After having had our new baby Jazzy for not even 3 weeks yet we decided to get her a friend.

This little one (as yet unnamed) is a beautiful spangle but is he a cobalt or violet and what exactly is a violet cobalt??

He still has baby bars but has already got the bright blue cere, when do baby bars normally disappear and at what age would the cere colour start to deepen and when do the iris rings develop? The lady I got him from said the breeder said he was about 2 months old and she had only had him for about a month so he should only be about 3 months. In bright daylight I can see the iris ring developing though.

 

Anyway, this is him, I love his colours :-)

He is in a borrowed cage for now and luckily I am able to borrow this cage for as long as I need it but hopefully Jazzy and this one will get along and will be able to go in the same cage eventually :-)

 

 

 

 

Arrgghh I have no idea what the problem is at the moment with stupid photo bucket but am having heaps of issues with photos not downloading properly and not rotating :-(

 

Hope this works

 

By the way, outside in the sun his colours are definitely more a purple then a blue

Edited July 22, 201212 yr by Clouds birds

Anyone? Kaz?

Hi Cloud's birds. Sorry you had to wait so long for anyone to come along with an answer. Now that the forum has changed, it has messed up my way of knowing when people in Australia wrote their posts, as opposed to just knowing what time it is there for all of you. (I used to have my forum location set to Perth time, so it was like I was on the same page as all of you, but now the whole time-thing seems messed up.)

 

Anyway, so I really don't know how long your post has been up there, but it's telling me that for you now, it's 8:00 am. I assume that means Monday. Where I am, it's still Sunday.

 

So let's see if I can help at all.

 

Photos of violet budgies are notorious for not showing true color on the internet. So when I look at your photos, I see a cobalt bird. But you say that in the sun, he looks more purple. So I'd say, you are probably right, and he is probably a violet. You ask what exactly is a cobalt violet. Well, the violet factor does something to the feather structure, which changes how the blue light reflects to our eyes. On most budgies, it doesn't really change much, or it might make the shade of blue seem darker, but it won't look purple. But when the violet factor is combined with one dark factor (which we call a cobalt budgie), then it makes it look purple, so we call it a violet budgie. So a violet budgie is actually a cobalt budgie with a violet factor, which means a violet and a cobalt violet are one and the same thing.

 

You can have violet factor on a sky blue budgie, as well as on mauve or any shade of green. But none of those will result in a purple bird. So true violet means the violet factor combined with one dark factor. To confuse matters further, when a sky blue budgie has a violet factor (called a sky violet), it can make it look like a cobalt budgie. And two violet factors will have more effect than one violet factor, so you see that there are many many possibilities of what a budgie can have, and there are slight variations between them, with some of them being impossible or very difficult to tell apart.

 

Sorry, I think I have given you more of an answer than you intended!

 

As for telling his age, all of the signs you mentioned begin to show up somewhere between 3-5 months of age. Losing the baby bars coincides with the first molt, because when the adult head feathers come in, they don't have the bars on them. The cere turning from baby color to adult color is pretty independant of the first molt, but happens at about the same age. I've had baby boys turn their cere blue early, like yours, and others who kept the baby pink past the first molt, and then it turned. Same with iris rings. They can lighten up a little early, or a little late, but it's generally in the 3-5 month range.

 

I'd say yours looks just right for a three month old. (And I love his colors, too!)

 

Keep in mind that quarantine should be at least 30 days. Then after that find out whether they like living together. I recently read a book that said quarantine only had to be 5-7 days, and I got so mad, I about threw the book away! You need the full month, and many recommend longer, to make sure there isn't a bout of some illness brewing and about to manifest itself.

Hi thanks so much :-)

The post had not been up too long but most of the time people seem to respond a bit quicker but I think what happens is another post appears and then yours kind of "disappears" ;-)

 

You got me really confused on the violet thing now hahahahha

His colour is to my eyes (I am a female) purple but to my son (male! Lol) it is a shade of blue. Don't they always say males and females see colours differently hahaha

Ah well, he is gorgeous and yes I was thinking he would indeed be about 3 months old according to the breeder (why would the breeder be making up an age anyway ;-) Mind you having said that, I had a look at a couple of birds yesterday and there was one in there that had no baby bars and full iris rings but that lady is elderly so I reckon she just took the wrong one out of the aviary hahaha)

 

You got me really confused on the violet thing now hahahahha

 

 

I'm sorry. That's the danger I run into when I try to give as much information as possible. Being long-winded tends to confuse things.

 

Simple version:

 

Budgies can have one or two dark factors. One dark factor is called Cobalt.

 

Budgies can have one or two violet factors.

 

A violet budgie has one dark factor and one or two violet factors.

 

A violet budgie is the same as a cobalt violet budgie, the cobalt is implied, and doesn't need to be stated.

 

He's lovely Clouds, I have bred birds very similar. The spangles seem to develop into really nice size birds, they take a while to mature but you look at them one day and say"Boy he's nice". Unfortunately mine seem to end up mostly cocks so I have to sell them as I need more hens. l.o.l.

thanks Robyn :-)

 

Actually, after reading one of Kaz's posts on here (don't ask me which one it was lol, it came up after Googling) I am pretty confident my boy is a sky violet. He has the purple hue especially in sunlight. He has quite a bit of obvious purple underneath his cheek patches and the blue seems to get darker the lower you go on his body. I would not call it blue blue, but a baby blue/powdery blue but closer towards light purple lol