First CC! Varietal content matters.

July 4, 2010
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 best Pied in Show! My Cinnamon Dominant Pied Light Green cock just though his first moult had beaten every single pied in the show (about 120 - I counted). 

Looking around, I saw a few better Dominant Pieds (don't ask me to judge him against Rec. Pieds) but they'd got faults and it appears that he'd won because he was a good pied with a good band and four good spots. It seems that varietal content matters.
 

The Big Fella's finally moulted

July 4, 2010

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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Breeding Update #3

May 18, 2010
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 Big Fella

May 3, 2010

This the Big Fella, he's appeared in a previous post but here he is in a show cage so you can judge him for yourself. He really is a barhead.




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He's a winner!

April 16, 2010
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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The best so far...

March 28, 2010

A nice Light Green cock

I've been watching this baby in the nestbox for a while, comparing him with the good chicks in the other nestboxes. I thought he would be good, but I didn't realise that he was about week younger than the best of the other youngsters and he was looking pretty much equal in quality at the time. Now he's out of the box, he far better than the other (which has turned out to be too fine feathered). What isn't obvious from the picture is that he is large youngster, bigger t...

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Looking good, looking good, um...what happened?

March 22, 2010
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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Breeding update #2

March 10, 2010
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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Cocks with brown ceres

March 10, 2010
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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Down

February 28, 2010
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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About Me


Beginner exhibitor. Restarted with budgies in June 2008.

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