Hi All, forgive me for stumberling a bit ,but this is a bit new to me, right, here goes, I have 3 pairs in an aviary, but only 1 pair " got together" not once but twice, resulting 2 babies from the first brood and 2 from the second, I realise its difficult to tell the sex of youngsters, but as it is ( was ) the aviary was nicely balanced i.e. 3 cocks 3 hens, My question is, whats likely to happen if I have another 4 hens, or 4 cocks --------- world war 3 in the budgie world ????? any advice would be more than welcome, thanks in anticipation, Baz

Colony breeding - breeding with more than one pair in a cage - can lead to so much trouble. For a start, you can't be sure of the father of the clutch - a hen can have a different mate for each egg Other hens can try to enter the nest box, killing babies or even Mum herself.(this happened to me, and is not an unusual occurance). So, despite previous successes with colony breeding, tragedy can and does happen.

 

Budgies can mate without a nest box. There is absolutely no need to provide a nest box for them. You can put 4 pairs in the aviary no problems if you don't breed. Just make sure you have plenty of perches, and at least 2 feed stations. Problems only occur when breeding.

If you have kept all the babies, you also would want to be sure that the brothers and sister aren't pairing up as couples.

If you want to breed with out the trouble that the girls have said. Use the Aviary as a holding cage and set up an area with breeding cages.

 

http://home.gil.com.au/~dwellsadsl/aviary/aviary10.jpg

My little set up.

http://home.gil.com.au/~dwellsadsl/aviary/aviary8.jpg

 

left half is the flight with the right part where the breeding cages are set.

 

 

Flight

 

http://home.gil.com.au/~dwellsadsl/aviary/aviary9.jpg

 

 

Breeding cages.

Edited July 4, 200618 yr by daz

Hi Again, thanks for advice, One thing I am 99% sure of is that it was only one pair that bred, the mother and the father were feeding the chicks, and I have two sets of identical twins, I shall be removing the nest boxes now, and plan to seperate the youngsters from their parents before next spring :beer: