I also know that some breeders just do not think it possible to do this easily with the larger birds we have today by comparison to those bred in the past. I beg to differ, when one takes a stud of birds as a whole.

I am not talking about individual birds which just refuse to breed at any price. I am discussing the total number of birds bred on the perches at the end of a complete breeding season.

This however has to be related to the actual number of pairings that have taken place. It is not good enough to say you have bred, say, 100 chicks and divide by 10 breeding cages, to get an average figure per pair produced. To be accurate you have to divide the total chicks by the actual number of pairings that you have made. This gives you the full reality of the success or failure of a season.

Evolving a System

It is of vital importance, particularly post the Millennium, that one has to create a system of breeding big budgerigars along with all the other desirable exhibition features.

A big budgerigar will always beat a smaller one given other similar character features when judged.

The old phrase is that you are better trying to breed “rats” by comparison to “mice”.

Some fanciers will only buy the bigger-framed birds and there is a lot of merit in that, but that said the value of a bird is primarily related to the qualities of the head overall from the base of the mask upward.

It is no use having a big bird with very poor head features.

Breeders generally, in my experience, develop their own techniques and believe they have found a “secret” to do well and breed birds of quality year in, year out.

It has been known that some who have struck lucky and bred a nest from some outcrosses, that turn out to be really outstanding, describe themselves as geniuses as livestock breeders – that is until a few more seasons have past and the full realisation that they are no such thing brings them crashing down.

We are all “playing” with different systems, inbreeding, outcrossing and so on, in the hope that super winners emerge. Great when one does, but sustaining it, is, dare I say it, “The Challenge”.

Establishing a strong feeding system has to be coupled with your breeding system. this. One cannot succeed without the other.

Selective Breeding

Selective breeding has resulted in the development of the budgerigar from the 1840′s to what we see on the bench today in certain colour forms.

This is mainly in the grey, grey greens, light greens and skyblues as a generalisation.

In photographs seen on websites, as well as in books and magazines, we can see a super quality bird, but cannot assess its size overall. It may look a wonder bird but may be very much a medium sized bird.

An analogy is that you cannot gauge how big or small a person is on TV. Nobody realises, for instance, how big was Les Martin’s Best in Show at the UK Budgerigar Society – both as a breeder in 2009 and as an adult in 2010.

My own Grey Green cock BA23 43 86, which won against a field of 4500 entries was very similar in size, but not with the directional feather that has developed in the past 7-8 years. To achieve such size, or power, as I prefer to call it, one has to have a perfect feeding system that works. Without it you are sunk as you can breed that potential super bird, but if it is badly fed it simply falls back into the pack.

To Beginners & Novices

The finest advice, especially to the beginner, is to do next to nothing in the first year once you have decided that this is the hobby for you.

Why? Simply because you have not the experience to design the right aviary and buy the right stock to start with immediately.

A year can be a long time when you are keen to get going, but believe me by reading, listening to lectures, going round as many aviaries as you can and developing the “eye” for quality and the prices for quality birds, this approach will give you a head start and save you a great deal of unnecessary expense in the long term.

Learn the basics first. It is a technique that you have to learn and where assessing quality on a budgerigar is concerned, some never learn it. Many so called judges prove that from time to time.

When you have done your apprenticeship, buy big birds if you can, but be wary of buying hens that are not only big but thick around the vent area – this is usually a sign of previous attempts to breed with them. They can be trouble.

All breeders should have a pedigree system. Amazingly very few fanciers ask for a pedigree and certainly sellers don’t offer them unless asked, because they can take up a great deal of time to complete unless they have a computerised system that can faithfully be completed all the time.

Better to start a system from the beginning and insist on obtaining a pedigree, even if only two generations back. If you do not have a system you cannot know what you are doing and neither can any subsequent buyer have any confidence in purchasing stock from you.

The Feeding Book

All fanciers should have a “Feeding Book”. You have to record your feeding system down to the minutest details. If you have a poor season you can look back at how your stud was fed in the previous season and conversely if you have a super season, you again look back and stick to that technique.

If you have a copy of “The Challenge” and you are in trouble, may I recommend the two chapters on “Feeding” to you.

At first glance they look complex, but study them in depth and you should be able to see what your diet lacks or where you have force fed too many vitamins and other faults. It’s all there if you take the time and trouble to digest the contents to achieve better and final good results.

One easily created fault is that it is so easy to forget buying this or that product that is part of your system and it is only when you look at your Feeding Record book that it reveals the mistake(s).

Lastly, record any changes that you make in the diet when you do them – not later as they get forgotten.

Feeding Technique Advice

If you are a raw beginner, you will have been around aviaries in that first year and listened to the feeding advice from very experienced breeders who have been breeding budgerigars for years.

Do not necessarily expect all of them to reveal everything they do!

Some may leave out an item which is a “key” factor in their technique. Others will be fully open.

The breeders you are looking for are those who have, say, 40 pairs of cages which are nearly full of chicks, year in year out.

