The amount of care and affection that they devote to their birds is immense and their dedication to the hobby is the same.

Their stud is located in a beautiful rural location near the town of Ballybay in County Monaghan in the Republic of Ireland.

They are always happy to share their knowledge of the exhibition budgerigar with visitors, many of whom regularly travel from as far away as the U.S.A., Europe and the U.K. to purchase birds from this high quality stud.

The Birdroom

The Emerald birdroom is a superb building measuring 70′ x 25′ (21 m x 8 m) and is described by many visitors as 5 star budgerigar accommodation.

The birdroom, among many other things, contains:

• 4 full height flight rooms each being 10′ x 8′ (3 m x 2.5 m)
• 2 nursery flights each being 10′ (3 m) long
• 2 breeding rooms which contain 50 breeding cages

All wire breeding cages are preferred, not just for their cleanliness, but so that all birds can enjoy a colony atmosphere.

Wooden, outside fitting nest boxes are used, sprayed inside and out with disinfectant and an anti-mite solution, before copper coins are put under concaves for their anti-fungal properties, with a handful of fine wood chippings added.

Stock

Emerald Budgerigars line breed and keep all the mainstream colours, specialising in Lutinos and Albinos.

Fine examples can be found in all colours.

The stud’s original mainstream colour stock came from Eric Lane and Ormerod & Sadler bloodlines.

The “ino” original stock came from Margery Kirkby Mason, Reg Watts and Rick Watts …. that was about 40 years ago!

In more recent years, very strong blood lines have been built, based on Daniel Lütolf, Reinhard Molkentin, Jo Mannes, Huxley & Marchant and Willi Dokter.

Eileen and John’s birds are well known for their overall quality and especially for their strength in width of head, length of feather and directional feather, which they have also managed to put into their “ino’s”.

Management

Daily management for Eileen and John includes changing the birds’ water and cleaning the utensils. Bottled water is used – not tap water – due to the chlorine content.

Another daily job is to make and provide every bird with fresh soft-food. This is made from boiled eggs, soaked oats, Orlux moist eggfood, vegetables, honey, garlic oil, ‘Panta-20′ (supplement), a small amount of salt, cod liver oil, wheat germ oil, ‘Frucht-mash’ (supplement), calcium / D3 powder, love bird seed mixture, and the most important ingredient ….. “EB.1 complete” – a magical mix that is used by many of Europe’s top breeders.

Eileen and John will provide more details and quantity information to any breeder requiring the same (see website link at the end of this article).

All birds, at all times, have access to 4 different seed mixtures:

• An “A.1.E.” mixture that contains 60% canary and 40% mixed millets
• An “E.B.” feather growth promoting seed mixture
• An “E.B.” conditioning and herb seed mixture
• An “E.B.” Japanese millet and fruit pellet mixture

Again, Eileen and John will provide more detail to any breeder requiring the same (see website link at the end of this article).

Grit and mineral utensils are changed weekly and all flights and cages are cleaned and disinfected weekly.

Cuttlefish and iodine blocks are provided to all birds and the bird room is cleaned with a vacuum cleaner twice per day.

Once a year, all birds in the Emerald Budgerigars birdroom are treated with “Tricho Plus” as a preventative against Trichomonas.

Also once a year, all birds are treated with “Doxycycline”, before pairing-up, to ensure the birds optimum performance.

Breeding

All birds are kept in the stock flights unless breeding.

Cocks and hens are kept together to encourage exercise and eucalyptus branches, ladders, tumblers, balls and various other play things are provided to stop the birds becoming bored and to encourage additional exercise.

Ring issue dates are ignored, as pairing commences every year in September. Eileen and John say that September is the best time to pair up exhibition budgerigars. If the birds are in condition, 50 pairs are put up in this month.

Both cocks and hens have their vents plucked and both birds are put into the breeding cage at the same time with the nest box already attached. Nest boxes are inspected daily, but only once.

When pairing birds, Eileen and John attach much importance to pedigree, and try to pair the best visual cocks to a lesser visual sister of their best hens, so long as the pair complement each other visually – i.e. if one of the pair lacks in a particular feature, the other in the pair must excel in this feature, and so on.

Showing

Eileen and John have won many “Best in Show” awards, “Major Specials” and “C.C.’s” at Championship, National and World Championship level.

However, in recent years, they much prefer breeding budgerigars than showing them and now, regrettably, show very little and do not show at all in Ireland.

However, they say that they will always support the B.S. World Championship Show whenever possible.

