Finnie

You are right that the first sign of moulting is an increase in loose feathers. But a lot of times that might not be too noticeable. The next sign will be pin feathers coming in on the head. That looks like little sticks sticking out. Sometimes it might look like blackheads, and sometimes like pink bald patches. It just depends on how many are coming in in one spot all at once. A lot of first time owners don't realize what they are seeing, and they write in that they are worried that something is wrong with their bird. Your birds are getting to the age to expect moulting, and since you mentioned the baldish looking patch, it made me wonder. Some people will notice that their tame budgie gets unfriendly and bitey during a moult. The usual advice is to give them more cover time at night. They need more sleep. 10 to 12 hours a night is considered normal sleeping time. During cranky periods, increasing that to 13 or 14 hours can help. You might not need to separate them permanently. Maybe just during cranky phases. And if they were in separate cages but near each other, they might not be too lonely. Especially if you give them supervised play time outside their cages. No need to buy extra birds unless you have been bitten by the bug and you just WANT extra birds! Personally, I think it's strange for two males to not get along. Usually it would happen if they were fighting over a female. (Or I had two males fighting over another male, once. ) So if you just happen to have a male that is more "argumentative" than most, there's no guarantee that he would get along with any other new friend you got for him. You could end up with four birds that all needed separate cages. (But I think that would be highly unlikely.) If your cage is big enough to house four, and you really wanted that many birds, there's a chance that just by changing the group dynamics, your two guys would get along better in the bigger group. But unless you were wanting to be a multiple bird owner, I don't really suggest that the solution to a bird problem is to buy more birds.

Are they moulting? Maybe they are being hormonal, and it will settle down after the moult.

Your new flight looks great,GB! I know I've been a little hit or miss around the forum lately, but is this the one you had in pieces and needed someone to help you put it together?

That male looks like either a greywing or a dilute. It' hard to tell from that photo, and also hard to tell if he has any dark factors. But your birds are examples of two different types of recessive genes. The lutino gene is a sex-linked recessive gene, so being a hen, she will only pass it on to her male offspring, and they will be split for it. It won't be visible. To get any visible ino chicks, your male would have to be split to ino himself. (That might be possible, do you know what his parents were?) The greywing gene (or dilute, but I'll just say greywing for now) is a non-sex-linked recessive gene. That means that gender doesn't matter, and all the chicks will get a copy of it. But since it's recessive, it won't show up, unless the chicks get a copy from the mother also. And since she's lutino, you can't see whether she has greywing or not. But she could easily be split for greywing, a lot of them are. (Do you know what her parents were?) So, unless your hen is masking or split for greywing, and unless your male is split for the ino gene, you won't get any chicks like the parents. Most likely, you will get all normal green birds. Unless both parents happen to be split for blue, and then you could get some normal blue birds. And I'm also not taking into consideration other possibilities that the mother might be masking or split to, or what the father might be split to. And I agree with Nerwen, they both look very young. The male doesn't look like he's had his iris rings very long yet. Make sure you let them grow all the way up (12-18 months) before you breed them.

A couple of things I would like to point out. Jimmy Banks mentioned way back that you should have your perches running front to back. And that they should be on opposite sides of the cage, so that the birds can fly back and forth from one to another. The reason for this is that it is part of the budgie mating ritual. The male will make overtures to the female, and then fly away from her, and then back to her. They also both go back and forth. Your birds cant' do this with the way you have the perches right now. So that is one thing you can address to improve your setup. The type of perch you have is also a problem. Thin plastic perches don't offer them a very good grip for when they are mating. It's quite a balancing act, and they need a good stable grip. Wooden perches 12mm in diameter work well, as do natural branches. It's great that you have given us more information. Now that we know you've been moving the location of the cage, I agree with GB. That will absolutely stop them from breeding. We've also learned that your hen suffered an injury a while ago. (I think she's a girl, she's not one of the mutations that give pink ceres in the males.) You said she's fine now. But there is the possibility that an injury might have affected her fertility. I have a hen that recovered from an injury. She bred well before, but now she doesn't. Does the cere on your hen change shades of brown at all? Does it get thick and crusty and then flake off? Those are signs of a hen going in and out of breeding condition. Without them, it is hard to know when is the right time to breed her, or even if she's really a girl. So I hope you're beginning to realize that there is a whole lot more to breeding budgies than you might have thought. Please do as Kaz said, and read up as much as possible on the forum. It's a fun hobby, and it would be nice if you could enjoy it, by knowing what you are doing. If you prepare yourself well, you can avoid a lot of heartache by being able to avoid and or deal with the potential problems.

