I had a bad time with the budgies last year; dead-in-shell, babies dying before and after leaving the nest, most of the survivors had french moult. I rang over 100, but have only about 30 - and I've not sold any. Continuing to breed to try and get numbers up was probably a poor idea, I should have paused for a month and considered what might have been causing such problems.

I did stop in November and restarted in mid-February. It's the 22nd of March now and I put a ring on the first youngster ...
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I was a bit too quick in my last blog to say the problems with chicks dying, instead of dying at about 10-14 days they were now dying at about 4 weeks. However, this has all stopped, the majority of chicks are surviving but french moult is causing a problem. Some pairs' chicks seem to be much more susceptible than others. It's rather late, I should have packed up breeding much earlier.

Things to learn from this: Perseverance with breeding is not a good idea, the disease just has fresh blood to...
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Things are picking up, but the birds have not been doing well in the nestbox. Lots of eggs, quite a lot of fertility, but many are dying a few days later and within a few days these eggs look like they were never fertile. Of the rest, most are hatching but there are some dead in shell, of the few that hatch more than normal are dying in the next couple of weeks.

Twelve youngsters bred and most are pet quality, there's only one that looks any good, a Spangle Grey Green cock. I took him to the ...
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I've just come back from the B.S. Show in Doncaster, the Best in Show is Les Martin's Grey Green cock (I think its the Best YB in Show from last year). On a more personal note my Pied is the winner of the Dominant Pied YB CC. Wayheyyyy!

I was up stairs watching Brian Sweeting's seminar, part of which included some pics of his Dominant Pieds bred this year. This was the point where I thought my pied had no chance as these birds were in the middle of some that he said he brought to the show. Ne...
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Another show with young bird C.C.s, so I was hopeful for another for the Pied. However, he was particularly skittish today spending a fraction of a second on a perch everytime he was persuaded by the judge (Ray Steele) to get up. So he was in second place, but just when it was important he stood for about 30 seconds and Ray got a good look at him, and he was moved to first place. So that was his third C.C.

He feels a bit thin in the hand at the moment, so I won't show him again except at the B...
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I had a good day, I stewarded for L Stanley and one of the colours he did was the Dominant Pieds, it was a Gold show so there were CCs for any age and young birds. I was happy when he put my young Dominant Pied into first place and left it there! Later after judging our colours and waiting for the other judges to finish, he said that he hadn't seen any birds that stood out except for a young Dominant Pied! Our big colour had been the Grey Greens so if my Pied stood out I was very happy, since...
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Well I've finally got started on last major work planned for my birdroom which is 12 breeding cages with a cupboard beneath. The cupboard is nearly complete and since it is the most complex part of the build it should not be to long before the cages are finished.

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I've shown at three Open shows so far; Melton Mowbrary B.S., North West Leicestershire B.S. and Leicestershire B.S. In the first two I got Beginner YB 1st, 2nd and 3rd. At Leicestershire, I fared poorly incomparison getting Beginner AA 2nd and YB 3rd, but I did get a 3rd place in the Cinnamon line up.

Entries seem to be way down, the Leicestershire show was almost exactly 200 entries less than last year (368 vs. 565 last year). Is the weather playing havoc with the condition of the birds?



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Some weeks ago he dropped both flights, I checked and saw a tail growing but nothing was showing a few weeks later. Both tails were stumpy, they easily came out and they were deformed. I sprayed with a dry iodine anticeptic spray, but I doubt he'll grow a proper tail again.

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I've bought three birds this year, all from birdrooms which use half-height flights for their main flights. All three have broken their necks in my full-height flight, the first two at the start of the summer and the last today. I thought the last one was safe, he rarely got off the floor and I never saw him higher than the lowest perch.

I've not had any other bird break their neck, but they've either been bred by me or came from birdrooms with full-height flights. So be warned if you have ful...
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Without any expectation of winning anything, but with a chance of getting the Best Beginner YB Dominant Pied, I entered a few birds into the Specialist & Rare Variety Show. Benched the birds on Saturday morning and went home. On Sunday, I turned up and Ghalib was on the door taking money for entry and catalogue, I saw my name awards sheet and thought I'd got what I'd expected, but it was on the Colour Award sheet for YB Dominant Pied. I'd gotten my first CC. Then Ghalib said I'd actually got ...
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I haven't posted anything recently, I've been watching the Big Fella moult out. He's definitely lived up to expectations.

