Finnie

Hi Finnie, It may be an old thread but new people join all the time and may learn something from them, who reads dates first anyway l.o.l (like reading instructions). Only when all else fails. Oh sure, I agree. Old threads are great for learning stuff. But when they start asking for details of the diet, it might be good to point out that that owner might not even be around any more to give an answer.

I think if you wanted to try putting the chick back with the mother, you should keep an eye on whether she accepts it or not. I was going to say that if you've had it away from her for a few days, she might not take it back, but then I thought about how people foster chicks to other mothers, and that works out okay, So maybe she will take it in and feed it. Kaytee Exact is fine to feed it, but recently Kaytee recalled some of their formula, so you will want to check the use by date on your package to make sure yours isn't included in the recall. If not, it should be fine. Here is the topic: http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/index.php?showtopic=31844 Adding ground up seed is unnecessary, hand rearing formula is designed to be complete. The chick will learn to eat seed when it gets big enough to nibble and peck at things. If you put it back in the nest, you will want to make sure the mother feeds it, and also that it stays in the huddle with the other chicks for warmth, and not pushed to the side or thrown out of the box, Don't worry about the larger chicks squashing it. In larger clutches, there is always a big size difference, and the smallest ones always make their way to the bottom of the pile. That must be the way it works best, and they don't get smashed. Good luck!

I'm guessing that you might not pluck him out of the air, he might already be in the net? Or maybe in your hand, and you just make it look like he was in the net.

Hi Woody and gang, welcome to the forum! Kaz has given you great advice. I hope you read up on all of the colony breeding info. A long time ago, colony breeding used to be recommended as the "Thing to do", and I even have books explaining how to aviary breed multiple species. (Really OLD books, and I shudder at some of their suggestions!) And there are still a lot of people who colony breed and say it's fine. But from all the reading I have done, I definitely get the impression that colony breeding will eventually lead to bloodshed and heartache. Anyway, I hope you have a lot of fun with your birds. I think people who live in a climate where outdoor aviaries are possible are lucky. Oh, and I can't help wondering just how old is your dad, anyway? I have a 26 year old daughter, and I don't especially consider MYSELF to be all that old.......

I had a similar situation once, where the mother fed the first two chicks just fine, but wouldn't care at all for any of the subsequent hatchlings. And each one died, except for the last one that I took away, like you have done, and hand raised it myself. Advice I was given in a phone conference with an Avian vet was that most likely, the parents didn't feel they could "handle" a larger clutch than just the two, and so the first two were well cared for, but none of the others. Supplement feeding the younger chicks didn't save them, because the mother just wasn't participating. She could have been pushing them aside. I know that she actually threw the youngest one out of the box, and I found it on the floor of the cage. That's when I decided to take it myself. This might not apply to your case, but who knows? As far as raising the chick on your own, the sleep deprivation can be pretty bad in the beginning. But after a few days, you should be able to stretch out the night feedings to four or five hours. (I found this out because I accidently overslept once, and the chick was fine.) I'm not sure exactly when you can eliminate night feeds, but I know that by two weeks of age they can go 12 hours.

Hi! Welcome to the forum. We might be able to help you with the genders of your budgies. Do you have photos?

Here is my take on your situation. Maybe the reason the parents are not feeding it wasn't due to its failure to ask for food, but rather from their decision to reject it, owing to it having some sort of defect. I'm not saying this is a certainty, just another possibility. Both scenarios are likely. I think that once a chick is too far gone, for whatever the reason, they stop asking for and accepting any food. If it won't eat, there is nothing you can do to save it. You can try tube feeding it directly to the crop, but by the looks of the chick, it might be too little, too late. It's nice that you have tried to save it, but I hope you don't feel too bad, because there are occasionally ones that just aren't going to make it. I forgot to ask, are the parents raising the rest of the chicks fine, and the problem is limited to just this chick?

I agree. This seems like a case where they shouldn't be getting away with this. It's highly unlikely that this shop is going to inform any buyers that these budgies need special care, and are short lived. An informed buyer wouldn't pay that price. So these Mops are being doomed to go to an unsuspecting person who won't know that they have to go the extra yards, just to give them any decency in their short lives.

Hey BJ and Flip, maybe you could take this to the PM system, instead of hijacking newbudgiowner's thread.

Hi Zingo. There probably isn't a lot of knowledge out there about feeding budgies tea, or else you might have gotten some responses to your question. I know that sometimes we use a wet tea bag as a compress over a budgies eye, if it is swollen. That seems to help them. But I don't know anything about feeding it to them, or how much. Is your budgies vet an actual avian vet? Because if so, then I would follow her advice.

Hi Penny. I'm very sorry for your loss. It doesn't sound like it was due to anything you did, or even like he was sick at all. Just one of those sudden, unexplained deaths. Try not to beat yourself up, although I know it's hard when you feel so sad about it. At least you can console yourself that you were there and tried to help him. On a normal night, you would have just woke up in the morning after it was all over, and it would still have been just as unexplainable. I do feel bad for you loss, though.

Hey folks, just in case you didn't notice, this thread is two years old....