Tips for Beginners

Here are some of Eileen and John’s top tips for beginners:

• Budgerigars do not always breed when paired up for the first time. Some birds can go 2 or 3 years before they breed for the first time, so it’s worth persevering with a quality bird.
• Try to buy one outcross, or two, every year to add quality fresh blood and always buy the best that you can afford with the desired feature(s) that your own birds require for improvement. Do NOT be tempted to split the money you have available over say 3, 4 or 5 birds – spend all the money that you have available on just one or two birds and buy the best that you can obtain. Quality is more important than quantity.
• Some budgerigar hens will not use a nest box if the entry hole is facing direct sunlight, as it will not be dark enough for her inside.
• Every evening before the main lighting changes to night lighting, fine spray the bird room (NOT the birds), with an F.10, Virkon-S, or similar solution, to kill possible airborne germs.
• When preparing your birds for a show, spread the de-spotting process over many days. Do NOT de-spot a bird completely in one attempt, as you run the risk of a good spot falling out later due to bruising around the area.
• It is good practice to spray the inside of a nest box that has chicks, in the same way using an F.10 or Virkon-S solution. Simply cover the chicks with your hand when spraying to protect the chicks from the spray.
• Have patience! If your birds are not performing as well as they could, seek assistance from an experienced breeder. If things are going wrong in your birdroom, it is probably not the fault of the birds, but your fault!

Further Information

For further details about the Emerald Budgerigar Stud, please visit Eileen and John’s website:

• www.emeraldbudgerigars.4t.com

Photographs

All photographs below of Eileen & John’s birdroom and birds were taken and kindly supplied to us by Eillen & John Hall.

Click on any image to enlarge it.

Emerald Budgerigar birdroom
- external view

Emerald Budgerigar birdroom
- internal view

Breeding cages are on the all wire system

The Hall nest box design

 

 

 

 

The First Purchases

When making these first purchases don’t expect to buy a champion’s best visual birds, remember he/she has probably spent many years of time, effort and money building up the stud to its present standard.

What perhaps you should look for, are those which I call stock birds. These birds will, with luck, be closely related to the seller’s show team. They will show good features but also have some faults. Look on these birds as being like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle – your job is to put these pieces together to make the finished article.

Perhaps it is worth mentioning that these first purchases will form the foundation of your future stud – so the better the birds you start with, the fewer the faults you will have to improve.

I would suggest that you don’t buy all fine feathered birds – try to obtain one or two that are coarser feathered, even if they are of a paler colour. Look also for good head quality – this I consider to be the most difficult feature to establish and maintain.

The First Few Breeding Seasons

These first purchases will form the basis for your new stud and, because the birds are likely to have common backgrounds, after the first breeding season you should have a few birds that are better than those you started with.

My suggestion would then be to select the best three or four young hens – consider their strengths and weaknesses, then go back to the original breeder and try to purchase two cock birds that are very strong in one or two of the areas where the hens are weak.

Don’t be tempted to buy birds that are just a bit better overall than the hens you have.

What you are looking to do, is to buy the features you want.

For these two cocks I suggest that you would expect to pay at least the amount you paid for the first two or three pairs.

The cocks should be used across all the hens.

The following breeding season, cross-pair their chicks – which should show an improvement in the features you require.

If one then carries out the same procedure, trying to improve any other faults, gradually the standard of one’s birds should improve.

Progress to me is all about selection and it’s no good just pairing two birds together with no purpose in mind.

Mixing it with Normals

When visiting most top UK shows it is obvious that even most of the best Lutinos are some way behind the top “Normals” with regards to size, feather and head quality – so at some point I consider it would be wise for the Lutino breeder to ‘dip’ into the Normal.

However, my view is that it’s pointless doing this unless your Lutinos are already of a pretty high standard.

Bear in mind, when one does this one should be using top quality Normals, excelling once again in the features you require.

It’s worth bearing in mind that these pairings may not be the perfect answer – because many times, not only does the Normal bring in the good features you require, but they can also bring in faults such as wing markings and green suffusion – so beware!

The challenge for the Lutino breeder, is to produce birds that are equal to the Normal in stature, but also have the deep buttercup yellow colour that the variety is all about. This is no easy task to produce this type of bird in numbers.

Defining the Lutino

I have described below some of my thoughts on what a Lutino is – and some of the faults that occur – which may be of help.

One tip, that may be useful, is if one avoids pairing two light shade birds together – one will always produce some offspring with a satisfactory depth of colour. Light shade to light shade always means pale youngsters.

The Lutino is the Albino form of any green series bird. The fact that the Albinoism generally hides the variety involved, means that the bird should appear “clear coloured yellow”.

