SunshineE

Thanks GB :-) I will now seriously consider moving him inside with me. The hard part of the equation is convincing my mum!! She's never been a fan of having them in the house when they could be in the aviary, but I'm sure I can convince her as he is my original budgie and I'm sure she secretly loves him almost as much as me!!

Hi guys, I've been wondering about my boy Blanc for a while now. His partner died in 2008 and he hasn't even looked at another hen since. He seems depressed, is that possible?? He gets on fine with all the other birds in the aviary, but he doesn't really interact with any of them much, instead he just sits by himself with his wings sort of dropped down by his sides and resting on the perch. He looks a bit scruffy at the moment and I just assumed that he was moulting because that's what it looked like, but he's been like that for almost a year now and I'm wondering if its normal to look more scruffy as they get older? (He turned seven in January) Should I bring him inside in a smaller cage? I originally had him and his partner in a cage inside when I got them and we got the aviary after my brothers' birds had chicks. We used to keep them in our bedrooms at night and then put the three cages together in the hall with their doors open so they could wander about. (it was so funny to see the three boys partying under the table and the three girls alternating between cages!!) He's very tame and I'm wondering if he would be okay in a cage by himself as he doesn't interact with the others anyway. Any opinions would be appreciated :-)

Our original breeding hen hatched twins in her second ever clutch. That was March 6 2006. On of them obviously didn't have enough room in the egg and has what i like to call "scolliosis" because his tail is twisted. He's called Wonka (for obvious reasons), but he has lived a happy and healthy life with no problems at all to date. We gave the other twin away. But yes, it definitely can be done, even with an inexperienced hen like ours, we were pretty impressed with her.

sorry about that!! I had resized them but it appears that i uploaded the originals rather than the resized ones, oops :-)

okay, here are some pictures, have been away and they have grown a bit so these are the latest ones. Chick 1: (sorry, fewer photos, was less camera friendly than chick 2! ) http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab355/sunshineblanc93/Screenshot2011-02-10at34709PM.png http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab355/sunshineblanc93/Screenshot2011-02-10at34705PM.png http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab355/sunshineblanc93/Screenshot2011-02-10at34715PM.png http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab355/sunshineblanc93/Screenshot2011-02-10at34722PM.png Chick 2: http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab355/sunshineblanc93/Screenshot2011-02-10at34734PM.png http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab355/sunshineblanc93/Screenshot2011-02-10at34729PM.png http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab355/sunshineblanc93/Screenshot2011-02-10at34657PM.png http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab355/sunshineblanc93/Screenshot2011-02-10at34654PM.png http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab355/sunshineblanc93/Screenshot2011-02-10at34650PM.png http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab355/sunshineblanc93/Screenshot2011-02-10at34645PM.png http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab355/sunshineblanc93/Screenshot2011-02-10at34641PM.png Also, we have a chick that came out of the nesting box about two months ago and is starting it's first moult. I always thought he had a yellow tinge around his face and on the underside of his tail but now he's moulting i can see it is definitely yellow on his head and on the feathers under his tail that are normally white on other blue budgies, other than this yellow colouring he is a normal cobalt bird. I am assuming this means he is a type 1 yellow face, but i'm not sure as we've only had type 2 before (his parents are normal cobalt hen and a light green cinnamon cock) hopefully these photos are a bit more help...

Our budgie Pippin died during the night. He was our original baby. Pippin B: 25 November 2005 D: 31 January 2011 He got very sick very suddenly and he leaves a hole in our hearts. He was a beautiful bird, winning first place and champion bird in the Dalwallinu show in 2006. Love you darling boy. http://i879.photobuc...3/Picture10.png http://i879.photobuc...3/Picture13.png

Hi all, first of all: what sort is Houdini? he is the greeny one in the middle of the picture http://i879.photobuc...1at123818PM.png And this is his partner Tex (because she massacred another hen's clutch), what type is she? http://i879.photobuc...1at123810PM.png They are currently in the aviary, but they were in a separate cage by themselves for a month before the eggs were laid and i only put them back in the aviary after the eggs were laid (because we were going away and the people looking after them found it easier that way) This is their first clutch (I have fostered eggs and then chicks to Tex before though so she is a good mum) These two are a pair and have two chicks which are starting to get feathers but I am at a complete loss to work out what sort the chicks are (still working on getting those photos on my computer). I will try to describe them: the oldest one seems to have light wing markings with green coming through on it's wings (possibly opaline??) it has a completely yellow underside though (ie: no body colour) the other one is a lighter yellow with the same light markings and green coming through the wings, but this one appears to have some colour on its underside. I will get photos of the chicks soon i hope but if anyone can go by description it would be great.

