Still having problems with my new "improved" show type birds. The birds I bought at the bird sale in June. All three hens paired with birds from the same stud had clear eggs on their first round. So I have paired up the three hens with other cocks & let all but one of the cocks fly in the aviary for a while. The other cock is paired up with one of my hens, but two other hens, her sisters paired up at the same time, have eggs & one already has chicks hatching. Do hens know if cocks are duds? She is on her first batch, but she had laid an egg in the aviary, so was more advanced than the others, but I haven't even seen her go into the nest, even though she is paired up with him.

 

The first of the three hens hatched her first chick a couple of days ago, straight away I thought something is wrong with that chick it looked so small, within a few hours it was dead. I had decided to remove the next chick that hatched to another bird that is hatching & feeding well, just in case it was that the hen didn't feed. Yesterday I saw one egg piping & I checked it this morning, it hadn't hatched & is dead in shell. Not going well, other chicks are hatching without trouble so don't think its humidity. She has more eggs to hatch, but getting worried & the second one has eggs that will hatch soon, the third hen even though she had eggs before isn't going down with the new cock.

Edited September 17, 200717 yr by Norm

Do hens know if cocks are duds?

:(Laughing out loud): I don't know but I do know that even though most times Budgies are quite willing to pair off with the ones we pick for them there are the few times when the hen just doesn't want anything to do with them.

 

Sorry to hear about the poor hatching survival rate. I'm not sure what could be the issue, apear from what you wondered with the lack of food. Is it a maiden hen?

 

I hope the others are okay and hatch soon.

Norm,If they are of show type,you might have to either trim or pluck the feathers

from around the vent on the cock & hen.Sometimes they don`t breed in the first

season,till they settle in .

It could be her first batch apart from the first infertile batch, as she is an 06 rung bird. My other bird from that sale, who I said was getting close to hatching, I found on the floor with something wrong with her leg, so I have removed her eggs to two other nests. This bird is 5 years old so I am loosing hope of getting young from her. In this batch one egg is very large, I have another bird I suspect that is old also that laid one like that too, I think they may be getting close to their last eggs when things like that start to happen [either larger or smaller than usual eggs].

The hen hatched her third chick, yesterday it seemed very active, squeaking loudly for food, as I transferred it to another bird that had young of a similar age & was feeding well. But looking in this birds nest I found that her last chick to have hatched was also dead, which worried me a little, anyway I left the new chick with her & removed her largest chick [just a few days old] & as advised by many on this forum, placed it with the hen from which I took the young chick.

 

I checked them both late yesterday & the larger chick had been fed real well by the first hen & the fostered chick had a very small amount of food in it’s crop, so things are looking good [cross fingers]. When I buy birds & spend my money I’m really happy even if I can only raise one bird from them to get the genetics & hopefully the chick will turn out better than their problem parents. If the purchase is a complete failure it’s very disappointing. Mostly if you buy a bird, especially if it looks good [why would you sell such a good bird] I suspect problems either it’s old if not banded or the previous owner has had problems. If you can’t get at least one offspring to work with, it’s a total loss. I have one male I purchased from a pet shop & now that I have learnt more from other breeders I find it’s from a very successful show breeder, that wouldn’t sell me any birds when I asked. This bird looks good, but is a zombie & doesn’t help feed chicks, [he’s also getting on 5 years] but I have bred five chicks from it & with two different hens & they look active so I’m happy. He only cost me $15 too…(Laughing out loud).

With a bit of luck you might be able to buy some thing off Gary Gazzard.

Tell him you are new in the game & he might look after you with a starter pair. :oliveb:

She hatched another chick this morning & I removed it to the other nest just to be sure, both fostered chicks are going well & the mother is feeding the larger chick from the other pair well, but I just didn’t want to take the chance & leave it with her. She has three more eggs that could hatch yet.

Things are going well…I found the hens forth chick had hatched & even though there were two large chicks from another bird, in the nest, the small new chick had been fed, hopefully on her next batch all will be well, but I still removed it to the foster Mum who has now four chicks that are going well from my bought show type bird. I will just leave her with the two larger chicks, so that she will finish this round quicker & then I’m thinking of putting a better cock with her now that I have found out she can produce fertile eggs. There’s still one egg to go, but maybe it wont hatch, at least I got four, hopefully improved type birds. I’m getting some nice young ones from my newer purchases, I’m looking forward to next breeding season, when I have lots of improved type birds to choose from, instead of only the few I have been able to buy, especially I have very few hens, I have more cocks, but little I can mate them with at this time. No luck still with the other pairs bought at the sale, but at least this one went from a nest of infertile eggs to a batch of 7 fertile ones. Which gives me hope.

One of my other new birds that produced infertile eggs with cocks bought at the same time, a massive Sky Blue Opaline hen that had something happen to one of her legs. I had this happen to another hen once, maybe it’s something to do with mice at night. I transferred her eggs to another that hadn’t hatched anything, I’m not sure but it looked like two of her eggs were fertile, one was hers for sure as it was a lot larger than normal & I thought maybe it was a double yolker. As one chick hatched & the large one had a hole in it for a couple of days, so I made the mistake of having a look at it & stuffed it up…I think better to just let them go & if it doesn’t hatch something was wrong anyway, now I don’t know if I stuffed it up or not & it’s not a nice feeling. At least that’s another one that can produce at least a couple of fertile eggs, slowly I’m getting a little out of my purchases. Now they are mated to a different line, there should be more vigour in the chicks [says he hopefully].

 

The top hens four chicks are doing well fostered, that was 6 out of 7 fertile, so thats good, one didn't hatch haven't looked at it yet maybe it was fertile & just died like the other first two.