defieldsfamily

okay...Little chick is doing great...full crop, good colour and fairly active...three days old now. But it looks like I might have a new problem brewing between the parents. When I came home tonight the cock has a bit of dried blood on the side of his face under his eye (not from the eye itself) and I thought there might have been a faint mark on the hen's abdomen but she wouldn't let me look. My firt instinct is to separate them just in case but here are my concerns: 1. The male seems so instrumental in the care of the hen and chicks especially around feeding and with the odds already stacked against them I'd hate to make it harder for the hen...no nestbox and all. 2 This pair is not in any way hand tamed...they were rehomed to me as abandoned birds and if I try to get him out there is going to be a huge amount of flapping and flying and chasing and I am worried the baby is going to get hurt in the fray. I'm desperate for advice!!!!!!

Is this a good thing? LOL...nah...our family and his family are all good friends

Hmmm...I take all my pictures down the microscope with a digital...what type of microscope do you have?

How are you processing these slides? Are you putting the neat droppings on a slide? Your best bet would be to mix the droppings into a few drops of saline, then add a drop to the glass slide and then coverslip it. Then you can exmine it as a wet mount. I'd guess that the ferning pattern is simply the way the specimen has dried on the slide. Also, your light is ery low...turn it up and you'll see much more Also, what magnification are you using?

Well, it's mid day and the chick has made it through the night!!!! But it was a night to remember....Huge windstorm blew in just after midnight and wreaked havoc. 300 foot firs down over powerlines and roads all over the place. The power was out all night and the house got really cold so I laid there worried about the little chick all night. The electricty was out for probably about 9 or 10 hours. The schools were all closed, roads closed and ferries shut down. My ex husbands house was hit by a falling tree at about 2 am ...ripped off his gutters then went on to land on his boat, his truck and his SUV!!! But it's gorgeous now! Sun is shining, chicky is all warm again and peeping under it's mama. Life is good!

I can't believe it!!!! One egg has hatched! Just hope it makes it through the night. I've turned up the heat in the room to try to help her keep the chick warm. Keep your fingers crossed and send good vibes!

Sadly...still not much to report...I think only one of 7 remains fertile. I'll leave them with her a while longer but losing hope. Sad to see her trying so hard having taken such a difficult path.

Got two new little boys today...a violet spangle and an opaline violet...they are gorgeous. Because of their colour we are naming one Barney (you know, after the big purple dinosaur) but we can't think of a name for the other one. Any ideas?

I'm confused...was the attack made here on this site or was it on Yahoo answers? Either way...I for one have found your help and guidance has taught me many things since I joined this forum which has, in many cases, helped me provide an even better for my birds. To me that doesn't sound like an animal abuser!!!! I try to spoil my birds just like you...I have always appreciated you and your knowledge! Everybody gets what they deserve in this life...and this twit will be no exception. My philosophy is that those who screw enough people over will always end up screwed in the end!!!!

Can you post a picture?

Thanks Finnie I wish I'd kept an online breeding journal for last yeaars breeding. The pictorial progression would have been great. I'm already starting to eye up potential pairs for this spring. Most of my birds are not ones I've bred myself so I have no idea of their parentage and what they might be split to so it's very exciting when you see new chicks with mutions you didn't expect! Like Christmas in the breeding room ...the eggs are like neatly wrapped surprises!

The bars of a cage for budgies should be no more than half an inch between them....this looks much wider bar spacing. It certainly looks like a nice cage but go measure the bars before you spend the money on it. If budget is an issue, you'd be best to find a used cage rather than buy something unsafe.

Currently only have the following two birds on eggs...unintentional breeding, no nest box up. Their nest box is the cage floor. Elly (hen, normal mauve) and Sunshine (cock, olive dominant pied.) Seven egs in nest...some are definately ertile...others are definately not. I failed to write down the dates they were all layed so will leave them with her until end of January before removing them. Not holding out much hope that this will be successful with her choice of nesting spot. (Please tell me I sized them correctly this time! )

Great pictures KAZ...lovely birds

Looks like she has a thing for my husband...she didn't seem scared of him at all so she let him get her. She actually seemed really curious about him...it ws cute! Maybe it will inspire him to become a bird fanatic like me . He did recently express an interest in Bourke parkeets so ya never know!

