kochy23

thanks amy s its good to get feedback it lets me know just where im at and where i can improve, im hoping to have more done this weekend so i will keep those photos rolling in!!!

thanks everyone for the comments, maddy i got the materials from a building supplier over here called "placemakers". i did cut the trees back yesturday but aftter reading all of the comments i think i may even cut them back further the is currently about a 1.8m gap between trees and aviary, im getting a dog soon also so hopefully that will sort the rats out! and kaz the birdroom floor is 15mm ply raised up on piles, the flight is on pavers with pavlock brushed into them to set them in place with untreated wood shavings over top which makes it easy for me to clean flight floor. although i might pull the floor up and layer a concrete one soon just to be more secure. and as for the birds gnawing the wood i havnt actually had any problems with that before they are usually just interested in gnawing on the branches they use for perches but i will look out for any signs of it.

hey kaz thanks for the suggestions, i actually thought of the tree thing after i took the photos and have trimmed them back quite considerably, having the new the pitched roof over top of the flight will hopefully eliminate any risk of rats getting anywhere near the birds and ive also double "skinned" the netting that is there with a 45mm cavity between the layers so that even if something was to get onto natting they couldnt reach the birds anyway. im at the point right now that im not taking anymore chances with the birds welfare. ive spent too much time and money to lose good birds to pests!!!!

okay time for a much needed update. ive been working on avairy today and made a few upgrades and i feel its well on its way to being completed. heres some photos: ive completely enclosed one side with ply to create an area for the birds to hide in bad weatherand keep out of the sun etc.. ive lined the bottom half of the flight so to protect the birds from wind and to stop those w@#4ker rats from climbing the netting! a view of the sheltered corner the other corner. next stage of the build is to do the pitched roof which i can hopefully do next weekend. i think whats been done so far is a 100% improvement to what i had before im excited to be so close to having the birds back out in it its been awefully quiet without hearing them chattering away outside!

they are very nice birds twisted, did you breed them yourself or did you get them from a breeder? id be very stoked with them if i were you.

thanks alot for that info kaz, handy to know. another question while im here what does the expression direction feathering mean? even if someone could post a picture as an example that would be great!

hey i have some basic questions to do with genetics and colour varieties etc in budgies. 1. i understand that green is dominant over blue and so on but lets say if i was to pair a green to a blue what would i get from their progeny? 2.if you have a bird that is heavily flecked but is otherwise a very good looking bird how would you go about eliminating that trait? if anyone could post some charts of the basic genetic tables that would be great im just trying to get my head around all of it ive read quite a bit of it on here to do with albinos yf and the like but not the basic colours. \cheers

thanks hilly and splat. yeah the pitch roof will top it off i feel, ill be doing more work on it this weekend, my birds are currently still at dads which is good because his avaury is completely finished, which will give me the time i require it can be a pain at times not having the time to work on it but ill get there, all going to plan when i alter the flight i can reuse alot of the materails from that for the new roof.

i posted him on here awhile back but had to put him up again hes just come through his moult and i think hes looking the best he ever has!

here are the long awaited photos sorry for the delay. the view from my birdroom out into my flight which i plan to completely line one side of to protect the birds from the weather etc. and heres my birdroom which im hoping to expand out and maybe even possibly allow for and indoor flight if money allows haha the front on view of my aviary im planning to put a pitched roof over top of it so the birds have more head room and will be more weather tight just a side view and a back view and thats all the pictures for now will update as i have done more work to it, any comments are more than welcome!!!

the birdroom is really starting to come together splat looks awesome id love one like that!!!

well done splat i hope when i start to show ill have this sort of success

i must apologise to all those waiting for pictures, ive been really slack lately with updating this post! i promise that i will update it this week with some pictures so everyone can see the progress ive made

hi awhile ago alot of you may remember me saying that rats got into my aviary through a small hole in the roof? after losing a few birds i decided to fix the problem (i was unaware there was a hole untill i found my birds dead ) which led to me deciding to revamp and redesign my aviary its not that old to begin with but after seeing other members aviaries and ones on the net ive decided that i want to change it up. so ive moved my birds out and shifted them over to my dads to his avairy while the renovating takes place, the plan is to extend the back of my bird room so i can fit more breeding cages in, my current dimensions in the birdroom are 2400x1200 i want to increase that to more like 2400x1800 i think that extra 600mm will make a world of difference, also my flight currently has a flat roof over top of it which functions okay but isnt that aethetically pleasing, so i plan to make that into a pitched roof which will also give it more height flying room for my birds, and make it look awhole lot nicer, also the whole thing needs a paint (i never got around to it the first time around, tut tut ) ill be able to post some pictures up tommorrow of my progress and where im at so far and hopefully you guys could even give me some opinions? cheers matt.

its more the other way around here the pet shop birds are usually average and very overpriced

nice birds you have there maddy good score for 10bucks too

me and my son hes 1 year old now this was when he was younger

id most definitely agree it is sometimes hard with budgies although ive met a few breeders who were willing to help me out with advice and a good deal for birds but the majority want too much and seem to forget that helping out begginers will only help the hobby in years to come. i wouldnt say that i know alot about budgies in fact i know little but we all start out not knowing anything dont we? lately i sold some culls which i sold for cheap and all the people i sold them too i made sure that i shared whatever knowledge i could to help and a few even asked me for information regarding joining up to the local club! as for auctions.. im yet to attend one but there are a few coming up that i might make the effort to go see, whether i can afford whats on offer is another story mind you.........

oh yes dean dont worry i will be getting even thats for sure!!!

i live in the country so coulod be anywhere maesie, ive got one trap down and bait, i should get some more traps to help the cause

they sound likie very handy dogs to have kaz. it is a pity i dont live closer. i just lost another to her wounds:sad: ill be making a trip to the vet tomorrow. hopefully the bait sorts em out

i went out to my aviary yesturday morning to find 3 birds dead on the floor of my aviary all with a leg missing. on close inpection i found a gap in my netting after spending some time fixing it up i inpected some of the surviving birds only to find that a few have had claws taken off aswell as parts of thier toes. its really depressing and i even contemplated chucking the whole hobby in, the surviving birds are obviously shaken up and are terrified, ive gone and brought some rat poison and have started the first round of baiting aswell as making sure that the aviary is 100% pest proof now. i dont have any cats or dogs so there is no other pets to worry about when it comes to the poison, im keeping a close eye on one of the budgies as it doesnt seem to be coping very well ive m oved her into my breeding room in the hopes that she may come around so im hopeful.

being a builder, ive built a few cow sheds and after we pour the concrete floors and spray a liquid sealant over the floor that seeps in and makes it so **** is easy to wash off and the concrete is alot easier to clean and wont stain i can find out the name of the stuff if anyone wants to know its kind of expensive from memeory but that was because a cowshed floor is such a vast area id imagine it wouldnt be too costly being aviary floor arent that big

with the bottom of my flights i just went to a local sawmill and picked up a few bags of wood shavings so when its time to clean i just scoop the shavings out and lay a new bed down it may save you the hassle of scraping down concrete? untreated shavings of course

yeah fair enough splat, thats about the time igot mine. my first birds igot late august were just pet types and they went down within a month of having them and being new to budgies a just assumed that the show types i brought in october would do the same, im learning now that isnt the way it works and correct me if im wrong but show types must be a little more sensitive na d not as hardy as the pet types. its okay though ill just bide my time and wait for the birds to be ready i have all the time in the world