GrahamJD

Hi Genericblue a good temperature for newlly hatched chicks is about 36°C. i highly recommend that if your going to take day old chicks that you get an incubator or brooder or at least a 'hot box' with a thermostat. budgies from this age are not easy to hand-rear and you must be very dedicated. have you tried using a re-hydration liquid, eg spark, with the newly hatched chicks and leaving them under the hens to keep warm. a word of warning don't feed vetafarm polyaid to baby birds. Vetafarm neocare or kaytee exact might be a better option for feeding or topping up baby budgies than a home made reciepe. you could get some cresteds, like i do, and use them for fosters. this will have 2 benefits 1) they tend to feed chicks that are lethargic who do not vocalise a lot, and 2) the chicks from the cresteds are usually very active and vocal. if fostered under non feeding hens they will often start feeding the crest bred chicks and away they go. graham

As nubbly stated picking up the show cage allows the opportunity to view the bird in a different light, particularly important for the ino varieties. It provides an opportunity to check body colour suffusion, eye colour and tail quill and flight colours eg cinnamon greywings it also provides different perspectives to the bird particularly useful in the top down view to gauge substance. Most judges will use this technique to some extent. i doubt that ring reading is an issue, if you ever judge at a budgie show your focus is elsewhere and apart from checking the ring colour in young bird classes you simply don't have time to read rings. The UK standard show cage size is within millimetres of the Australian cage, they, on average, just have bigger budgies and that is why the cage looks smaller.

Hi all The Gladstone Budgerigar & Cage Bird Society Inc now has a website.The link is www.gladstonecagebirds.com.