In February, late Feb, we had our first babies hatch. Sadly, I stupidly lost the father and so the mother raised the chicks by herself. She did a really good job too, 2 lutinos and 1 spitting image of the father.

 

So keeping in mind that the babies are about 4 mths old, I just caught the mother and one of her offspring in the throngs of passion. I know he is too young to breed. Is there a problem with related birds breeding. This probably sounds like a stupid question, and I'm sure there will be birth defects in the hatchlings, but I thought I'd ask.

 

At the moment they are in an aviary with no nestboxes. I plan to seperate them to individual cages to breed.

 

To solve this problem, we thought of a solution, but I need to introduce you to the rest of the family.

 

Romeo and Stella are our original pair. We tried breeding them in the February session with no success. First, someone was eating the eggs, then Stella laid 5 eggs but nothing came of them. She wasn't very good at sitting on them and liked to investigate every noise.

 

Next we have Rosie. Rosie is the mother of Daffy (the lutino we kept) and Jnr. Daffy is a girl by the way and Jnr a boy. Jack was the father that I lost.

 

okay, our cunning plan. We pair up Stella and Jnr (who I know is too young to breed yet), Romeo and Daffy or Rosie and we get a new male for Daffy or Rosie. Is this okay? I feel bad splitting up Romeo and Stella but they had no success last time. Is it okay to split them up? They will be breeding in individual cages.

 

Any advice would be great. Sorry for the worlds longest post!

 

Simon.

yeah it's okay to split them up. It is not good to breed related birds although sometimes experienced show breeders do it, but for us ametures it's not a good idea for the obvious reasons.

sounds like a good plan but don't breed the babies until they are at least 12 months old