The shade of yellow will be either – light, medium or dark because the bird will carry either:

• No dark factor – light
• One dark factor – medium
• Two dark factors – dark

This would equate in normal green series birds as follows:

• No dark factor – light green
• One dark factor – dark green
• Two dark factors – olive green

The actual colour will be the background yellow colour of the individual bird being masked and would, therefore, match the colour of the mask, wing feather edges, background colour on nape of head – all green colour and black pigmentation having been taken away by the Albinoism.

There will be no totally white feathers on the bird apart from the cheek patches.

The only other things that I believe affects the colour of the Lutino are:

• By adding the grey factor, one would produce a dull version of the yellow
• A fine feathered bird gives the impression of being a better colour than a coarse feathered bird
• The light in which the bird is viewed can also affect the appearance of the colour

Faults in the Lutino

Faults from a variety point of view are:

• Markings of any sort anywhere on the bird -this includes Cinnamon markings and throat spots
• Violet cheek patches
• Green suffusion – this can vary depending on the light type in which the bird is viewed

In my opinion, birds displaying these faults should be penalised very severely – even if the budgerigar content is good – because they are breaking away from the whole point – that the Lutino should be a clear bird.

I would point out that the above views are based on my experiences and in no way would I pretend to be an expert.

Gallery

The author wishes to thank Terry Tuxford and Ghalib Al-Nasser for the use of their photographs in this article.

Click on any image to enlarge it.

Lutino cock - another member of
the 2011 show team

Lutino Cock, Colour Champion

Lutino Cock, Son of
Colour Champion

Lutino Cock, Breeder CC Winner
S&RV Show 2011

Lutino cock - a member of the
2011 show team

Lutino Cock, Any Age CC Winner
& Best Red Eye S&RV Show 2011

Lutino Cock, never shown

Lutino Cock, Nephew of
Colour Champion

He had a “gut” feeling that the level of lighting some have randomly installed, could be more important than we think. However, being an amateur when it came to understanding the physics of the variable sources of such lighting, he was still in the process of researching the matter more fully.

On a personal basis, I also have no experience at all on this subject. I have read that all forms of ultraviolet (UV) light, whether from the sun or an artificial source, can trigger the formation of Vitamin D when it falls on our bare skin. But what about the effect on our birds? Perhaps some experienced fancier can advise me?

The matter was dropped until I was spoken to by a leading Red Eye breeder. He had built a new aviary and installed UV lighting – such as has been described in magazines around the world and is normally used by those who illuminate their aquariums containing reptiles or related species.

To his dismay, he found some red eyes going blind with these lights. Significantly, with three rows of breeding cages, there were more cases of blindness in those sited in the top row, than those in the bottom row. To date 13 high quality red eyes have gone blind and long term there could be more. Perhaps some still sighted birds have sustained some visual damage. Who knows?

This news of course relates to lutinos and the like and perhaps cinnamons. I stress I am no expert, but my feeling is that many fanciers in their rush to breed better birds with greater fertility, could run into serious problems in using this type of lighting. Here we have a fact of serious damage and loss of birds as a result of going blind. All I can add to the hobby worldwide is to be careful in the use of sources of UV lighting before such effects have been thoroughly researched by those who know far more about this subject. The normal black eyed varieties, so far, seem to be unaffected but one cannot be totally sure about such a statement.

As humans, we are continually warned today about long exposure to the sun – causing skin damage and cancerous melanomas arising at any age. This is because the UV strength has increased following the thinning of the atmosphere. We are also encouraged to use sunglasses to prevent eye strain and long term damage. So the dangers of UV are a fact we should all take on board – especially us as bird fanciers, who in some cases have rushed to install this type of lighting unaware of the dangers involved.

Lütolf has that special eye that sees far ahead of the current ideal representations of the day. He sees what is beyond what is currently being bred and winning on the show bench. Harry Bryan in the UK had that ability, as does Jo Mannes in Germany and Henry George in Australia, to name a few.

Lütolf is 42 years of age and has been breeding birds since he was 11. A great deal of time and money was spent with little success until he purchased birds from Heinrich Ott, a top Swiss breeder. Heinrich Ott treated him very well, selling him stock, which bred superbly and produced his early winners. The pedigree background to Heinrich’s stock was based on Omerod and Sadler blood.

Lütolf’s career is as a teacher, he teaches senior pupils in maths, geography and history. He travels extensively, going overseas to far off places so that he can pass on his experiences to his pupils, but he never forgets his birds at home and the friends whom he trusts to look after his birds safely, and he gives a big thank you to them.

The Lütolf aviary is split into three levels because of the steep gradient of his home. It is modest in presentation, but the birds are exceptional in quality…but difficult to buy if you strive for the best.

Lütolf realised early, that he needed to design a bird to be ahead of others. This came from his ability to carve and paint.

