moglet

I love the boy from pair two. He's a cutie and knows it! Snow.... sheesh, not gonna happen in Brisbane. I'd love to see it. I've only seen it twice down in Thredbo years ago. I think it's darn freezing today and it's 23C outside.

Sigh, Renee your birds are gorgeous!!!!! drool drool drool over your albinos. They are my faves. I had a beautiful Albino cockbird who had Tony Luxton line hen for a Mum but had a disaster with a !@#$ butcher bird.

Taylor they are gorgeous. I'm so glad someone else calls them all by name and knows their silly quirks! My mentor in our club delightedly told Henry George on our visit to his huge aviary recently "She STILL NAMES her babies!!" and everyone rolled their eyes and had a good chuckle at the newbie. I was slightly mortified!!! I can't imagine having a bird and not naming and knowing it. Even when we were kids and had 50+ birds, my sister and I knew all their names and who was related to who. I'll have to try the beetroot thing. Mine love everything else (except peanut butter apparently). I mixed up some grated carrot and peanut butter into their morning egg and biscuit mush one day on advice from a breeder in my club. Boy did I get evil budgie looks! NO one ate it. The chooks gobbled it up the next morning though. I hope you get some awesome babies.

Well I'm a wally aren't I posting about this in the news section last night! Sheesh. I am madly in love with Lot 12, but I have been told by an open breeder in my club you wont get a bird under $1000 either. Bugger!

Lucky's dad, who died, was a huuuuge big grey normal boy, I am hoping it will be a mini me of Johnathon. He was such a sweet natured fellow and very full of himself!

As promised MUCH better photos of my babies in natural light Taylor, I meant to reply before about the nest stuff. I bought some bedding wood shavings from my big pet store. It seems to be doing a good job. I let the hens kick it all out before they lay, and then I add a heap more AFTER they lay and are too precoccupied to chuck it out again. I found out the hard way that without lots of nest material a skitty hen can kick the eggs around scuttling out of the box. That seems to be why Red was the only one to hatch out of 6 fertile eggs (thanks KAZ!) This is Lucky, my special baby.... super confident and has monster huge feet! These are Lucky and siblings.... The little skyblue is very shy and dives under everyone else. These two are from my pet type pair. Their names are Gem (yellow feathers) and Tink (pied). I am raising them for my little niece. They are celebrities in her Prep class

I heard from the dude in my club. He has it, so if you want his email pm me.

I'm pretty sure the Ring Steward from my club, ABS, sells it too, he sells most stuff like that. I just emailed him to confirm, he's out Ipswich way I think, but mails stuff and is a top guy. I'll keep you posted if he does.

My budgie club has sent out the PDF for the Mark Chidel auction happening in North Rocks (Sydney) on 17th September. If anyone would like me to email this PDF please PM me. ....I'm dreaming of some gorgeous birds..... sigh. Maybe in my next lifetime! But it is so interesting to see them. ahhhhh.

I've seen the cage fronts in the produce store too as well as the big pet city near us. Keep looking, they are around good luck!

I have NO idea any more what Red is other than totally gorgeous! Red has its own cage now in my daughter's room and is rapidly ruling the house with the bat of a big black baby lash. We are going to take Red along to our next club meeting so I will keep you informed of the general gender consensus! This is Red's new house.... Now for the other baby pics update. Lucky looks like an absolutely gorgeously huge big grey normal, just like Dad who died. I'm sooo pleased. Johnathon (Dad) was just adorable in nature and such a big handsome dude. Lucky seems very very confident and doesn't hide like Red always did when you took it out of the nest. Lucky stands straight up and looks right at you! This is Lucky, the same newborn in my signature. Next born from the foster babies under Red's mum is Ace. We did originally call it Junior, but it seemed too impersonal and everytime you pick it up it flaps its wings straight out and holds them there. Ace is going to be a sky blue like Mum. Third is Billie... looking like another grey normal and a bit shy but howls like a wounded banshee when you pick it up. And lastly is little Eenie Meenie. I'm not sure what colour we have here, but is sooo cute and little compared to its huge siblings. Eenie dives under everyone else for cover. This is all four of the little foster siblings under Red's Mum, Sparkles. The other two babies are really hard to photograph for some reason. They wriggle off and everything is blurred. This is Gem, looking like it will be maybe a T2 Goldenface cobalt like Dad? And this dreadful photo is the best I could get to show you Tink's Dominant pied markings like Mum. She is a lovely mauve dominant pied. Ginger (sky blue) is due to start hatching her 7 eggs around this Wednesday. I'm hoping and praying for a few spangles like Gilbert (Dad). Hopefully this weekend I can get some natural light photos of our stunning new boy from Henry George's aviary. He is a totally gorgeous recessive cobalt blue pied. He has the most beautiful face and mask. Thanks for all your feedback on my babies. We are having such a lovely time watching everything happening. I can't wait to get home in the evening and see the changes in them each day I'll try to get some better natural light photos of the babies this week. We have a show day holiday on Wednesday here. I don't get home until after dark, so I have to take them under a yuk fluoro light with very low shutter speed and no flash and pull the guts out of them in photoshop. Thats why they look flat...