Hi all, We currently have a pair with five chicks, the last of which hatched today. There were six eggs in the clutch and all of them hatched. The eldest baby was six days old when I noticed that it had a yellowish lump in "in" its crop. The chick died at nine days old but hadn't grown since it was six days old. When it died I noticed that its organs seemed to have been bleeding but this only happened in its last day (you know how their skin is see through and you can see their insides). I can remember having another chick with the same sort of thing about two years ago and I was wondering what could have caused it. The parents are not related and this is the hen's first clutch. (The parents weren't related the other time either). Has anyone else had this in any of their chicks? I can't see anything wrong with the other babies at the moment and last time it was only one baby in a clutch of five.

Thanks everyone for you opinions I'm glad she hasn't got anything wrong with her! I was worried at first but she seems normal apart from that. hahaha I'm glad someone likes her name, my Dad said I should have called her Banana!! She looks exactly like my first budgie, Sunshine and I'm really trying to tame her before she gets too old so I have another budgie who doesn't bite! My fingers have been traumatised by one hen in particular! Thanks from me an Mango

She is!!! She has a ladder fetish too! haha There a ladder in her cage and she loves to lift it up and drop it back down so it makes a lound banging noise and tinkles the bell! So cute. She was skittering over my keyboard today and kept pushing the "m" key down with her head, almost like she knows her name starts with M!!!

RIP, thanks for the clarification No I did not get your PM, when did you send it? My server is very unreliable and it drifts in and out often so maybe something happened there, not sure though...

She doesn't have any bars anywhere- she's a lutino but she's definitely a baby still, her feathers are still really fine, ie: she hasn't had her first moult yet. By going brown i mean it's going tan around her nostrils and white over the rest of her cere. I've picked the gender of all the budgies we've bought correctly for four years and I've had a lutino hen from a chick before too so i know what to look for, it's definitely a "hen" white-brown, not a recessive or lutino cock purpleish pink. The photos make it look like the pinkish cere thing for boys, but the nostrils and across the rest of the cere are turning white-brown. This is her being brave: This is her burrowing (sorry not a very good picture!):

wow- that helps heaps! thanks. I'm sure she's a grey now i've seen some comparison photos, HEr cheek patches are not that really dark blue/violet on the mauves so she must be a grey. I agree that the blue sheen is a fault but I didn't get her to show, my brother fell in love with her the moment he saw her and we were looking for a partner for one of our boys who has been depressed ever since his partner died so I hope he likes her too! Anyway Thank you all for your input and advice, I've learned heaps as well as what colour Jemima is

I had a look before when i was trying to figure out what she is and her tail feathers look completely black... what does this mean, is she a grey variety or mauve. I didn't know there were different varieties of grey before so i'm even more confused :huh:I've just been looking through other topics and I found this one:http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/index....=26306&st=0I did understand most of what was said in this topic however the addition of this other possibility only serves to confuse me more!!If it helps to say that Jemima looks just like the budgie referred to in this topic then... She looks just like the budgie the topic is about Is this a possibility for Jemima? Could she be grey carrying a violet gene??Also she is Jemima, as in Jemima Puddle-Duck

She is very young but her cere is starting to turn brown so i guess that puts her being either out of the nesting box a while or a fast developer. I thought the same thing but she only does it when i cup my hands. The rest of the time she is quite happy to climb all over my shoulders or run around on my desk! she's soooooo cute!!!

Hi all, thanks for the advice i'm still a bit confused when it comes to cheek patches though... You see this is Jemima, the budgie I'm asking about. These photos are the right colour so they should be a good guide to go by on her colouring. The thing is... we had a grey budgie before and she had blue cheek patches. This is her. She can't have been mauve because her partner was a skyblue recessive pied and if she was mauve she couldn't have had mauve babies with him because he had no dark factor, the darkest their babies could have been in this case was cobalts, but they had grey babies too so this is where i'm coming form. Why has a grey budgie (proven through breeding) go violet/blue cheek patches?? and how can you be sure Jamima is a mauve based on her cheek patches in that case? If anyone can see where i've gon wrong please lt me know so i can improve my understanding, this has just made me very confused.

