Finnie

I don't know what happened, I guess I thought I had plenty of time, and then all of a sudden, they were all sold. And while they were still in the nest, I was spending all my time with them trying to tame them, so I thought I would take pictures later... I never even realized I had no pictures of this lot until I went to post about selling them, and I didn't have any pictures to put in! :kiss: :star: It was pretty overwhelming having so many birds, though, and I was worried about being stuck with all of them, so pictures was the last thing on my mind, and I honestly didn't think they'd be gone before I took pictures. So, Ratzy, you sold one of yours, and you're keeping one. What about the other two? Did you ever have a second round?

Some updated photos of the 3 babies I've kept. Nelly, on the left, and Riley. 4 months old and moulting! And Kelpie. (The name Kelpie means 'the color of seaweed') All three of them are from Colleen and Sean's clutch. Riley is my first hatchling ever, so I'm glad I kept him.

you are so right Finnie and she was there for ten days. Then theoretically, the youngest puppy could have been 10 days younger than the oldest! Although, it probably it would have taken Maggie at least a day or two to accept his advances. But even 7 or 8 days, the youngest would be too premature. Most breeders wouldn't allow the matings to continue over that many days, for this reason. Since your breeder didn't think they were mating at all, she probably didn't think it was too much time. It's just like with budgies, though. Just because you don't see anything does not mean they are not mating when you are not looking. Well, I hope everything goes smoothly from here on out. They sure are really cute! :star:

I'm sorry to hear about little Moo. As we all know, the occasional loss is all part of the breeding process. Sad, but inevitable. On the bright side, a litter of 7 will take much less toll on Maggie than a litter of 10. Kaz, you and Maggie will have to make sure you get your rest, and keep up your strength. I hope all goes well with this leadlight project. I've been thinking about what you said about the owner of the stud dog not witnessing any ties. I think you mentioned she just had them together in a run for a few days. My guess is that she wasn't very observant, and she missed a number of ties over that period. (Who knows, maybe all the ties were at night.) That would account for some of the puppies being more premature- they were conceived a few days later and didn't have as much time to grow. Just how long was Maggie at the breeder's?

Me, too, hee hee!

How do all of you get your pictures small enough to fit the avatar requirements? If I use my computer's editing, I can crop/resize a picture to get it down to 100 pixels x 100 pixels, but then the file size is way over 10Kb. The only way I can get it under 10, is to make the picture really really tiny. I can get it the right size using Photobucket's editing, but then I can't get an image from Photobucket to go to the avatar location of the forum. (It keeps coming back that I've used an incorrect code or something- I've tried every code photobucket gives me! :question: ) I know I must be doing something wrong, because I am quite technically illiterate. Maybe it's because all the pictures on my computer are saved as too large of files? I'm not even sure how I got the cloud picture to work, except that I started with a picture that didn't matter how it was cropped. So is there anybody who can teach me the right way to do this?

That's awesome! I have lemon balm, I didn't know I could give it to them before! :question:

Yup, they gnaw on it, just like they do on wood! :bow:

Plus, you can go to their member profile, and in statistics, it will tell you when they were last seen. In Jimmy's case, it was 2 days ago. Does that really count as missing?

She is very cute. Sootie is a fine name. A lot of us have a user name that is the same as our bird's. :question: cheers, Finnie

Love this picture! When I logged off yesterday, I thought the count was nearly done, at 4. But 8? Wow! No wonder she looked like she was going to explode! Congratulations. Now you and Maggie have your work cut out for you, huh?

I just want to say, Thank you, RIP. That's awesome that you took the time to pick through all this and make sure to set us straight. Good job!

okay, I'll wait :ohmygod: And I'm sorry I made you cry. :rofl: :laughter:

Time to add a few more pictures. This is Neil ( On the left, sky blue opaline grey wing male.) He also has the pied spot on the back of his head, so I'm counting on him being split for recessive pied. :hurryup: Next picture is older, and behind him is Aveline, a dominant pied violet cinnamon wing hen . Aveline again, on the left: Here is Ariel, in between Neil and Aveline: Ariel has a little bit of a gender identity crisis. In the store, I thought she looked male, but when s/he was caught up, I was sure there was white on her cere. I've watched her a lot the last 6 months, and always walk away feeling that the ring area around her nostrils was too white for her to be a boy. HOWEVER, after all this time, the other hens her age have gotten tan and brown ceres, and Ariel's is still the pinky purple color. And Ariel has really bonded with another hen, always preening and feeding each other.This is the first time I've noticed that in the picture above, she looks really male. I'm thinking I might have to come up with a better name, Ariel doesn't quite fit for a boy. Photobucket has stopped responding, so I'm going to have to post this much before it gets lost, and then hopefully add more pics when photobucket behaves itself. :ohmygod: Photobucket working again. More pics of Ariel. In the left one, the top half of cere looks paler: Here s/he is with her best friend, Teagen. Unfortunately, I don't have any more shots of Ariel that show the cere. Teagen is even harder to get photos of. I can't get near her with the camera, or she flies away. So digital macro setting rarely works. Sometimes using flash will catch her in motion, but I took 80 some pictures yesterday, and here are the only few decent ( ) ones. My guess for Teagen is light green opaline recessive pied (or maybe a combination pied?), with grey wing. I'd like for her to be spangle, but no matter how hard I stare at her markings, I don't seem to be able to shrink them down to the tips of the feathers! :rofl: Well, that's it for now. I've shrunk my flock down to 15. I think the only ones left to get up here are Aiden and the 3 bubs I kept, Riley, Nelly and Kelpie. I'm waiting on getting some good pin-head shots of those 3. :laughter:

GB, can I ask what you do with the baby during the 10 minutes he spends with you? You mentioned he was in your pocket at one point. Do you put them in your pocket and go about your usual business, or do you spend the 10 minutes actively playing with them? And then at what age do you keep them out with you for longer periods? The reason I ask is because I'm having no luck hand taming my babies. While they're still in the nest, I handle them a lot, and they are fine with that, but as soon as they fledge, I'm looked on as a horrible monster, and they panic and fly away.

Hi Ratzy, I just now saw this. Are they doing better?

I suppose she could be done laying, or just having a delay between eggs, but it would probably be a good idea to check on her more than once a day. Tap on the box so she comes out, and check to make sure she can move around normally without any problems. If she can't, you may need to call a vet. I hope it turns out to be nothing.

It sounds to me like the hen is the one you have to watch out for, if she is doing the attacking. I would take her out, and put the father back in to feed the chicks.

Violet is a color adding factor, Grant. When you have a sky blue or a mauve bird, it can have the violet factor, and you can't usually see it. But when you have a cobalt bird, the violet factor changes the color to the violet we all seem to love, and that's when you have a visual violet. So when we say we have a violet bird, that's just a way to say we have a cobalt bird with the violet factor. Here's some more pictures I was able to get outside today, hopefully they are better. I'm leaning towards that recessive pied to NOT be a spangle. I know a lot of times when I look at my recessive pieds, they seem like they might be, but I guess that is just the way the rec. pie gene affects the markings. If you look at her secondary flight feathers, they seem to be filled in all the way. Also, I've NEVER seen a spangle bird at any pet store I've gone to, so it would be odd for her to be the only one. On the other hand, out of 16 stores I canvassed yesterday, she was one out of only 4 cinnamons, so who's to say she couldn't be the only spangle?

Thanks, Anne. I'll keep my fingers crossed that the color intensifies during this moult. Yeah, I figured that if I can't even tell in real life, a computer picture probably isn't going to be clearer.

Well, I think you guys are all gonna want to lynch me- all four of these babies are sold now, and I never took any more pictures of them! In fact, other than the ones I'm keeping for future breeding purposes, I've sold every one of the babies that hatched this year. I had 21 babies hatch, and I've kept 3. For a while there, I thought I was never going to be able to sell any of them. I took a dozen or so to a bird fair back in March, and only sold 1 bird the whole day. Then I had a few sales trickle in from various ads I had around, but I thought that at this rate, I was going to have to get out of budgie breeding completely. No point making baby birds I can't sell. Then yesterday a lady followed up on a contact from a while back, and she bought 4 birds, and then today I went to another bird fair, and sold all the rest of the babies, plus a couple of others I decided to "cull". That makes 10 birds sold this weekend! ( As a reward, I bought myself a couple of new hens for my cinnamon line.) I've decided that if I try to pace the rate at which I allow the birds to breed, I should be able to continue to enjoy this fun and interesting hobby. As for the three babies I have left, they are showing signs of moulting, so I will put up some current pictures in a day or two, once they get those cute pinny heads.

It's my intention to get pictures of all my birds up, little by little as I am able to get decent pictures of them. Since I got two new hens today, this seems like a good time add the next installment. Picture quality is not that great, but what you are seeing is one violet cinnamon recessive pied, and one yf2 sky blue opaline with either grey wings or cinnamon wings. I can't quite decide if they look greyer or browner. She's going through her first moult right now, so maybe her adult feathers will be more defined in their color. What I've really really been wanting to find is a cinnamon opaline, and it would probably be too good to be true for her to be one. But at least the whiter hen is definitely cinnamon, so I think I will just have to breed my own line of cinnamon opalines.

Your fences look very nice, Dave. It adds a nice clean, finished touch.

Time for an update. There must have been two clear eggs in a row, because there was a 6 day gap between chicks #2 and 3. Then I had two hatch on consecutive days, March 14th and March 15th. So the two oldest are huge and the two youngest are tiny. There are still two more eggs that might hatch, or might not. We should know in a few days. In the mean time, it looks like the one above that's got his wings stretched out might be a dommie pied, and the oldest one looks normal to me, but it's another grey wing!

It's wonderful that the new cat is fitting in so well!