I know of a website where you can buy bird products, called Lady Gouldian Finch.com. That might be a good starting place. http://www.ladygouldianfinch.com/index.php Oh, and this should probably go in the Off Topic Forum, so I'll move it for you.

I don't have anything scientific to add, but just this anecdotal tale. Some customers of mine were telling me about their previous budgies. All of them lived into their teens. Except for their last one, which only lived to be about seven. They were speculating that the last one might have died younger because it had lived its life near the television. (But I guess the other ones hadn't). So they thought that over time, something from the TV might have had an effect on their bird. Now, that's total speculation, and probably not true, but if it were, it took seven years of builiding up before it killed the bird. I agree with you that your case sounds like too much of a coincidence. Reading it, I thought that whatever it was, your family would be exposed to it as well. You read stories about towns and neighborhoods that are contaminated in some way causing higher than normal incidences of cancers. It is often blamed on the water, or on massive overhead power lines. There is also something called "new building syndrome" where formaldehyde is released from building materials. I don't know if any of that applies to your situation, but it sounds like a good idea that you moved away.

Ohh, now I see where I got it wrong. The TCB gene is actually an allelomorph of the ino gene. I was thinking it was a separate mutation. Sorry for my incorrect info up above.

Yes that's the Man.The other one is John Scoble,I think that's his surname.???? Wow! That sounds like a great location to be taking up budgie breeding in! Welcome to the forum.

I believe this is correct. The male chicks will have one of their X chromosomes with the lacewing (cinnamon and ino genes) on it, and the other X chromosome with the TCB on it. So when they in turn breed, half of their hen chicks will be lacewings, and the other half would be TCBs. That sounds like a useful cock to me, if I were breeding both of those varieties. (But you won't know what the boy chicks from such a cock are split to until you breed them.)

Ratzy, are you feeding her hand rearing formula? Because if so, I wouldn't add any extra calcium. It is already formulated with the proper amount. Too much calcium is known to cause deformities, just as too little calcium is. Also, I think your chances of raising her successfully are very good. You already have the midnight feedings figured out, and to me, that was the hardest part when I had to hand raise some day old chicks. That and keeping the warmth constant. I used a 5 gallon fish tank for a brooder, with a heating pad underneath half of it, and a towel covering the whole thing for darkness. The hard part was finding a heat pad for sale that didn't have an auto shut-off mechanism, because turning it back on every two hours was a major pain! The advantage of a heat pad over a heat lamp is that the baby can be in darkness, which is more like how it would be in a nest box. I line my brooders with some newspaper in the bottom, and several layers of white paper towel above that, and no other bedding. I remove the top paper towel as it becomes soiled, and when I get down to the newsprint, I empty the whole thing, clean it out and start over. You can start adding oats and seeds after the chick is old enough to walk around and start pecking at stuff. Oh, and I add a small stuffed animal for something to cuddle up against. It sounds like you are managing very well. Good luck and keep us posted!

Interesting, the new photos with flash make the cere look pink, not brown. Could it be a male after all? I think it's a recessive pied full body greywing or clearwing, but not a spangle. (Well, I take that back, I'm not sure about spangle. That first photo isn't the best, and the new ones the flash washes the markings out completely.)

Thank you for spreading the word, Kaz. They've updated their website now, here: http://www.kaytee.com/pet-birds/kaytee-exact-hand-feeding-update.htm

Have you had a look at the taming articles in our FAQ section yet? Click here Also, if you go to the taming section of the forum, there are some good taming threads written by our members Birdluv and BirdJunky.

Welcome to the forum, Kat! Enjoy looking around. You will find information on all those things you are considering here.

Hi Mike, sometimes a hen doesn't start sitting on her eggs until she has three of them. What makes you think she has lost interest in them? Tell us how the hen and the cock are both behaving, We need more information to go on.

You could have posted these new photos right in the old thread as an update. Would save people from trying to find the old one. But here it is, since I found it : http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/index.php?showtopic=30989&st=0&p=367051&fromsearch=1entry367051 However, the old photos aren't showing up for me any more. I seem to remember that at the time I didn't think he looked cinnamon. But that happens a lot, where from photos, I just can't see the cinnamon when everyone else does. So I didn't pipe up because I can never be sure about that. But in these new photos, I definitely think the markings look grey. He looks dilute from here, but if you think his body color is too dark, then he may be regular greywing. The probem with telling color from photos is that different lighting makes the same bird have different degrees of darkness. In these photos, they look overexposed, or just taken in very bright light, so everything, even the bird in the background, looks paler. Just going by how he looks in these pics, I'd say dilute mauve. But in the old thread, they were saying cobalt or violet. Honestly, I could imagine it to be any of those three, if you consider it could be a trick of the light. Are the old photos showing up for everybody else? I think it could be my internet filter blocking them for me.

okay, thanks. I think I can see on her photo what you mean by that, and I thought her head markings looked opaline, too. I just wasn't sure if that was enough to go on. And the newer photo of the two cinnamon chicks on the perch looks like they are both boys, so that would confirm that the mom is opaline.