I recently bought a hand-raised baby budgie. She's a lutino and I love her already. I've called her Mango I was playing with her the first day I got her and she seemed to want to snuggle in my hand cupped to my stomach. I have had babies before so I know that they like to snuggle when they're young. At first I thought it was just this but then she started pushing her head down into where my hand connected with my stomach and started flicking her feet almost like she was trying to flick my hand away, but when i took my hand away she stayed on it and just pressed her head into my palm and did the same thing. She's not scratching herself, just flicking her feet on my hands. What is this?? Is there something wrong or is it just a quirky characteristic??

yes, whoops... :fingerscrossed:

We recently bought a hen. She appears to be grey but she also has a slight bluish tinge. Her cheek feathers are blue and her tail feathers are black. Is she a mauve or a grey. I tried to do a bit of research but it just confused me. My research told me that greys have grea cheek feathers and black tail feathers while mauves have blue/violet cheek feathers and blue tail feathers. However, we had a grey opaline hen a few years ago and she had blue cheek feathers????? Any ideas?

Unfortunately she didn't make it. Another problem with giving medicine in the water is that they have to drink it, which I don't think she did. I don't think she drank anything since I brought her inside and therefore she couldn't get the antibiotics she really needed. Thank you everyone for your support and suggestions, I'm hopeful this sort of thing won't happen again.

He did say he thought there was another problem but I can't remember what he said because he thought out loud and I got confused about what thing was what. Anyway he did say that the bioxytetracycline was an antibiotic so it's obviously treating a bacterial disease as you say. I have a microscope and we looked at microorganisms in biology last year. I couldn't see anything that looked like coccidiosis when i looked. THis was before we took her to the vet and he said he didn't think it was that so... fingers crossed. I hope it works, i feel so helpless at not being able to do more, it's so frustrating not being able to ask the bird what is wrong.

UPDATE: We took her to the vet this evening and he said that it sounds like air sac mites. He has given her invermectin and told us to put bioxytetracycline in the water. He also said to treat the whole aviary so i have spent the last half hour catching each of the budgies and putting a teensy drop of invermectin on each of their heads so it's absorbed through the skin and I have also put the bioxytetracycline in their water. We cleaned the aviary on Friday. We haven't sprayed them with water so the floor hasn't been wet, instead we hang a wet towel over the end near the air conditioner outlet fan so that the air blowing through the towel is cold. I will update tomorrow morning, hopefully she will make it through the night...

Hi everyone, One of our budgies is sick. I found her sitting by herself on the bottom of the aviary all fluffed up this morning. She had very slightly soiled feathers around the vent but seemed to have lost a lot of weight overnight. She was perfectly fine yesterday when i was checking them all. We have had two become sick and die suddenly (within a day and a half) with these symptoms in the two weeks ago and since, we have changed the water three times a day and cleaned everything regularly. I have brought her inside in a cage by herself and put a lamp near the cage to keep her warm. I have also put sulfa in her water in an effort to help the diarrhea, but she hasn't improved since this morning. Please, anyone who has seen this before, I need advice.

Our first pair ever to breed did exactly this. The hen raised two clutches successfully like this, her second clutch even containing a set of twins. She chewed the newspaper up in one corner and said her eggs there. She was out best hen ever and we still have two of her sons, a granddaughter and a great-granddaughter in our aviary, all just as good. Whenever we wanted to clean the cage we just cut out a corner of the newspaper we put in and placed the eggs back where they were. Here are some pictures of her first clutch on the cage floor. (sorry about the quality, I wasn't a crack shot at the time) This is the best picture i have of her second clutch, they're about to fledge. Hope this is helpful. I'm quite glad to know that other hens do it to.

I'm not quite sure, but I have successfully bred the following relations without trouble: Mother and Son Father and Daughter Uncle and Niece I have also had a brother and sister pair have chicks with no problems, but as they only had one clutch I can't truthfully say if this was luck or not. I did have a set of twins pair up while I was away once, but their chicks stopped developing at about ten days and eventually died when they were three weeks old still looking like ten-day-old chicks. I think other members would know much more about this than me, but for now, here's my experience.