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Forty-six rung so far.

Lots of the youngster from the first round are looking good, only a couple look like pet quality. Almost all of these youngsters are cousins or half aunt/uncles, and belong to the Cinnamon family, so they largely resemble each other making it harder to remember which one is which. However since they have good faces, good shoulder and feather I don't mind too much.

The original Cinnamon Light Green cock from Dave Swann that started the Cinnamon family is responsible for 13...
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The Light Green baby is living up to his promise, he won the Northampton BS nest feather last week and the Leicestershire BS this week.

Comment "What's an adult doing in a nest feather class" - Don Hughes

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I paired a cock that bred most of my good youngsters over the last 18 months to a cousin that had produced some well-feathered babies of her own. Out of six youngsters in the first round, one stood out as being something special, he was large with good directional feather showing in his quills and a really large, wide head. Every time I looked at him in the nest box, he made me feel good.

Well he's just left the nest and now everything that made him stand out has apparently disappeared! He's f...
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Of the first six pairs: five have produced youngsters, 15 babies in total. The pair that haven't produced are laying again and the first egg is fertile.

The stats: 26 eggs laid, 19 fertile, 2 addled, 1 dead in shell, 16 hatched, 1 died (10 days old), 15 rung and growing.

The youngsters have been moved around, none of the hens have more than four youngsters to bring up. Besides not over-tiring the parents, moving the chicks around means that if one pair runs into serious problems some of their y...
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I've just noticed my third cock in 6 months with a brown cere, this time it's an 18 month cock a relatively young bird. Is this something that is becoming more prevalent in budgies? I hope not, I hope it's just a patch of bad luck.

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The last time I was in budgies, I noticed that down appeared to be important in producing large birds. A friend had given me a wonderful Dark Green cock, he was five years old but fertile and he bred a brilliant Opaline Cinnamon Cobalt cock. Both birds had very thick down, trimming their vents ready for breeding produced a mini-snow fall. Looking at my other birds showed a range of down from fairly thick to almost none, the bigger birds were almost all with thick down.

This time around, I've b...
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Thirty-three days after pairing up the first six pairs, all have had fertile eggs but one pair have addled their only one. Four of the pairs have chicks, ten in all. The most promising pair hatched their first today, and an egg punctured a few days ago also hatched today against all expectations. Nine fertile eggs still to hatch - hopefully.

The next four pairs (paired up Sunday 7th Feb) have started laying in the last few days, three have eggs.



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Last year I paired a normal Cobalt cock to an Opaline Violet hen and got 14 youngsters. Each youngster was either a Cobalt of a visual Violet, no Skys or Mauves were produced. In fact, 11 Cobalts and 3 Violets was the final outcome.

Since the genetics of the youngsters are purely due to chance, this is a possible outcome (on average of the youngsters produced there should be 1/4 Sky, 1/2 Cobalt & 1/4 Mauve with a half of each being Violet as well). So out of 14 youngsters, 3 or 4 Skys, 7 Cobal...
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The first six pairs all involve at least one bird from the Cinnamon family, in these next four pairs only one bird is from that family.
 
Of the four pairs, two are likely to produce good youngsters. One of the pairs is a reasonable hen from the Cinnamon family paired to Light Green from Dave Swann and is related to the hen, the other are two '09 birds from Richard Bowker (YF DF Spangle hen x Grey Green cock). The Grey Green cock is very useful looking and hopefully the hen is a relation and so...
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The old girl that I said hadn't produced any fertile eggs has proven me wrong, after a week's grace she started laying again and so far the first two are fertile.

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I keep too many birds, but as soon as I begin pairing up I can see those birds I'll never use and will end just eating seed. They'll have to go.

I put down 6 pairs just after the snow disappeared, within 12 days all had eggs. Only one pair has had not been fertile, the hen is an older girl that is past her best but she bred some good youngsters last year (two of her daughters are in two of the other nest boxes - I've paired up many of my best birds in these 6 nestboxes).

Today I've put together...
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