Finnie

Thank you.

Hi Nadene, welcome! Those are nice chick photos.

That's why I thought the light was washing it out. Because if you look way up at the very first photo, the green one really looks like a boy. Yeah, it can be really hard to get close up shots if they don't like to have a camera in their face. And they don't like to hold still long, either.

These two photos are too small and still not close up. Good close up, however it appears that bright light is washing out the cere, making it still too hard to judge. I'd feel comfortable saying the blue one is a boy.

I would also add that a week isn't very long. Keep giving your budgies vegetables, it will probably take several weeks before they are comfortable enough to take their first taste of them. As for seed mixes that contain pellets, I have found that it is better to get seeds and pellets separately. As you have seen, they just kick out the pellet portion and waste it. So you are paying for a certain percentage of your bag of seed mix that you are not using. If you want to give them pellets, you can buy them separately, and feed them in a different dish. Then your bag of pellets will last a lot longer, if you regulate how much you give based on how much they actually want. I think of pellets kind of as a supplement. Like how we have breakfast cereal that is marketed as nutritionally complete. But it still doesn't mean it is suitable to make up our entire diet.

NO Maddy! Don't go there! Poor Rashu has been through countless trouble trying to figure out Winter's gender! Winter is a boy, don't make him start guessing all over again. You can see here, for yourself. http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/index.php?showtopic=31705

Well I am partial to greywings, so I would say to put Vanilla with Winter, and then you could find out whether she was split to greywing, or masking it.

Hi Jet, welcome to the forum!

What BJ said. And, I think if they are going to get used to it on their own time, then 3 days is not nearly long enough. I would give it a week or two. (Unless you have no food in the aviary, in which case they will need to eat sooner than that, lol.)

What fun! He is awesome.

Hi Stevie, welcome to the forum.

I'm coming into this a little bit late, but I just wanted to agree with Kaz' estimate of his age. Besides, if he had been born in January of this year, and we are only in the very beginning of March, he couldn't be older than two months. That's barely out of the nest, and you would REALLY be able to tell. Maybe if the breeder got mixed up, he meant January of LAST year? Is the breeder very far from you? He sounds like he would like to remain involved, and if there is a question as to Vinnie's health, maybe the breeder would let you trade him for one that really is a baby? Although you might not want this if you are attached to Vinnie. I agree with Kaz also about taming him. Even though he is older and it will take more effort on your part, you are doing him a good turn by being his friend.

This may seem like a silly question, but are you certain of the genders of your birds? (Mostly referring to the behavior of the males after you removed them from the breeding cages.) I'm not trying to insult you, but it's not unheard of for even some experienced breeders to get the genders wrong once in a while. Just another thing to factor in.

You are in our thoughts and prayers, Splat.

They are very nice. I like their names.

What do you mean by "non visual violets"? A blue budgie with one dark factor and at least one violet factor is considered a "visual violet", but can also just be called a violet. The violet factor is a dominant mutation, so a bird can't carry it recessively, in split form. But, it can be hard to see the violet factor if the bird is grey, green, or mauve. And it can be hard to see it on a sky blue bird, because then it tends to look like a regular cobalt. There are ways to tell, but I think it can be easy to misidentify. Because it is a dominant mutation, you only need one parent to have the violet factor in order to get single factor visual violet chicks. Since the dominance of the violet factor is "incomplete", the double factor form of it is a stronger violet than the single factor. If you want double factor violet chicks, then both parents have to have it. There is also some linkage between the violet factor and the dark factor. So whether they are on the same chromosome of the parent or on different chromosomes, that will affect the percentage of visual violet offspring produced. You need a dark factor, so two sky violets wouldn't work.

No, they are separate mutations. If you combine clearflight pied with recessive pied, you get a dark eyed clear. That doesn't happen when you combine the dominant pied gene with recessive pied.

Right! Those chicks are molting now. I should get some updated photos after they're done.

okay:) She is YF, yes, but the pied comes from the father being clearflight pied. Father (Gabriel): opaline dilute (I think) clearflight pied mauve Mother (Ava): cinnamon opaline yellowface mutant two sky blue split to some sort of dilution mutation

She's definitely a girl! See that little bit of tan in the middle of her cere? Pretty soon that will be covering her whole cere.

Here is the father:

I'm kind of hoping RIPbudgies will see this, even though she hasn't been around a lot lately. I know she's talked about modifying genes before. I have a clutch from a pair, the father is a dilute, I believe, so all the chicks will be split to dilute. The mother is a cinnamon wing, split to some kind of greywing mutation. (To my knowledge, the father is NOT split to cinnamon, and no chicks had plum eyes when they hatched.) So I'm expecting to get either normal/dilute chicks, or else greywing types that are whatever the mother has/dilute. And I thought that any of these greywing type chicks would all look the same, for the most part. Four of the 7 chicks are normals, but the other three are NOT all the same. One has wing markings that are a much darker grey. Here are photos of the three: Chick 3: Chick 4: Chick 5: Whole clutch, except one of them is buried: Chicks 3 and 5 look alike, but it is the middle chick, #4, that has me wondering, because its markings are so much darker. I know I should get pictures of the parents. I'll work on it. But the father is just so pale, that I don't think he could be anything other than a dilute.

Flip trainer is right about the sky blue and the yellow face mutant two. If we could please see the backs of them, it appears from what little I can see of their head markings, that they might be opaline.

Hi Mike, welcome to the forum! You may be right about the two eggs being infertile, because you would expect them to hatch every other day. You should have had a 4 day old and a 2 day old by now, as well. Do you have photos of your baby and parents? We would love to see them.