Now here is the important point. Keep your eyes wide open. Look at exactly what is being fed in each cage and also what has been consumed and look for the leftovers that are still in evidence. What minerals and vitamins are going in, both in solid and solution via the drinkers? What packets are on display and what bottles are present?

The seed mixtures everyone looks at as though that is the main clue. Unfortunately it is only part of the whole input and frankly I feel that, provided you have a high percentage of canary seed, which has the highest protein content, all the other conventional seeds we use are just the fillers to the diet – but they have to be there.

Reproduction – what you put in you get out

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Are your birds looking as though they are active and keen to breed?
2. Are you hens calm and relaxed and good incubators?
3. Do some hens scream their head off when you open the boxes and scatter the eggs? If so make a note to not use them again.
4. Is feather plucking a problem indicating the hens are nervous?
5. Do the hens emerge from the boxes when slightly disturbed or not?
6. Is the fertility good or spasmodic? Are the cocks too young and lacking experience?
7. Are the hens basically all feeding well apart from the odd pair that produce scrawny retarded chicks that eventually die?

Such questions are limitless, but are all basically geared to: “what am I doing wrong?”

In 99 per cent of cases it is your husbandry and lack of attention that is at fault. You are the provider and in full charge of your livestock. If you are not prepared to put in the effort – why bother being in the hobby at all?

If things go wrong, it’s your fault, not the birds – apart from the standard irritations they dish out in this or that nest.

I have personally made many mistakes over the years and have tried to learn in the process, but when I make the same error twice, I really get angry with myself!

Check the Temperature

When your birds are breeding in the Northern hemisphere a temperature setting should be 10 degrees Centigrade (50 degrees Fahrenheit) from experience.

Lower than that and eggs get chilled very quickly when a hen is off the eggs for any reason for a period. It takes time for them to excrete, mate and fill up their crops and addled eggs can appear later on quite easily.

In warmer countries, breeding is far easier, as Reinhard Molkentin in South Africa confirms having previously experienced breeding in Germany.

Of course heating charges get worse year by year and you can run up big bills, but you have to balance your affordability against the results you are getting.

In conclusion, remember that the first round chicks are not always fed as well with the rich crop milk required – especially from young hens. Their crop milk does not flow as well until the second or subsequent rounds when the chicks are much fuller in the hand when still in the nest at four or five weeks of age.

It is these latter rounds that are frequently the rounds that produce those “Rat Sized” birds!

One of these in the hand gives great pleasure and makes the efforts and overhead expenses worthwhile.

Happy Breeding!

I began breeding this marvellous Australian Grass Parakeet at the age of 12, immediately after the 2nd World War – 67 years ago!

I am still as fanatical today about breeding top quality exhibition budgerigars though I do not claim to be so obsessed to the exclusion of my family and golf – the latter modestly. Over the years, many hundreds of Australian and New Zealand fanciers have visited my home in Virginia Water and all have been welcomed.

With my administrative background, I was also privileged to have been the UK co-ordinator for the nine Australian shipments of some of the UK’s finest budgerigars to Melbourne, before a ban was instituted as a result of infected ostriches arriving from Canada at the Spotswood Quarantine Station in Melbourne. That ban has not been lifted for budgerigars, but I believe pigeons were permitted until the Avian Flu outbreak arose.

Luckily 4500 budgerigars did pass into the Australian hobby which has helped enormously with head quality improvements and many fine birds are to be seen these days on the Australian show benches.

The Attack Principle

The desire to breed super exhibition budgerigars is the ambition of every fancier in every country. I am well aware of the fact that the Australian show scene and its structure and administration is different to the UK. That aside, we all have the same aim as it is the finest birds on display that we wish to breed and own for the simple reason of pride in having achieved something that money cannot buy.

That said, there always comes a point where you have to “speculate to accumulate” and buy the essential outcrosses to avoid losing size as well as quality.

Sell ten birds and buy one has always been my philosophy.

The Early Years

By the early years, I mean the first ten – perhaps even longer. There is so much to learn from each breeding season, particularly establishing a feeding regime that really works well and breeds many budgerigars each season from the best birds you possess.

I cannot stress enough how important that is. Two consecutive bad seasons can destroy a stud. That is the danger we all face as it brings you to your knees and so many leave the hobby at that point. If it happens there is only one person to blame – you! This is the point when the strongest characters refuse to give in and “attack”.

In “The Challenge”, I have listed in depth many proven successful diets, including Australian diets, that have stood the test of time. Those diets should be unchanged in their entirety and not added to with something that “so and so” is feeding at your club. If you do then the stud as a whole is rocked and as budgerigars object to change, it will show adversely in the breeding cages later on.

Once you have your proven diet working well, may I suggest you write it down and place it on file because it is so easy to forget an item(s) from the daily routine – then trouble arrives and your memory for what has gone wrong will fail you.

Get the feeding right and you can progress to look elsewhere if another problem appears. Remember, you need to produce quantity as well as quality from a nest so that you can select the best two and sell the rest.

