defieldsfamily

150. when the jewellery you buy is all in the shape of budgies (recently bought a gorgeous brooch shaped like a budgie....searching for earrings to match! ) ('> ()) /"

131. When you go grocery shopping and have a special part of the grocery cart that is just for veggies and fruit for your birds. <---- me today!

Thank you for looking at my pictures Would I call the first one a yellow faced olive green dom pied or just olive green dom pied? (Sorry....still trying to learn the right nomenclature). As for the second one, now that I look a little closer I think you are right...but how would I differentiate between a heavily marked clearwing and a grey wing? Is he also opaline? The help is very much appreciated...thank you

I don't know enough about budgie genetics but I just wanted to say he's a gorgeous bird....such delightful colouring. The people on this forum know SO much about budgies so I'm sure someone will be able to help you.

I have been a medical microbiologist for 25 years in a very large private laboratory system. I also teach microbiology, medical terminology, lab math and specimen collection and handling as evening courses at a local university college. I also am very active in the labour movement here in British Columbia, Canada and serve as a chief shop stewaard in my workplace, am an elected exucutive officer in my union local, I am chair of our negotiations committee and I am Chair of the occupational health & safety committee. In addition, I am singlehandedly organizing a huge medical trade show to be held in Oct of 2010 which will involve biotech vendors from all over North America and will host 300-350 delegates. Add to that the fact that I have three children (ages 6,9 and 16) an you might say I'm a wee bit busy! okay! Who is next?

Can you post some pictures? That would help a great deal :thumbs_up:

In the following pictures, there are two predominantly yellow dom pieds...but what colour are they? I don't seem to have much luck with resizing picturs on here appropriately so I'll list the direct links. Thanks in advance for your help. These first four are of Sunshine (Sunny) with his cagemates Elly and Bubbles http://i960.photobucket.com/albums/ae81/md...ds/DSCN1114.jpg http://i960.photobucket.com/albums/ae81/md...ds/DSCN1113.jpg http://i960.photobucket.com/albums/ae81/md...ds/DSCN1109.jpg http://i960.photobucket.com/albums/ae81/md...ds/DSCN1105.jpg And these are of Piper with his cagemate Splash. Splash is a gorgeous sky violet but his colours haven't come out properly in these pics. Previous owners did a real hackjob on Piper's wings so hope you can see them properly. http://i960.photobucket.com/albums/ae81/md...giveusakiss.jpg http://i960.photobucket.com/albums/ae81/md...s/PiperBack.jpg http://i960.photobucket.com/albums/ae81/md...haveasurpri.jpg

I just cannot get a good photograph of one of my pieds ...the colours come out strange both with or without a flash. He's a dominanat pied. His face and main body colour is a lovely lemon yellow. Where he has patches of colour on his body it is an olive green. His flight feathers on his wings are pure white. He has the normal banding/striping of my other pieds. From this desription, can you tell me what mutation he is?

So glad to hear he's on the mend. He's very lucky to be so well loved! I'm a microbiologist so yes, the gram negtive part is correct...it refers to the staining characteristics of the bcteria itself. Typically, the vet would have used the term gram negative to refer to enteric bacteria. Hope that helps

Keep in mind I'm a relative newbie but I hadn't heard of feeding budgies whey protein...but it sounds like a great idea. How much, how often and how do you include this in their diet? I see it's horse whey powder you are using so that must mean there isn't a specific one for birds? I'll have to see if I can get something like that here in western Canada. Kaz, you said you don't believe in budgie pellets...I'd be interested to know why. I give mine an enriched seed but so often I see owners and breeders who advocate a pellet only diet and I don't know why. My birds get an assortment of fresh veggies and fruit and egg each week plus the enriched seed mix. Your thoughts would be most appreciated. Interesting about the guinea pig pellets...I might give that a try. Why is this better than budgie pellets? Sorry for so many questions but I'm still learning !!!!

Thanks splat The two males are adults ...one came to me as a found bird so no idea how old and the other was given to me and I think is 2 or 3. The other female is about 4-5 months old and they are good with her so I'll make the switch and keep my fingers crossed

The three chicks from my last pair that bred are about 7-8 weeks old now and the cage "the family" is in is a wee bit small for a family of five. I'd like to transfer the oldest one to another cage that has room that currently houses her older sister from an earlier clutch and two other males. Is she old enough at 8 weeks that this transfer would be okay?

Prayers for little Cosmo

Gorgeous birds!!!!!

I saw a budgie today that looked like a normal grey but had a blue tail. What might this mutation be?

okay...relative newbie here with a question.... Pink cere so what makes Mr E a male? Do the cere's of a recessive pied look different to others? I ask because I have a 6 week old rec pied amongst the new chicks and have been called it "her" but now I might be wrong.

Oh my, that poor bird in that picture! Thankfully it looks nothing like that but they are just sufficiently different from my other females to make me wonder. Thanks

Thanks Liv , I'll try to take some photos this week. I had no idea they shed their cere. If it's hormonal, then maybe that's why both females in this cage look this way?

The cere's on the two of my females look different to the other females I have and I'm wondering what could cause it and if it is of any significance. If you were to imagine the cere as having three dimensions with depth meaning how far it sticks out from the flat plane of their face, I would describe theirs as being shorter (top to bottom) and having more depth (meaning sticking out from their faces more). My other birds' ceres are all relatively the same ...fairly flat to their faces...but these two are not so. There's no crusting or scaling and the birds seem happy and healthy. Any thoughts?

I couldn't agree more! I have only ever bought one bird from a petshop and it was completely mentally unstable. It would freak out disproportionately to any situation and eventually ended up killing itself by slamming itself into the bars of the cage one too many times. Come to think of it, this same pet store sold my kids a hamster that only travelled in circles...it was incapable of running straight ahead...always counterclockwise circles. Pet stores aren't known for reputable breeding but I do know of one bird shop whose owners are phenomenal breeders but it's a small family owned shop and they were breeders LONG before they opened the shop.

Welcome! :rip: That's a very pretty picture (with the pretty sparkly effects) of your Giselle...wish I knew how to do that..lovely bird!

So sorry kazoo...I know it's heartbreaking. I had one chick die trying to hatch and it made me feel so guilty for not being able to help. :rip: But keep your chin up...my two went on to have four gorgeous healthy chicks that they've done a champion job raising...just took them a while to figure it out with the first tries.

Elly and Sunny (along with their cagemate Bubbles) are amongst my newest birds and all came to me together so I have left them as cagemates. Took a little while for the two females to stop scrapping but they seem to have gotten their act together now. Well, today was cage cleaning day - everything taken out of all the cages, scrubbed down and sterilized before being put back - so I spent the entire afternoon working with all the birds. What I noticed Elly doing that I haven't seen her do before was to get really close to him on the perch and then slide her head under either his chest or right under his body and keep pressing up on him with the top of her head...almost like she was head butting him over and over again. Then they'd preen each others heads for a bit and then she would lift up the foot closest to him and push it up against his wing almost like she was trying to keep him a leg length away from her and she'd just hold her foot against his side for a while...then she'd dip her head down and start all over again...always in EXACTLY the same pattern. He didn't seem to object so I didn't make her stop but any thoughts on what this means? Perhaps those with much more experience than me have seen this before? I'm not looking to breed any birds right now and so they don't have a nesting box nor does their cage have anywhere that she might use for a nest. Also got two new birds this past week...a beautiful sky violet male and one I'm going to need your help with figuring out the mutation but I think he might be my first greywing...lovey lovely birds!

Yes, all from the same clutch same parents...Pop's development has been much slower however. Their baby from a prior clutch is a normal skyblue.

I'm sorry GB :sadsorry:But thank you for sharing your experiences