Finnie

Aw, aren't they cute! They just want to stay babies a little longer. :rofl:

Thank you, Wendy

Thank you for the advice, GenericBlue! :thumbs_up: Today was the second day that I've done 10 minute sessions with each of the two. The 10 minutes goes by so fast. I think I will do longer, tomorrow. One of them cuddles down into my hand or against my shirt, and the other one tries to climb all over my hand, and grabs on with it's legs pretty good. But I will be careful not to come at them with my finger, like you said, but will use closed hand. I think they are both greywings, now. And they are looking girl-like. The oldest seems to have blue feathers on it's wings, so I am thinking opaline. Here are today's pics: Chick #1: Chick #2:

This one is SO cute! :thumbs_up:

Well gosh, you two! I was all set to say "Boy, definitely" until I scrolled down and saw your answers! I think the paleness is from the bright light of the windows, and other wise, it seems like an even all over blue. (And yes, it is lighter around the nostrils, but almost all budgies are lighter around the nostrils.) :thumbs_up:

How exciting! I can't wait to see the fallow chicks grow. :thumbs_up:

Dave, if I remember correctly from before, Souffle was on our approved name list for Omelettes children :thumbs_up:

All the steps you have to wait for made me think of all the waiting we do when breeding budgies. First wait for the birds to go into condition and bond. Then wait for them to lay eggs. Then count off the days on the calendar and wait for the eggs to hatch. Then wait two days between chicks, but after a few chicks you look back and realize that the time has gone by fast! I can never have an outdoor aviary, Splat, but I am enjoying watching your progress as you get yours! :thumbs_up:

Thank you, Nubbly and Kaz. :thumbs_up: One of the cool things is that every time I look at Finnie's chicks, which is 3 or 4 times a day, now that I am working on taming them, they have more feathers and more color, even if it's just been a few hours!

Hi Shell, welcome to the forum! :thumbs_up: You said "My question is if I give her a male, shouldn't that stop all the problems. The vet said no..." I have to agree with Kaz and Dave and the vet. This isn't just a normal vet making a guess. There has apparently been a lot of testing done, and the vet seems to have good reason for the diagnosis he made. You've already been willing to have all these tests done, and the bacterial infection has been cleared up. The next step seems obvious: to have the injection, and see if it helps. I suppose if the 1st shot doesn't seem to help, you are under no obligation to go back the next year for another one. But I think, having done this much, I wouldn't quit just yet. As far as your hen laying eggs and getting very sad when they don't live, at 5 years old, she is pretty much too old to breed anyway. Even if she had no health problem, getting her a boyfriend so her eggs can live would be a big drain on an older bird. I'm all for people owning as many birds as they want to own. If you want a flock of four, there's nothing wrong with that. But Kaz's point about the stress that adding new birds would bring is a good point. It's better to sort this problem out first, and think about new birds after Sam is better. Also, about the vet convincing you to keep your birds cage-free? This makes no sense to me. I would think a vet would be fully aware of all the dangers to birds that exist in a human home. No matter how carefully you birdproof your house, there is always going to be something they will find that you couldn't forsee. But I guess if it's been working for you for 5 years... I just think you must have been very lucky all that time. Not to mention that there is no way to avoid the door being open when you go in and out... I can see why you would be at your wit's end. It looks like you have done as much as possible, short of getting a second opinion from a different avian vet, if there even is another around. (And who would, no doubt, expect you to pay for all the testing to be re-done.) It isn't a pleasant thought, but for a 5 year old bird who has had a stroke and whose bones are solidifying, she may be on her way out. You are obviously a caring pet owner to go to such lengths to try to cure her. I guess you will have to decide for yourself whether to continue working with the vet on this, or whether to just make her comfortable at home on your own. But I feel pretty safe in agreeing with Kaz and Dave, that another bird right now would make the problem worse, not better. I hope you will let us know what you end up doing, and how it works out. And also, we love pictures here, so it would be great if you put up some of your two birds.

This is great! You are like me, with 3 hatching all at once, and then 4 more to go (or 5 in my case). Ours will be growing at the same rates, we can compare notes.

I'm very sorry for your loss. :rip: I hope you are able to prevent the others from getting it.