That's probably because of your age. You have to lie about Wait, no, I would never tell someon to lie. Just ask your parents or brother to let you on THEIR account. How did you find that, Jimmy? I can usually find people's photos on Photobucket, but it wouldn't let me see anything for funkypanda97. Funky, it sounds like you need to improve their diet. Besides seeds, they should be eating a variety of vegetables, egg and biscuit food, soft food, etc. To be in optimal breeding condition, they need great nutrition. I suggest you read up as much as you can about budgie breeding and nutrition. You can work on improving their diet, which will take some time. And in the meanwhile, you can use the time to learn about how to breed them. So you will know what you are doing by the time they are ready. Take a look at members' posts about their breeding set ups. It will show you what a functional breeding cage should look like. And please, if you are spelling poorly just because you can't spell, that's forgiveable. But it really looks like you are just typing in a hurry and don't care whether your sentences are readable. Can you please help us out by putting a little more thought into your typing?

They are awesome! In fact, collard greens are my green of choice, because they take a long time before they wilt in the cage, and they keep nice in the fridge, too. (Better than chard, which breaks down and gets mushy, and stains up their faces.) And I love mustard greens too, because they are easy to grow in the garden, and if you let some of them go to seed, you will keep getting new plants for years.

When I want to clip mine, or really, do anything to them, I get a washcloth, and loosely fold it around them, so that their head is covered. This really seems to calm them down so they don't struggle or panic. Then I just expose the wing I want to work on. When I'm done, I hold them back in their cage and gently peel back the rag so they can crawl out (or fly) by themselves. I don't think any of this sets back their taming. Of course, you have to catch them first, and depending on how you do it, that could be where the set back lies. If you try to do it without the rag, then yeah, you'll have a struggling, unhappy bird. And you won't be happy, either, trying to trim safely. Yours don't sound like they'd be too hard to catch. Good luck. I'm sure you'll hear from Birdluv soon.

Here is a male lutino I used to own.

It sounds like you have already made some good progress. To go further, I have a couple of suggestions. The first one: You can improve their stepping up skills inside the cage by using spray millet as a reward. I'm not sure what foods they already eat from your hand, but it is a start. With the spray millet, first of all, keep it aside for only during training. Not kept in the cage all the time, where they will get bored of it. Then hold it just out of their reach, so that they are forced to step off the perch and onto your hand to get any. Obviously, your finger won't be near their belly for that step, But once they are hopping to your hand to get the millet, then use two hands, one for holding their reward slightly out of the way, and the other for putting your finger near their belly. That's to associate that Finger Near Belly means Step Up and then, Get Reward. You want to practice that a lot, until they just react to a finger by stepping on it. My second suggestion: You might want to condsider clipping their wings. Of course, a lot of people wouldn't want to do that. It's up to you, but remember that they will grow back once they molt out the clipped feathers. I've never really had much luck working with a fully flighted bird that's not already tame. The combination of not-yet-tame and full-flight feathers seems to be hard for me to overcome. They just take off, and there's nothing I can do about it, and they know it! Especially when they prefer each other over me. I make a lot better progress when they are clipped, and their flight is limited. Then when they take off, I can get them back with very little stress to them, and I teach them that staying with me is 1) inevitable and 2) not so bad after all. And yes, this does work better when they are in a room away from their cage and their buddy. Mine learn when they take off like that, that my finger means "Back to Safety". (The fully flighted ones learn that "Top of Curtains Means Safety".) I'm sure other people will have more and different advice for you. I'm not saying my way is best. Just what seems to work for me. There are some good taming articles around here on the forum. Look in the FAQs section, and also, search for a thread by Birdluv called Hobbes and Claire Taming Journal. That one really helped me when I was new to budgies. Good luck!

Oh, wow, Splat! I'm glad you didn't lose any birds! And congratulations on your new Site Promoter badge!

okay, thanks. I guess I thought that her back had a more spotty pattern of markings, whereas all my other dom pieds have a more solid pattern to their markings. (Like the mother in the picture.)

Thank you, Neville. I forgot to mention, and I know it's not conclusive evidence, but that store I got her from has never ever had any spangles. It seems unlikely (but not impossible) for them to get in a DF but never a SF. BUT, when I got her, there were many recessive pieds and what looked like dom pieds, but could also have been clearflight pieds running around in there. And they had other whites and yellows (and YFs), some with red eyes and some with black. I knew you'd say breeding would be the way to tell. My wish list of pairs waiting for nest boxes is getting too long! But if I get to her, which would be better, a normal or a normal/rec.pied?

