Aviary Management

 

Our Management routine has changed very little from our early days in the hobby, I guess we were both advised correctly from the beginning, in fact over the last two years we have reverted back to the KISS principle ( Keep It Simple Stupid) which has if anything given us a much improved result in the overall yield, vitality and quality of our birds.

At one stage when we first commenced our partnership we gave the birds all sorts of mixes of a soft food mix, which included a variety of products from the local Woolworth’s health food section. This I believe achieved poorer results than currently experiencing using the KISS principle.

We both feel that a Budgerigar mix alone is insufficient to breed quality youngsters, and birds do like a treat now and then. We probably give our birds a few unorthodox items, which I will explain further. Before we go on let me emphasize that if you are satisfied with your current management routine then stick to it, we believe that there is always room for improvement and we are both proactive in our desire to implement improvements that may benefit our birds and even ourselves.

We truly believe that our following detailed routine has given our birds the vitality to reproduce quality in quantity. We rarely find birds dying in the flights, sure we all have the breeding season mishaps, but have never had a rampant sickness go through our studs. I’m sure that anyone that has purchased birds from our previous sales can testify to the good health and well being of any birds purchased.

 

 

FEEDING: (Seed)

The feeding program consists of Golden Cob Supreme Budgerigar mix, which is now coated with Protexin Probotic, and hulled oats. The hulled oats are given to the breeding pairs a few days prior to their first egg hatching as well as twice a week in the flights. As previously mentioned we gave our birds all sorts of seed mixes and other soft foods but noted better results by feeding a Quality seed such as Golden Cob.

 

 

WINTER BUILD UP:

As our breeding season starts after our Annual sale Day in late August and concludes in March/April the following year, we use the winter period to build up our stock birds prior to pairing up. This year in particular we have introduced the following to our feeding routine to ensure that all the birds are as fit, strong as vital prior to pairing up.

Every day we feed the birds with quality hulled oats coated with Cod Liver Oil, Vetafarm’s Breeding Aid and Dr. Rob Marshall’s Turbobooster on alternating days. This has resulted in a visible increase in activity, which is usually abandoned in the winter period.

 

EXTRAS:

Recently we introduced a Budgerigar Tonic Seed mix, which even to my surprise the birds absolutely love and polish off the small bowl we provide daily. This mixture consists of 13 different specialty seeds, which is blended and available from Barry Ryan. Contact details – 02 9671 5380 or teresea@healey.com.au

 

WATER:

Our watering routine is well planned and documented on a twelve monthly calendar so that we are both aware as to what additives to supply daily. The weeks are broken up into Sunday night to Wednesday night additives, and Wednesday night to Sunday night, Water.

A typical month would be;

Week 1 Coccivet or Sulpha D

Week 2 Vitamin Supplement

Week 3 Probotic

Week 4 Calcivet

 

We also schedule in the calendar year some preventative medications;

Twice a year: Ronivet-S for Canker

Quarterly: Potassium Permanganate (Condis Crystals)

Yearly: Wormer

Until recently we were supplying Vitamins twice a month but decided to change to a Calcium solution particularly as both our aviaries have indoor flights under artificial lighting.

 

GRIT:

We feed three types of grit, Cunanda grit (soluble) , Charcoal & granite grit (partly insoluble) and a course Sand which is spread over the aviary floor, the birds absolutely love the sand, you do have to be careful to ensure the sand you supply is clean. We also add Iodised Salt to the Cunanda grit as well as the Murphy’s Minerals.

 

GREENS:

This is where we feed a few unorthodox items, Monday, Wednesday & Friday we feed Carrot, Corn & Spinach to all birds, on the weekend we give the birds in the flights citrus fruits such as Grapefruit, Lemons & Oranges. Although birds do not need Vitamin C, they do like ( after getting accustomed to ) the citrus fruit which we believe is a contributing factor to suppressing Mega-Bacteria, after all some of the early treatments for Mega-Bacteria was Citric Acid.

We also place a Eucalypt branch in the flights on a regular basis, which the birds love to chew and strip the bark, this also gives the aviary a fresh scent of eucalyptus, which may have some medicinal benefit as well.

 

PAIRING:

The pairing is always going on in our minds, but the serious pair up occurs after we have completed our annual sale and know that the birds we have retained are what we have to work with. We do pair both visually and on pedigree, we believe you need to consider both as the idea is to breed the best budgerigar with the least visual faults and obviously with natural power and style. We believe that the key to constant improvement is dependent on your cull, you need to cull hard, keep the best birds with the desired features and this will naturally give you a visible improvement.

 

SHOW PREPARATION :

Show preparation starts with handling the youngsters in the nest, as soon as they hit the Nursery Cage we start with their show cage training, all youngsters will spend overnight in a show cage firstly in pairs and then a few weeks later prior to being released in the flights, ( 12 weeks old) they spend a night in the show cage by themselves.

Whenever we are doing our chores in the aviary we always take the opportunity to catch up a potential show bird and place it in a show cage.

 

CLEANING:

This is unfortunately one area that many fanciers are lacking, we have a general clean up on a weekly basis, occasionally vacuuming mid week when excessive feathers are all over the breeding area. Both our set ups are easily maintained having a white melamine lined walls and tiled flooring.

 

Good Luck and Happy Breeding!

 

Note. I down loaded this from Plunkett & Tasi's Web Site which unfortunately hasn't been up for some time.

This is the basis of my own management. I hope it helps.

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Thanks Daz, some good ideas that may be added to my management as well next season and see how they go.

I have been using this as a base and it does seem to work well.

My management is very much the same and seems to be working fine, I have healthy vibrant birds