Thank you. Yes Red is gorgeous. She was out of the box by herself for the first time today when we got home. She was picking at a millet spray, but I don't think she quite knew what to do with it She sits on your finger now and tries to fly a bit. More of a hover with a floppy landing at the moment. She seems to love music and chirrups along when my daughter has music going in her room with Red. Pride, your avatar is an absolute dead ringer for Red's Mum, Sparkles! I candled Ginger and Gilbert's eggs properly tonight. Definately at least four fertile eggs. She has 7 now. We could see a little heart beating in one of the eggs. The kids were so awed.

Red is ready to fledge any day. She comes out to play with us and can sit on a finger now with confidence and is getting the idea of step up. She spends lots of time sitting in the doorway of the nest box until Mum or Dad shove past her to get in or out. She is starting to get a bit nippy when you try to pick up her foster siblings now. She tends to tuck them up under her away from you if she is in there and not in the doorway. The foster babies are growing beautifully. I think Lucky, the oldest, might be a big grey like Dad was. It has HUGE feet and is very sturdy standing up and looking around. Lucky is the one standing up at the back in the corner. It was being difficult when I wanted to photograph them! This is Possum and Whizzbang's two babies, Tink and Gem. Both seem to have varigated light skin patches on the back of their heads, so I think they will both be pieds like Mum. Gem, the older one seems to be darker and with yellow wing spikes, and Tink seems to have the white wings tips like Mum. I can't wait to see their feathers. Tink, the younger one by a day, seems to be the boss and Gem hides underneath it a lot. Not the best photo, but they were wriggling and carrying on a lot tonight!

Most of the birds he had for sale were $150+ ish. Being very new members he offered us an extremely low price for our young recessive cock, he said he was very taken with us being so interested and the fact my 12yr old daughter was so into it he wanted to foster that. I wont say what we paid as it may cause issues. Maan it was so inspiring. I learned so much just observing, and I had a field day with my camera We also had an amazing demonstration of one of his award winning dressage stallions, I could have watched him work all day. It was such an amazing place to get to visit.

My club went on a trip up to Henry George's aviary and horse stud today. OMG. What can i say but awesome. Henry himself if the nicest most loveliest person. He was so patient answering my probably incredibly stupid questions. His aviary was the most amazing thing, I think it was bigger than my house... and the birds!!! He showed us a nest of superb babies that were just pin feathers but you could see the potential in all of them. We bought a gorgeous recessive pied cockbird he picked out for us, and we have named him Henry in honour. I will take a picture of him tomorrow. He's settling into quarantine now. I have attached a few pics of his beautiful birds for us all to drool over..... I can't recommend joining a club enough. The people are so lovely and the knowledge shared is just priceless.

We love Kaz.. she is the budgie guardian angel that teaches most of us to slow down and watch, observe and learn I am hitting the like button many times too....

OH I am sooo pleased Homer is okay. My heart was in my mouth for her. She is very very lucky. I haven't had an eggbound bird, but I am sooo nervous about it. My budgies get lots of fresh seeded grass heads I pick in the park (make sure there is no evidence of spraying). I give them a good wash and they just go insane over them. They are free and so good for them. I don't have much money either, but there are lots of alternatives to expensive foods. I buy a big bulk bag of cuttlefish and a bag of grit from the produce store, it is a much cheaper way to buy it. The girls will just chomp it to pieces when they are going into season. I so know what you mean about bitchy girls. When mine were starting to go into season they were bickering non stop with each other and giving the non partner males what for if they even looked sideways at them! Cranky pants city They settled right down when I moved the pairs into cabinets. I would never to colony breeding again, hens can be just brutal to each other. We colony bred at a kid, and I can remember some awful things happening to chicks by other hens, even when there were spare nesting boxes available. I give them the best quality seed I can and top them up every day with grass seeds, fresh vegie odds and ends, unsalted popcorn, and gum leaves. They LOVE the gum leaves and celery tops. I have bought a big bag of very expensive breeder pellets but none of mine are terribly interested in them. If I put fresh food in they are hanging of the cage walls yelling at me to hurry up and hang it up. I use one of those "fruit skewer" treat holder things from the pet store. It's like a metal kebab with a screw on end and a clip to put on the cage bars. I load it up with vegies and corn and apple bits, whatever is going in the scrap bin that day they get a bit of. Now I have babies and pairs with eggs I give them egg and biscuit mixed with warm water in the morning. They absolutely guts it down. I make sure I take it out at the end of the day as I worry about the egg bit going off. You can get a big bag for about $7 at the produce store where I go. So far they've been having it every day for about 6 weeks. You don't need that much and they never seem to finish the dish so I know I'm putting out enough. We all make errors. You have to treat them as teaching moments or it can really upset you. It's not that you intentionally do things to hurt your birds, but stuff WILL happen. Learn from it and do it differently next time. I think your decision to think long about if you really want to breed is very wise. I have two pairs now with babies, and one pair on eggs. I haven't bred for a long time and I had forgotten what a lot of work it is. I am loving it, and my daughter does it with me, but I would be happy just loving them as gorgeous little friends too as you do. I had to laugh at your egg dilemma. I too have quails. It can be confusing if you've never seen a budgie egg before. The quails were probably indignant that you took their egg! LOL. You can hear them muttering about rude humans!!!!

Well I have updated my flash player and updated Firefox, and all appears to be working again with photobucket... for now! LOL. So here are some updated photos of my darling babies This is Gem and Tink, Possum and Whizzbang the Terrible's little family. Possum is so protective. If you make the weeeniest sound at night in the room there she goes RIGHT off at you from under the towel and from in the nestbox. She is such a sweet bird which makes it even funnier that she gives us all a huge what for. This is little Red with her foster siblings. She is really mothering over them now. She is getting to be so friendly and nibbles my check when I snuggled up to chat with her. This is Red being a big bird (well, sort of, she will dive up your sleeve in the blink of an eye She is getting really hard to photograph now as she escapes all the time to hide, or runs at the camera lens. Ginger (skyblue hen) and Gilbert (greenish spangle) now have five eggs. Had a bit of a candle of them last night, but they are still to early to tell really I think.

I rung my first two birds ever today. Wahoo. yes I am a dag.... I rung Lucky as it is 8 days old today, and realised since they are big babies I need to do it sooner. Another day and I wouldn't have gotten the ring on. So I rung Junior too. I have been TRYING to wrestle with photobucket. It was doing something weird to my new picture of Red I was attempting to post last night. Sometime photobucket works like a dream and again today I'm going mental with it trying to load. Now it will load up everything EXCEPT the upload button. I've tried emptying the cache and ditching the plist (I'm on a mac), but it wont play ball tonight. Grrrr. I have some great new pics too! The baby in my signature is Lucky, the first of the foster babies to hatch. We named the littlest one who hatch yesterday Eenie for now. It's a noisebox of a baby. I suppose it has to shout over it's siblings! I'll reboot firefox and see if I can get photobucket to work.... I have some lovely new photos of all the chicks to post.

I was amazed to come home and find the fourth foster baby has hatched. I am sooo glad I saved those eggs. They are from the first show quality pair I have and I am really excited to see what the babies are like. Lucky, the oldest is beginning to really fluff up now. Sparkles and Cosmo are doing brilliantly and they all have bulging crops. Red is stealing hearts in our house. She is so friendly now when she comes out for a cuddle. Very relaxed, grooming and nibbling at our fingers curiously. She is starting to poke her head out of the nest box now, and was 4 weeks old last Friday. The little foster babies crowd underneath her now when Sparkles is out of the box.

Thanks Kaz, I need to colour balance it, it looks like it's a bit jaundiced. I took it under fluouro lights which always causes colour cast issues. This looks a bit better and I worked out how to make it a cool signature.... man I better get some work done today!!!

Thanks Pride, we love our pets... there is much todo in our house when a new friend comes along that needs a name. It has to be the RIGHT one. The best one we had was an awesome duck my son named Duck Vader We had another one of Possum's and Whizzbang the Terrible's babies hatch yesterday. The first only hatched on Saturday so I wasn't expecting another until today. It's name is Tink. Whizzbang has always been the ratbag of the flock, so it's funny to see him being so sensible and looking after his family. So now we have big fat Red, who is looking like a lovely normal light green, and the three foster babies (Lucky, Junior and Billie) under Sparkles with Cosmo as her mate. There are two more eggs, but I'm not sure they will hatch. But hey, I didn't think ANY of them would hatch so I hope I am wrong. Now Poss and Whizz have two babies - Gem and Tink, with 4 more eggs. Lots of noisy baby chicks and busy parents. It's so lovely to see them growing and developing. The kids are just amazed and can't wait to see the changes everyday.

Maesie I'm with you!! I bought 4 budgies about 6 weeks ago from a breeder in my club who was selling out to retire. Thank goodness I did quarantine them, one came out with scaly face, two came out with this wheezy chest which killed one of them. The other hen is still wheezing away and I have treated her with antibiotics and now I am using a pyrethrum spray on advice from my club and she is still wheezy. I could have lost ALL my birds if I hadn't quarantined them away. These birds looked absolutely beautiful and fine when I bought them.

Well, we had another 2 babies hatch today, and a new egg! Ginger (sky blue hen) and Gilbert Aqua/green spangle now have three eggs. The third foster egg under sparkles hatched today. A lovely healthy bird name Billie. Possum and Whizzbang also hatched their first baby, my 5 year old niece has named it Gem, I will train it up to be her special friend and she is sooooo excited. So there was much oohhing and ahhing in our house this morning. I have posted a picture below of the two babies that hatched this morning. I thought it was interesting to see the difference between a pet type baby (on the left) and a showbird quality baby (on the right). The size difference is not as noticeable in the picture, but Billie the showbird baby fostered under Sparkles is much bigger and fluffier already, and they were both only a few hours old at the time I took this picture.

Hey Finnie, The eggs are going FAMOUSLY! Third one hatched today. I wrote it all up in my breeding journal and I am about to post in some more pics of the new bubs