Time for an update. So much happened yesterday, and the forum was DOWN!!! First of all, Finnie's chicks are getting big, and I did a photo shoot of them: Now, the light and shadow in the above picture makes it kind of hard to tell whether some of those chicks have white down, or whether it's just the bright light shining on them. However, the grey down looking chick is DEFINITELY grey-downed. In fact, I don't know if any of my other chicks from last time breeding ever had such grey down. The white chick directly behind, that's the plum eyed one, who must be cinnamon. I've been crossing my fingers that she is also opaline, and it looks hopeful, but I have been told that greywings can have white down, and there is the possiblilty that she has greywing, too, so I will have to wait for real feathers to see about any opaline. The down on the older two is ambiguous. They don't seem as light as the third chick, and until the 4th one got that dark grey, I was thinking that they had grey down. Now I'm not so sure. Chick #1 is normal, and I've been pretty sure all along that chick #2 is greywing. Between the two, the second one's skin markings have always been lighter, and the more they grow, the more I think it's a greywing. Chick #1: Chick #2: Chicks #3 and 4 to come later, when they are bigger and have more to show. So that was all from Saturday night, and I didn't have a long enough turn on the computer to download the photos to the computer, then to photobucket, and then to go onto the forum. Figured I'd do it Sunday. :rip: Then on Sunday afternoon, I found this in Aveline's nest box!: TWO AT ONCE!!! It was on about day 22 since the first egg was laid, and I was beginning to think the first couple weren't going to hatch. (Those were the ones that had the blood on them.) But they both showed fertile when I candled them, so I'm glad they didn't die. AND, they are both red-eyed! So both ino hens. It would be nice if Aidan is split to blue and one of them can be an albino. Then, finally, in the evening when I was doing my final check for the day, I saw a broken half shell on the floor of Kevin and Teagan's cage, so I knew they had a new chick, too! I'm pretty sure this is a regular black eyed chick. But since Kevin is Donovan's brother, and Donovan seems to be split for cinnamon, then I will be keeping my eyes out for plum eyes in this nest as well. So three chicks in one day!! I was so excited, I wanted to come on here and tell everyone. But to my dismay, I could not get onto the forum. So I had to wait until this morning. But wait, there's more... This morning, Aveline now has 3 CHICKS!!! 3 Chicks in less than 24 hours! Go Aveline! And this one is also a red-eyed hen. Now, I'm fine to have inos, but I really need some boy chicks here, if I'm ever going to figure out what other genes Aidan is masking or carrying. Well, there are 5 eggs left. I could get some boys. I will do my best to keep them from getting gunked up, but as I have nowhere I can foster anybody, it will be up to fate, whether they all hatch. I'm thinking, that since Finnie is such a good mother, I might be able to foster some of these inos to her, but with the big age difference, I don't know if that would work. But I might try it at the first sign that they play soccer with their younger egg-siblings! I will have to play this by ear. In the past, Colleen hatched and raised 7 chicks just fine, so maybe Aveline can too. (And Teagan, too, of course.) Things are getting really fun, around here! Oh, and I think it's time I start really working with the oldest two chicks, so GB, I need some of your hand-taming advice! I'm going to go search for the thread about Houman's chick you raised for him.

Looks great! It sure looks like it is going to be spacious. :rip:

this bird is looking mauve mate see the deep purple cheek patches hes mauve for sure I've heard that it's hard to tell if a mauve has violet. Based on the information given, there doesn't seem to be any possibility of violet in this bird. Maybe the breeder just used the words "violet" and "grey" to describe the mauve color, thinking it was a grey bird, and not realizing it is mauve. I think this bird would be very useful in breeding violet dom pieds. He will give 1 dark factor to each of his chicks, so if you pair him to a sky violet, you will get all cobalt (1 dark factor) babies, and 50% of them should be dom pieds, and 50% have violet, so I think that comes out to 25% expected violet dom pieds.

Hi Ishtarsands! Welcome to the forum! I can't wait to see pictures of you birds!

I always thought spinach was a source of calcium. In this article, it lists it as having 146mg per 1/2 cup, cooked. Food Sources of Calcium

Thats so funny cos Kaz hasnt answered yet :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: I agree with Kaz, too, IF she says " Photos were taken with flash, which washes out the cere and makes it hard to tell." :rofl: (Except for the two hens who have obvious brown crusty ceres) (So Tribal Dan, we need photos without flash. Natural light, but not so bright that it washes out the cere color. ) But if I had to guess with these photos, I think Rachel might be right.

If the hen has been willing to mate with both males, then I don't think it matters which one you take out, and which one you leave with her. The hen that was removed to a different cage- did she seem to have a particular favorite when they were all together? How long were all four together? If you can't tell who goes with who, maybe it's because they weren't really bonded well yet, in which case they might not mind being shuffled up. Do you have any eggs in the nest box at all? Maybe you should just start all over. Remove the boxes, separate the pairs how you want them, and wait until they are bonded before giving them their nest boxes back again. I know it's hard to wait once you've had that first egg, but sometimes you get better results if you back up a step and wait until things are more settled, and then start again. Edit: Okay, I just now saw your other post. I think you should pair Hot Stuff with Pretty Girl. (Unless Hot Stuff goes around kissing all the girls! )

Have you considered crate training him? It would be good discipline for him to learn that once in a while he just has to lay quietly in a crate. It's also helpful for situations he may encounter in the future where he may need to be put in a crate. (i.e. emergencies, vet recovery, hotel visit, etc..) It can be part of his routine that at certain times of day, he takes a nap in his crate while you are busy.

Well, that is definitely a front on cere shot! But unfortunately, the way the color looks washed out, it's hard to tell whether that's any white I'm seeing, or just the lighting conditions. I almost think it could be a male, but it's hard to say. Well this is it two weeks or so ago and Kaz said female so I don't know... Yes, it did look like a hen then. So it ought to have a whitish cere now with light blue. What do you see when you look at the bird in person?

Look! Your chick has an egg pillow, too!

Rachel, that video is awesome! The chick makes it look so easy. But really, it is so amazing how it just pushes on the shell forever, and then it just crawls out! I'm going to go watch it again- and show my kids.

Does that interfere with any of your plans? I know a lot of times I've read that some of you don't like cinnamon turning up where it doesn't belong. I just realized that a cinnamon chick from this pairing will have to be a cinnamon and greywing. You probably don't remember when I asked a long time ago if this was a possible combination, and what would it look like. Well, now we will find out! Cinnamon and greywing ? NO. The cock is dilute. The hen is greywing. The chick isnt greywing at all based on what I can see. Anything else we will have to wait and see. I did this pairing aiming for dilutes. Sorry, I meant 'greywing' in the loosest sense of the term, not differentiating between greywing, clearwing and dilute. So, all these chicks will be either greywing/dilute or dilute/dilute, to be more specific. Did I get that right? And then if there is cinnamon thrown on top of it all, that is a separate gene. So I will still be interested to see what this chick ends up looking like. Is this the plum-eyed chick we were talking about before? I've been waiting to see a photo of her out of the nest.

He or she is cute!