Papa Doc Duvalier

Thanksgiving! Sounds like a load of Yankee **** to me. The most pointless day ever! Oh, lets stuff ourselves full of Turkey and then do it all again 20 days later! We've had to endure Halloween, and Valentines day, hope Thanksgiving doesn't become an international holiday, just coz the Yanks do it.....

A couple of years back I settled in Dalat, a French Colonial hill station in Southern Vietnam, it's a beautiful place, but one does need a hobby, so soon after arriving I decided to build an aviary and purchase some birds. The aviary build was the easy part, but where do I get some birds? I scouted around Dalat, through the cobbled stone streets, asking shop keepers in my pidgeon French if they knew where I could buy birds, and without luck, until one guy ushered me out back of his store and into a shed, and there, hanging from the roof were....birds, whole roasted ducks, head and all, dangling from the rafters, there had been something lost in translation. My search continued, Finally an elderly gent told me about his cousin who lived in the country, "He have many, many birds" the old guy assured me, so at 7am the next morning I climbed into his car...an old, old Puegeot 404, and we cluttered along, up into the mountains until we came to a kind of farm property, we walked to the door and the stooped old owner ushered us out into his back shed.....not more dead ducks, I hoped, but to my surprise there were birds, live birds, real birds, my search was over. The man called himself Vu, old Vu must have had 200 birds flying freely around a shed 10ftx20ft, there were finches, canaries, a couple of cockatoos and yes, budgies. I looked at them and the other parrots; Eastern Rosellas and King Parrots, I wanted to ask him how he had got these birds over here, but I knew that this is Vietnam, and foreigners don't ask questions. there were 2 dead finches on the dirt floor, and every now and then, you'd see a couple of mice scurrying here and there, the feed was just wheat, shovelled onto the floor, and the water had a greenish tinge. I purchased 6 budgies - a pair of green spangles and 2 pair of sky blue normals, there were no other choices of colour. I paid the nice man the equivalent of A$150 in US notes which even by Aussie standards was steep, but I reminded myself that these are black marketeers. The birds now have a home in my aviary and the group has now expanded through breeding to number 26. So that is my bad pet shop story.

Actually Black Doctor, I don't have a doctorate at all, but the user name "Papa Doc Duvalier" rolls off the tongue so well....if they ran a university doctorate in all things Budgerigars, now I'd sign up for that one.....

a bird split for recessive will get a blue cere if male. Its only a visual recessive males that dont when we are discussing recessives and ceres. Oh, means the ones I've got are full recessive afterall, always thought that they were splits, thanks for that.

I agree with Golden wings, saves me the typing, the birds with pink ceres will be male, their's will not change to full blue, as they are split for recessive, same with the ino birds, ie; Lutino, albino.

Well I didn't do 6 years at med school to be called Papa Mr. Duvalier!!! LOL, Sorry, just kidding, thanks for the welcome Black Doc

Used to be only the lead based paints that were lethal, they don't make those anymore, but the killrust is oil based, whether that makes a difference or not, I'm not sure.

Hi everyone, I am new on here, just thought that I would intro myself, I've got 26 budgies and just coming on the forum to learn some more and maybe do some posts of my own, great to meet you all.

The one upside about living in a country like Vietnam is the climate for growing your own vegies, I live in the old hilltop station of Dalat where the temperature is cool, but not too cool. I see the locals growing some vegies that are excellent for the budgies, Bok Choy is a fav of mine, silverbeet is grown here and the birds love it, I've tried them on herbs such as lemongrass and corriander, but they just don't like the stuff.

It's just so important to make sure that the mesh on your aviary is toughened or at leat double meshed, this is to guard against birds of prey, hawks etc, that land on the front of the aviary and try to rip it open to get your birds. Strongly wire meshed aviaries will keep the little suckers out.