DL: “I like big birds in proportion to their length. I knew that the 8 1/2 INS, small Budgerigar, in today’s exhibition world (216mm) was useless.

All top birds of today require a longer 9 1/2 ins (241mm) length to get the bird in balance, coupled with the shoulder substance that is required.

The shorter length results in a bird with no substance and is completely out of date if you wish to win on the show bench, irrespective of your chosen variety.

It is your choice, as a beginner, into which direction you go as you breed and as you create YOUR designer bird. You have to focus on that and set higher standards every season. I have always selected birds with big feet, but am careful in my choice of breeding hens.

I select birds with very big bone structure that are thick in the neck area. Interestingly, such birds create a problem that many of us are familiar with. This is the problem of today’s rings being too small for the bigger birds of today, and such rings have to be cut off before serious damage is done! Every year I was forced to cut off rings. I now get rings allocated officially that are larger in diameter at 4.4mm. They are perfect and there are no further problems for the birds and are accepted on the show bench.”

The Colours

The colour range that Lütolf has is broad. There are Spangles, all the Normals and some wonderful Violets, Olives, Lutinos, Texas Clearbodies, Yellows, Dilutes and Recessives.

All have mouth watering quality.

He is now starting to attack the Clearwing variety.

DL: “To improve any variety, you have to pair them at the start to your very best birds. This is what Reinhard Molkentin did, followed by Jo Mannes with the very small Spangles that arrived in Germany years ago.

To improve the recessive varieties, Clearbodies and Lutinos, I pair them to Spangles. The Spangle variety will improve such varieties considerably.

Always remember that if you want to improve a rare variety you have to pair them to the best you have and if necessary go out and find a super bird no matter what its colour happens to be.”

Pairing

Unlike the majority of breeders today, Lütolf breaks away from the conventional way of pairing Normals together.

He mixes many colour factors together continuously. Buying a pure bred is therefore difficult, but if the quality is in front of you, you take a different view. He never breeds two super birds together, or inbreeds, to avoid any feather problems or cysts. Nature does not select pairings as we do as fanciers.

Lütolf also watches the mixed sexes and ages of the birds in the flights. The practice of having the sexes separate in different flights, he feels, encourages homosexuality and the following effect of cocks being afraid of certain hens that are perhaps aggressive by nature. Hence infertile eggs. If he sees a pair making up, then the chances are they will go straight into a breeding cage – and they breed.

Lütolf is also critical of the standard practice we follow of pairing our Greens together and our Skyblues together and so on. He believes in mixing the colours, but in addition he uses the grey factor frequently, across the colours, a view held by Harry Bryan but not Dr. Alfred Robertson of South Africa, the well-known breeders of their period.

To support his views, Lütolf will buy an outcross, breed with it and very often sell it immediately. It has left its blood behind and served its purpose.

Lighting Periods

The breeding room has a very powerful extraction system and recently a superb timed spray system developed by Sigbert Pestringer, to remove dust. The aviary always feels fresh.

The lighting routine is interesting. Lights come on at 07.00 hours. The birds emerge to excrete and mate. They go off again at 13.30 hours and come on again at 15.45 hours. This follows a resting period that the observant will see easily in their own studs. At 15.45 hours they again mate with the light coming on until 23.30 hours.

Feeding

Avoiding discussion about the normal feeding procedures, Lütolf prefers to feed natural products as well as seed etc. Hormova is the only manufactured product used, together with various natural vitamin sources.

Water is often changed twice daily to which is added a small dash of vinegar and lemon.

DL: “This lowers the possible rise in bacterial infections.”

When breeding, the canary seed is increased. When not breeding, the millets have the upper hand. He feels that small sunflower gets the stock too fat.

We now come to vegetables. The range is very extensive and remarkable. Everything comes from the local market. Lütolf checks that none have been sprayed with pesticides and he uses natural food only.
Fennel, peppers, carrots, blackberries, broccoli, cauliflower, uncooked beetroot, grape leaves, tinned maize, and parsley to name most of them. All are chopped and desiccated, and when finished, some 10mls of olive oil is added and mixed in. Apple slices are dropped onto the flight floor.

I wondered what else olive oil could be used for?

DL: “When chicks turn white for no reason I give one drop to the beak and they return to normal colour.

However I do not know why!

The credit for this belongs to Reinhard Molkentin, not myself”

Soaked wheat and oats are fed on alternate days. Tree branches are always in the flights and changed regularly.

Conclusion

Lütolf birds are very big and my concluding comment is that Lütolf’s “quality of birds in depth”, in the top range, is one of the best I have seen anywhere in recent years.