Jazz got out of the quarantine cage and is still on the loose...she's a very skittish bird. /i'm at the ice arena with my daughter and her friends...hope she goes back in of her own volition by the time I get home!

I've seen this one on the internet, and wondered what the design was like. So you like the t features on it, it's convenient? I did a search for Marchioro U.S., and found lots of items, but none of them was Kaz's nest box. I so far have only found those on their European site. DF, I'm guessing that in Canada, you don't have the heat issues they would be having in Australia. But do you have cold issues? Does it stay warm well enough? Finnie...my birds are all indoors so I m able to control the temp and we don't have any issues with humidity here...it's always dry. It's nice and versatile as you can put the opening and perch on either side and it mounts both inside or outside of the cage...hooks onto horizontal bars easily. And being plastic, it's easy to clean and sterilize between uses. There is a clear plastic insert that fits nicely into the bottom so quick and simple to do any nest box cleaning een when in use with chicks. We havent found them over here yet....but we are looking How much are they there ? Looks small for show budgies. Kaz...it measures 9 inches long, 7 inches tall and 6 inches across. Whaat size do you use for show budgies? I think I paid 11 canadian dollars for it. If you can't find it and want to try one, I don't mind shipping one to you.

If it doesn't stop raining here soon I'm going to go completely snakey! I has poured like a monsoon all day! I hate rain...I'd rather have 10 feet of snow than a day of rain.

I have a nut job of a hen who has chosen to ignore the nest box and lay her eggs on the cage floor in the corner underneath a seed cup. She has layed 9 but broke 2 so she is sitting on 7. I took out the insert from the box (the part with the nest depression) and she let me move her eggs into it as she was having a real problem getting the eggs under her on a flat surface...as soon as she'd get one under her, one would role out the other side. The male hasn't been doing a fabulous job of feeding her but he's trying and to help her along I've made sure to put handfulls of seed, millet sprigs and veggies within easy reach of her when she's on her eggs. This all seems to be helping. I finally found another light to candle the eggs (I lost my usual one) and of the seven, only one looked infertile. Two looked like they are fairly well developed but had big blank spaces (?air bubbles???) at one end which I'm thinking might mean they are no longer viable...is that likely true? Three looked fertile and hopefully fine but one let us see something that gave us a true "aaaaaaaaaaaaawe" moment...a beating baby budgie heart! It was a very beautiful moment for us all....the beginning of a new life...so sweet. Not sure if she'll be able to bring this group of chicks to fruition with the awkward nest choice she has made but we are keeping our fingers crossed.

Yes, that is the type of egg food I bought. Are you mixing it with cooked or raw veggies? How much of it do your birds eat? The Cream of Tweet ingredients are here ...it sounds delicious! LOL

...but how best to serve it to my birds? They also had one there called "Cream of Tweet" ...anyone ever use this? I didn't buy this one but loved the name. :sadsorry:

Well...my experiment to date: I put a small handful in the bottom of both budgie cagiary (too big to call a cage, too small to call an aviary!) and that of the Grand Matriarch of the bird room - Moe, the Cockatiel last night about an hour before it was lights out last night. Moe seems to be enjoying chewing it and continued right away this morning...the budgies seem to have kicked it all out ...tossed or flapped-out I don't know...and the two in the quarantine caage completely ignored it. The kids and I are going to make some bird toys this evening so I might wind some timothy hay into chew balls and hang them in the cage...will let you know how that turns out.

I'm that way with "Up"...my kids watch it but I only see little snippets as I pass through :sadsorry: Glad to hear Qwerty is loving the head scratch!

No....have you ever been to canada?

The colours aren't showing up true to form here..sorry...winter in Canada...not much in the way of bright natural light....bucketing down rain. Blue is the softest powder blue and very pale yellow on face and body (where there isn't blue) The wing markings and bars are very very soft grey. Chick is only 10-11 weeks old. http://i47.tinypic.com/242bsas.jpg http://i49.tinypic.com/ine5qt.jpg http://i46.tinypic.com/21bk7rt.jpg And the next pictures are of Jazz...a light green spangle...5 months...a hen too, right? My first ever spangle...gorgeous bird. Anything else I need to know in terms of her colour/mutation?? http://i47.tinypic.com/2ljt1k9.jpg http://i45.tinypic.com/2r4tuo1.jpg These are my two newest babies!