Finnie

Yes, when he is moulting, and growing in some new cheek patch feathers, they will look different for a while until the sheaths wear off. Then they will go back to what they usually look like. New feathers with sheaths still on them are called pin feathers. They resemble the coated ends of shoelaces. If he has enough pin feathers in his cheek patch area, that can make his cheek patches look spotted and patchy temporarily.

Hi Xyfbudgie, welcome to the forum. And to the world of pet birds! There are tons of things that the average non-bird owning person would never realize about living with birds. I was really surprised at how much there was to learn, when my first two budgies were new, and I discovered this forum. You will be way ahead of the game by learning about them before you get one. Have fun with it, and don't forget to show us lots of pictures when you actually get your budgie!

We had a thread about similar cages a few days ago, but the link to the "Cheap as Chips" website doesn't seem to be working. Link to Cage Topic But you could google "HQ Double Wide Flight Cage" and that should bring some up.

Hey, Firebird, I have been using a mixture of regular fluorescent bulbs and the ones labeled "full spectrum" in my basement bird room for about one and a half years, now. You can see in the photo that there's only one small window, so not much natural daylight comes in. I do have the lights plugged into a timer, because I got smart and realized that then I wouldn't have to keep going down to turn them on and off manually. I adjust the length of their "daytime" to be shorter when I'm not breeding them, and longer when I'm hoping that they will go into breeding condition. (I also play a CD of water sounds then.) I have heard people say that the light bulbs sold commonly in stores that are labeled "full spectrum" (the kind I use) are not truly full spectrum, like the ones you can buy special for birds and reptiles through on line catalogs. However, I haven't been able to find anything written in the catalogs about their special lighting that makes me believe there are any differences between the two. Other than that the catalog ones are more expensive and require a special lamp. Since my birds seem happy and healthy, and fertiltiy is good (so far, knock on wood), I'm not planning to switch over to the expensive type yet.

I don't know a lot about clearbody, but this cock looks opaline to me? Would that be right? And if so, then for that second chick to be female, doesn't it also HAVE to be opaline? Or maybe the cock really isn't opaline, and I'm just seeing things.

I was thinking the exact same thing before I scrolled down this far! Welcome to the forum, little shadow. Your are right about the opaline. But I'm not good at telling between sky violet and cobalt. You could be right about that too. (I'm guessing you are trying to figure this out without asking your mum?)

She sure does look itchy, poor thing!

Okay, I'm not very good at telling mutations, but you haven't gotten a response in 12 hours, so I'll take a stab at it anyway. Then when the experts corect me, we can see if I'm getting any better at this.

I've been reading lately about what pink feet and orange beaks might indicate. So I took a look at my flock, which consists of 48 budgies, and made a chart showing for each bird its foot color, its beak color, its visual mutations, and any known splits it has. (I also wrote down splits it could have inherited from its parents, but that I can't tell until I breed it if it has those splits, just to be more thorough.) For example, if a dad is known to be split to cinnamon, then I wrote that his son has a 50% chance that he got split to it, too. Then I pored over all the data, and I came to some conclusions. Since it's just a sampling of 48 budgies, of various mutations, my conclusions might not match up to what others of you with a lot more experience already know. But I thought this could make for interesting discussion, and some learning experience, for anybody interested in these things. My conclusions: 1. Orange Beak always means recessive pied, either in visual or split form. (17 birds with orange beaks, all are either visual or split to recessive pied, EXCEPT for three, which I didn't breed and can't say, but I plan to test breed those eventually, and see if they fit into my theory.) 2. Orange Beak is not connected to cinnamon. (13 visual cinnamons, 6 have horn colored beaks, the other 7 with orange beaks all have recessive pied, either visual or split.) 3. The following mutations all have pink feet: Visual Cinnamon (13), Visual Recessive pied (5), Dominant Pied (4), Ino (1), and Clearflight Pied (2). (Obviously those are small numbers, so I wouldn't be surprised if other people say that these mutations don't all get pink feet) 4. The following mutations can have any color feet, i.e., the mutation itself does not determine foot color: Greywing, opaline and spangle. (An interesting note, spangle seemed to turn the feet a more bluish grey, and where it was combined with cinnamon, so the bird had pink feet, those had a hint of grey to their pink. Don't know if that means anything about spangle or not.) 5. There was only one other type of bird that had pink feet that didn't fit the above categories (which were cinnamon, rec pied, dom pied, ino, and CFP) : Some, but not all, of the split to recessive pied birds had pink feet, even though they didn't have any visual reason for the pink feet. So I looked closely at all of my split for recessive pieds, and came to one more conclusion. 6. Split to recessive pied MIGHT be indicated by the following: a.) Spot on back of head (which we already knew), b.) orange beak, and/or c.) pink feet. (And of course, some split to recessive pieds have none of these.) So my theory is, that a bird with one or more of these indicators, that has no visual reason for the indicator, MIGHT be split to recessive pied. I have 6 birds that have one or more of these indicators, without having a visual reason for it. 3 of them I bred, and I know that they are split to recessive pied. The other 3 I plan to test breed to find out. (1 with a head spot, and two with orange beaks) So, what do you more experienced breeders think? Is there any merit to my findings? Do you have examples that show that I figured this wrong? I realize that with a small sample, I can't rely on my own statistics. So more input and discussion would be great.

