a family. Birds in the wild breed when food is abundant for raising chicks. Finch breeders will often give their birds what they call an "austerity diet" during the non-breeding part of the year. Then use the increase to a breeding diet as a trigger to bring their birds into condition. But other people feed the same diet year round, so it's hard to advise about diet as a means to stop her from laying. You should let us know if any of those ideas work. It's really just hearsay unless someone can give feedback on whether it works.

The color in the photos is a little funny, and I actually thought Shazza was a yellowface herself, and not a green. But Nick must be right, or else you would have questioned him calling her a green. It must be the grey factor that makes the photo look different. If you want to work with the yellow face mutant two, you don't need to worry about double factor removing the yellow. In YF2 you reallly can't telll a single factor from a double factor. It's when you combine the YF2 with goldenface or YF1 that you will see incomplete dominance affecting the outcome. For the most part, just stay away from YF1, and you won't have any problem with your YF2s. Also, the teal color effect comes about when there is no dark factor. A dark factor will make a more green colored bird, albeit not as green as a normal green. With my yf2 cobalts, I have found that the color molts in fairly patchy, leaving some areas blue, some teal and some green. It's a nice effect, but not the same as an overall "seafoam" bird. So I would say to select birds with 0 dark factors, or failing that, one but not two dark factors. I would also stay away from grey factor, since that masks how many dark factors a bird has. (Although a grey YF2 can be a unique and beautiful bird.) If you only have one yf2 bird to use, then choose blue for the other bird.

Hi Faye, Welcome to the forum. It's normal for the male to take on more of the feeding activities once the chicks get to this age. But not so normal for the parents to be at odds with each other. As long as they are working things out, I would say to just keep an eye on them. If for some reason the male seems to be a danger to the female, then you could easily remove her from the breeding cage and let the father finish rearing the chicks. What is more common is for there to be some kind of aggression (not always) at the time the chicks start to fledge. Because at that time, one or more of the parents gets the idea that they want to start a second round, and they see the first round chicks as being in the way. So then you have to watch out for one of the parents attacking the chicks. I've also seen it where one parent wants to start a second round, but the other doesn't. So then the two of them may start to fight. Or they may fight if one parent is defending the chicks from the other parent. But most of the time everyone does the job they are supposed to do, and they often transition very smoothly to the next round, even with the older chicks still present. So hopefully what you witnessed is just a temporary squabble. But always be alert, like you have been, and if one of the birds seems to be in danger, then you have to decide whether to take the aggressor out, or else the victim, depending on the situation. Edit: I Forgot to say that fledging is around four weeks of age.

Hi Fee wee, welcome to the forum! There is a lot of information on here that you can read to find out everything you would want to know about breeding budgies. Check out the articles on the FAQs page, and also look for pinned topics in each section of the forum. Sounds like you are off to a good start, what with having experienced breeders in the family. I agree, you can't really make back what you put into this hobby moneywise, but it is definitely a unique and fun endeavour. Good luck, have fun, and keep us posted on your progress!

So Splotch turns out to be split to cinnamon, as well as all the other things you have found out about him! It's possible for a recessive (and a sex-linked recessive) gene to stay hidden and be passed from one generation to the next without appearing visually. But it's kind of unusual for the sex-linked ones not to show up, since any male that is split to a sex-linked gene will throw 50% visual daughters. So Splotch's father must have been split to ino and cinnamon, and passed both of them on the same X chromosome to Splotch. Which means that it will be more likely for Splotch to throw a lacewing daughter than to throw simply an ino daughter or simply a cinnamon daughter. Because the crossover would have to occur in order to separate them from being on the same X chromosome. How many female offspring did you get from Splotch's father? If not very many, that might explain why you didn't know the cinnamon was there. Do you know what the parentage was of Splotch's father? Congratulations on the lacewing chick!

I think it's a boy. It's definitely a recessive pied, and therefore won't get any iris rings. Recessive pieds don't necessarily have bars going to their ceres, as Flip pointed out. They also tend to retain those bars into adulthood, if they do have them. So you really can't tell age on a recessive pied, unless it's a hen with a brown cere, and then you only know that it has gone through at least one molt. If this one is still a baby, then there is the potential for the bit of white on it's cere to expand. But many males have some white anyway. So you will have to wait until time passes, and if it doesn't develop the brown cere of a female in condition, then you will know it's a male.

Just thought I would point something out while we are on the topic, since other people looking for advice may search this. You wrote: "...the other is smaller, probably housing two birds at the maximum - better housing only one." I always tell people that if a cage is too small for two budgies, then it is also too small for one budgie. Even a single budgie needs space. I feel sorry for birds crammed into shrimpy half-size cages simply because "there is only one bird". Or people put a finch in a tiny cage because it is a tiny bird. Poor finch! I think four birds could be happy in your cage, if they are the right four. But having a backup cage to separate them is a great idea, and keeping them separate altogether is even better. (Especially during the quarantine period.) I think it's great that your father wants birds, too. It's hard to be the only bird lover in a family.

As I read your question, I also thought of Birdluv's thread about taming her birds. It is a good one. Just remember that taming two together is a lot more work, and you have to be consistent. You have to work with them every day, and not just on weekends. So many times people give up on taming their bird because they don't know why it isn't making progress. They are surprised when I tell them that if they don't work with it every day, it will regress. (That's when I can tell that they were only working with it on weekends!)

It is a male. That's actually just lighter blue around the nostrils, not white.

Body color looks washed out to me. Maybe post a photo of its abdomen after it finishes feathering out.

Wouldn't a grey have a black tail, and a mauve have a very dark blue tail? I suppose that might be hard to tell apart. And I think the grey cheek patch of a grey could also be called a dark slate blue? I agree that the bird looks grey. Very pretty birds. You folks in Australia have a lot better access to lacewings than we do here in the U.S. I know of a few people who breed them, but they are far away and expensive (and only show types). I am working on breeding my own in the pet type version, by pairing cinnamons with inos. Oh, and also, welcome to the forum, varified!

Hard, small, round black poops are what's normal. But what's normal for one bird can be different than what's normal for another bird. If they drink a lot of water or eat a lot of veggies, that could make their stools on the wet side. Do they have any other symptoms? Maybe you could post a photo of these watery stools so we can see what we think of them.

Sounds like trefto has covered all the bases for you. I hope they bond for you soon.

That does look amazing! And I agree about needing a smaller door. Maybe they have one on the side that we can't see.

Hi Kaj, I started to answer this last night, but then I got a phone call and never got back to it. okay, I will now add more in Purple.

How's he doing now? It could be just some kind of irritant. A wet tea bag placed over the eye for a bit can help to soothe it and clear up minor problems. Of course, that would not help if he required treating for some actual ailment.