I thought it was a good time to follow up on how this turned out, as the owner of this bird has sent me some photos of her. Once the chick finally got weaned, she was fine. I honestly think she was just sulking for more formula. Once I cut that out completely, she eventually dug into her regular birdy foods and stabilized and was just fine. Of course, my bird buyer was already quite attached to her, and preferred to just get her home, come what may. And everything went very well. "Miss Birdy" is 8 months old now. Been through her first major molt, and a couple of brief ones. Perfectly fine and healthy, and her owner couldn't be happier. She gave me permission to post some of her photos on here. They spoil that bird! But I can see why, cuz that bird has always had Some Personality, even from two weeks of age. Playstand they made for her out of a tree branch: Hmm. Her photos appear to be too large. I guess I'll have to rely on the auto-resizer. Sorry. Funny preening shot: She loves her daddy!

We seem to have the same conversation going on in both threads. I am going to merge the two. I hope it doesn't cause any confusion for anyone. Oh, and Jimmy, funkypanda is a "him", by the way.

Hi funkypanda. Welcome to the forum! Trust me, if they've had a breeding box for a year, they KNOW where it is! There must be some other issue. You have come to the right place. There is a ton of info to be found here, and if you read up on the FAQs articles about breeding, and read through a lot of our threads, you will educate yourself, and your breeding will be more successful. Looking forward to seeing your photos!

Well ... my "aviary" is only really a patio aviary, it's on a stand. We can't build a safety chamber on it then. But, we will be getting a bigger aviary with a safety chamber, and we will be putting it in the shed just to keep all the birds inside. Until then, you might want to put locks or clips on any doors that can "pop" open unexectedly. I hope you get them back.

The white bird in the middle (of course) Belly shot: I know the photos aren't the best. To get better, I guess I will have to catch her up, which I'd like to put off, since she just came out of the nest. The father is a normal/rec pied (At least, I think so, since he has the pied spot on his head, and no other indication of poorly marked pied). The mother was, I THOUGHT, a clearflight pied. But all the pied chicks appear dommies to me, so I'm rethinking that. Plus, IF the mother is split to recessive pied, and IF this chick is indeed visual for recessive pied, then the mom would have to be a Dom Pied, or else the chick would have been a Dark Eyed Clear. The choices are: SF dom pied SF dom pied and split for recessive pied SF dom pied and visual recessive pied To post photos of the parents will take me a bit, I'll have to find some and upload them to Photobucket first. This is the best parent photo I can come up with for the time being. I'll have to either search more, or get out the camera. It might take me a while.

Okay, here is my hen. I guess she has lost a lot of the blue since I bought her back in January. But you can kind of see it low on her belly and on her back, if you really look. I still think she's a Dark Eyed Clear, not a Frosted Pied. Opinions, anyone?

Hi Roller, welcome to the forum! I agree with Birdluv and Corztunt. Read up on the FAQs section of the forum. There is really a LOT to learn about breeding budgies if you want to do it well, and not have problems when something happens that you didn't prepare before hand to handle. If you are keeping your birds indoors, then they can breed any time of year. Whether or not they will breed when you want them to is a different story. They have to be in proper breeding condition, or they won't do anything. Also read a lot of the threads and questions posted by other members in the breeding section. You can learn a lot from reading other people's responses. Reading threads about how to feed breeding birds properly is important, too. Good luck. Look around, and if you have more questions, ask away!

Entry No. 13

When I read through this, I got the impression that the dad was attacking the mother. Was he actually attacking one of the chicks? I once had a cock attack the mother, and do some little bit of damage to her in the process. I think I worked it out that he was wanting to start a new round of breeding, so he was trying to clear the chicks out. And I think that since they were still in the nest, the mother was in there defending them. Well at first I thought the mother was the offender, so I took her out (to a hospital cage, since she was bleeding). And no sooner did I turn around, than the father was in the box attacking the chicks, who now didn't have a mother defending them. So I had to take the cock out, too. Fortunately the chicks weren't hurt, but they had to be on their own then, since the dad was mean and the mom was in the hospital. (They weaned fine after that.) I think you have handled your situtation the best way you could. As Dave said, keep an eye to make sure the Mom is okay with them. Once they are weaned from her, you could probably set the pair back up for a second round, if you think they are both in good condition. More than likely, once there are no chicks around, the two will get along fine. Even still, though, I would watch them. Cuz the hen might have decided she doesn't like that particular cock anymore, or just plain doesn't want to breed again. And that may be why she's rejecting his advances. In that case, give her a good long rest, and try again next time she goes into breeding condition.

That's really neat, Jimmy. I have read that if there is a feral population of pet dogs of different breeds, eventually the descendants will all revert back to the wild type. Which I guess looks pretty much like a Jackal or a Dingo. I also heard that there are feral flocks of pet birds in New York's Central Park. I think you've inspired me to do a Google search of it.....

Great idea, Splat! I have some spare wire sitting around. Maybe this will help me be able to get some better photos.

Yes please Finnie. Could you please change it All set! I'll be putting some up, Splat, when I can find some. I'll have to work on getting new ones, though. All the ones I could find yesterday were not good.