Hi,

 

I am new on this site. I used to breed budgerigars as a kid and I'm thinking of getting into the show hobby. At the moment I am trying to get my head around how colours are typically bred.

 

I have read lot of vintage budgerigar books, the best being "The Cult of the Budgerigar" by W. Watmough. In this book he describes the practice of dipping into green. With this practice, a line of say skyeblues is maintained by outcrossing to light greens (split for blue) whenever colour or type start declining.

 

My main question is. Is it possible to breed a competitive line of show birds without keeping grey greens?

 

Grey greens seem to have better type and I can see how they can be used to improve other colours but I just don't like the colour and I suspect that they must be the hardest birds to sell to the public. I see cages full of grey green show culls at a local bird dealer who tells me he often has to give the things away.

 

Would it be possible to breed a line of lutinos without outcrossing to olive hens to maintain size?

 

If I kept albinos would I need to keep any other colours?

 

Dilutes look interesting. Would I need to keep normal/dilutes to maintain size and show type?

 

Cheers

 

Drogo

Hi You can breed any colours you like. Birds have come along way since the old days.

Watmough would think that todays birds have most of the flaws they tried to breed out.

There a now good birds in all the major colours that nowadays you would be dipping

into any colour if it had the desired features you wanted. If your showing to win I suggest

you take out a second mortgage. You can't buy winners in pet shops. Yours B.J.

Hi Bird Junkie,

 

Thanks for the reply. I have read that Watmough was not a fan of the bigger show birds when they started to make their appearance.

 

So if I have this right, it's not necessary to keep normals or even greens to maintain type or size in varieties like dilutes or albinos. It just depends on how much I am willing to pay for stock.

 

Cheers

So if I have this right, it's not necessary to keep normals or even greens to maintain type or size in varieties like dilutes or albinos.

I think you will find it is necessary to keep good normals to maintain type or size as very few breeders will breed albino to albino etc and use splits from good normals. Most albino breeders use greys as their normals for splits. Same with most other types they need good normals to put through them.

So if I have this right, it's not necessary to keep normals or even greens to maintain type or size in varieties like dilutes or albinos.

I think you will find it is necessary to keep good normals to maintain type or size as very few breeders will breed albino to albino etc and use splits from good normals. Most albino breeders use greys as their normals for splits. Same with most other types they need good normals to put through them.

 

Thanks for the warning Kaz.

 

If I had to keep greys as part of an albino stud I'd rather keep another variety. Maybe suffused dilutes if classes are provided for them or failing that cinnamon. Greywings look good but I saw on another thread that the standard calls for birds with strong body colour and it's the soft muted colour that I find attractive in the first place.

 

I don't mind keeping normals and splits but I do like soft coloured birds like heavily suffused dilute green etc.

 

Cheers

have you thought about yf blue's, or cinnamon's? Cinnamon blue have a very attractive soft colour, especially the violets. I would still reccomend normals, that is one of the things I am struggling with most, I regret not getting normals to get splits from.

Cinnamons are nice. I have no problem with keeping normals as well.

 

However, I saw a class for suffused birds on the Budgerigar Council of Victoria's website so I will be looking into dilutes. If the standard for suffused birds is to my liking I will stick with them.

 

Some dilutes in pictures from the UK look spectacular. They were heavily suffused with green not like black eyed yellows, very nice.