That looks like the cages I use. Not having an aviary, those are my main cages, that the lucky birds get to live in. I paid around $200 U.S for mine, so I think with the exchange rate, wouldn't $200 AUS be an even better deal? I really like them, by the way.

Thanks, I am very happy with them, I have been out all day looking for an aviary so I can keep them all Yes, very beautiful. I would be wanting to keep all of them, too!

Well, GB, I'm still sticking with the advice you gave me back in the fall, to give them carrots, greens and orange every day. And no random, unexpected things to throw them off when they are breeding. It's been very consistent since then, so I'm hoping I will have good results. I'll let you know next time they have chicks, if it makes things better. that would be good it should as that was the advice i was given by one of the best just my memory is so so bad finne i really dont remember what i even told you now to a t just random bits so i truley do get worryed ill over do things however in saying this i have been just going with my gut instinked and things are looking good nubbly my birds did the exact same thing due to to much acid lost weaight couldnt gain weaight but are now all good i have given them a orage and lemmon few times a week and carrots on the off days freash seedling grasses to boot Well, it's been 8 months that I've been feeding them their new diet consistently. This past breeding season went very well. All the mothers fed their chicks well, and only one died. And it was the eighth chick in that nest, and I just think 8 was too many for her. And she was the one who couldn't kept a single chick alive the last time. GB, you told me that I was making my feeding routine way too hard, and I was giving them way too many different things. Plus, since some of it was random, as I was trying to give them a varied diet, you (and your advisor who gave the advice) said that the hens wouldn't know for sure if they would get the right food they needed on any given day. That they had to have just the basics, and those reliably. Would you like me to resend you the emails, to jog your memory? And I had thought the oranges were for vitamin C, I didn't realize they were for acid, too.

That's funny! Actually, boy budgies are not particular, they will bat for whatever team they find themselves with. I think Dusty looks like a girl, but by now, it seems like her cere would have started to turn tan. If she's just six months old, maybe that is coming soon, and will give you a definitive answer. Welcome to the forum. I like your user name.

I know I'm probably the only person who's obsessed with my own birds, but here are more photos! I like how the oldest one always seems to be looking up at the camera And here are some of the youngest. I'm really hoping she is an opaline, but until she starts to get some more color, I can't tell. I'm not good enough at that yet. Do any of you experts see signs of opaline? (She does have white down, but she was also a plum eyed chick, and I've seen my cinnamons have white down, too.) That last photo is a little abstract, but it's her mantle. Her head is to the lower right. And sorry about the lighting. I went near a window, but it was overcast today.

Thank you, Nubbly. Your input is very helpful. It is true that this was one of the more fun clutches I have had, because of all the unexpected things. I'm really glad to hear that you think the clearwing gene really is floating around in there. In a way, I would like to repeat this breeding, because I thought that some of the chicks came out really beautiful. In fact, I was a little bummed at myself for selling a couple of them, but I had promised them to people while they still weren't fully feathered. But I also like GB's suggestion to find a cinnamon hen for him that isn't split to greywing, because then if there can't be any visual greywing chicks, the cinnamon will show up better. (If I can find a hen like that. So far all mine are split to greywing, except for one who is also recessive pied, and if I got all rec. pied chicks, then the markings would be harder to determine, plus they would all have plum eyes, which would confuse the issue even more.) So that's two potential breedings for Mystery. And then now that I know about the clearwing, I want to put him with some hen who will bring that out. Discover whether the clearwing came from him, or whether he might be split to dilute, allowing the clearwing from Nelly to show up. So I guess I want to look for either a dilute hen for him, or a clearwing hen that isn't a full body greywing. (i.e. clearwing/clearwing, clearwing/dilute, or dilute/dilute.) And the trouble there is if I mis-identify the hen, then I throw off the results of the chicks. So I need to be careful finding the right hen. So other than Nelly, I need to find two perfect hens for Mystery. And then he needs to get busy! Oh, and chick 5 was the only other one who was starting to have hen-like tendancies, just before I sold him. And I stressed to the buyer that if he did end up being a girl, I really needed to know. Really nice people, I will call them if I don't hear back by the time the moult shoud be over. Thank you, RIP, we posted at the same time! That is valuable to me, too. Now I can go back over the photos with this information, and absorb it all in. (I have LOTS of photos that never made it on this post .)

I kept the second and fourth chicks from this clutch. Here they are molting. (Pretty bad pictures, I know.) Once they are all done with their molt and have adult feathers, I'll have to catch them up and get them into some better lighting to get some usuable photos.

Hi Erin! Being in the U.S., I can be of no help to you finding a budgie, but I wanted to say welcome to the forum! And to encourage you to read around in the different forums, especially the budgie faqs section. This is definitely the right place to learn a lot about our little feathered friends! I'm sure there will be someone around who can help you find a great budgie.

Splat, I'm glad to hear that your mouse problem is under control.

Aw, thanks GB:blush: I had to laugh. When I read what your wrote, it made perfect sense to me. It wasn't until Moglet had a question, that I went back and saw how you had worded it. Hey Sunshine's Dad, whatever she is, your Sunshine is one gorgeous bird. I love the yellow in her spangle wings!

Some newer pictures of the babies: Chick 1 (had black eyes): Chick 2 (had plum eyes): Chick 3 (plum eyes) : Chick 4 (had black eyes) : Chick 5 (had plum eyes) :

He sounds like quite a character!

Splat, I'm not sure how harsh your winters get. Parsley will re-seed itself and sprout new in the spring, if you let some of it go to seed. Must be why you have it growing wild. But Basil is an annual, so it will die over the winter. But maybe it doen't get that cold where you are? I gave my birds fresh sage I had growing, but I can't remember if they liked it much, or just left it. One of my chick buyers was telling me about a dried herb supplement you just feed by itself in a dish, and they dig into it or not, depending on their nutritional needs. I'd have to ask her for more info on that. Looking at what you wrote above, it sounds like you could just give them those four dried herbs right from your cupboard.

GB, am very interested to learn. Why does the dad being a sky spangle mean it's a hen? And why single or double factor. I'm still a bit confused on the factor biz. Moglet, sometimes GB's fingers type out differently than she means to say things. I'm pretty sure she meant that the chick has to be a hen because the mother is not opaline. Opaline is sex-linked, and the father might be split to opaline, and then it would show up in a daughter. And I think she meant that the chick can't be mauve, because if the dad is sky blue, he has no dark factor to give the chick. (But when GB comes back, she can tell us what she really meant. ) You wouldn't be the only one confused about the yellowface and golden face genes, LOL! They are basically yellow-removing genes. So a goldenface has a really dark yellow face, and some yellow in the body, but when it is in double factor form, more yellow is removed from the body, so you mostly only see the golden face still, and that might be a lighter yellow. We need Sunshine's Dad to come back and tell us more info!

Hi Budgie Smugglers. Sorry you haven't gotten an answer yet. I don't have an aviary, but I do know that you can't use treated lumber, like the kind used for decking. For my indoor cages, I have used regular plywood.

I was thinking the same thing, Splat. It's interesting how different it looks in the different lighting. The lighting in the second set of photos looks more natural. But now the bright lighting makes the cere look like it might be more washed out in the photo than in real life. I think if I had this chick at my house, I would be guessing about the gender up until the last minute, and then it would turn out to the opposite of my guessing.