Establishing The Basics

Like a great house, your stud has to be built on very solid foundations. Your initial problem may be financial. If not then you may be lucky, but if you are financially strapped you may well be better off in the long term, so do not despair.

This is the way I began as a boy, but I learned the hard way and was the better for it. The hobby is filled with a cross section of characters. Happily most are honest and will help beginners in a constructive way, but a few are depressing.

I clearly recall my first attempt at buying from one of the top ten UK fanciers when I was fourteen years old. It was my first lesson. I travelled a long way by train to this “famous” fancier. He asked me before I had even seen any of his birds, how much I had to spend. I had saved all my pocket money and I said (this was 1948) I had £20.00. His reply was stunning to a beginner. He said “You won’t get much for that young man”.

My father, having taught me well about the world being full of good and bad people, prompted me to say: “No problem, but I am not interested in your birds” and I left immediately. He never forgot me and always came up to me at shows after that, obviously ashamed. A lesson learned regarding buying and selling and how to treat people decently and fairly.

By contrast, you can have the odd well off fancier who likes to enter the hobby with a bang. He knows little but thinks money will get him to the top. They rarely last the distance and every country will have such examples. They might win for a while but their lack of experience results in their quality dropping, with poor results, and out they go.

So be encouraged that if you have a small pocket, as I did then, you will make a better fancier if you attack at all times as best as you can. If you are patient and sensible, it is a valuable lesson not to spend anything for 12 months, but in that period visit all manner of studs and shows to get your “”eye for quality” well established.

You will also see all manner of aviary designs and that will give you a good idea for construction of your own aviary. Remember that an aviary has to be designed for what is the best for the birds, not necessarily for what is best for you.

Have You The “Eye”

This title means: have you learned exactly what is wanted in order to win at top level?

The next question, if you want to save a great deal of expense, is “if not, why not ?”. With long-standing experience let me tell you that top quality judges, and there are many of them, also breed top quality birds. By doing so, they keep up to date with new features that are difficult to achieve. They can see faults to the millimetre and that isn’t very much. If he / she cannot do so they are second grade judges and there are even more of those.

It is my contention that the top national show, in any country, should be judged by the former group at all times – as breeders have been striving all year to win and thus deserve no less a compliment. Officials just working through a list of “qualified” judges to please all the judges, irrespective of their individual ability, is an insult to every fancier and indeed any non-exhibitor looking around the show.

I digress, but I make the point to illustrate how essential it is to possess the eye for every detail.

How Width Of Face Appeared

From the 1950′s until the 1970′s, the majority of us were breeding very good birds – or so we thought!

Somewhere towards the end of that period, a few fanciers realised there were far better birds around that were streets ahead of the so called “Ideal Budgerigar” as depicted in drawings.

One fancier in particular, Ken Farmer, wanted to capture the look that the Norwich canaries possessed with their lateral feather over the head and eyes. Until that time, the UK breeders had all their birds with their head feathers growing from front to back over the head. So now the hunt was on for any birds that possessed what is now called “lateral directional feathering”.

By the 1980′s, the numbers of such birds had increased slightly. The late Harry Bryan was a breeder who would scour the country for birds with “width of face”, as well as not losing the quality features already established. Not easy.

In 2010, that feature has become somewhat more common, but almost every fancier that comes into any aviary is looking for width – and it is that feature that by its very nature is expensive to acquire.

In 2005 I named it “the buffalo effect”, which is a descriptive wording that has gone world wide as a result of “The Challenge” book. Everybody in the UK who arrives at my home wants “buffalos” but so do I – and it is a struggle to keep them!

Focusing The Super Bird In Your Mind

I will now assume you have progressed a little. So now focus on the finest bird you have ever seen – forget “The Ideal” as it is probably behind what is actually being bred, but it has helped as part of your apprenticeship.

Carry that image of the finest bird in your mind. It is vital as you are now going out to buy birds to build that bird yourself from hundreds of good birds that may be on offer. Even better, you may have the ability to see beyond the best birds ever seen, but such fanciers are rare. Exactly what financial level you enter the hobby is personal.

Buying The Foundations

Your two selected breeders for purchasing should have a common genetic denominator – so establish where their original stocks came from. This is important because otherwise you will be buying unrelated birds which all have hidden faults that emerge in droves. By comparison, super quality birds will suddenly appear from pairing related stock.

I also stress that you should get pedigrees immediately you purchase the new birds, so that you know exactly what you are doing over the coming years. My records go back to 1950 (believe it or not), but in practice one never goes back that far of course.

Another tip – when you go to buy, go alone. You are in a much stronger position to deal with your seller on a one to one basis and you will not get distracted from getting what you want, bearing in mind what I mentioned earlier. You also have much greater leverage in the process.

Starting The Breeding Season

It is a fact that South African, Australian and New Zealand fanciers have it far easier to breed budgerigars compared to those in the Northern hemisphere. This is due to the sun and far better light that is available in the south. Reinhard Molkentin in South Africa confirms this as he has bred in his own country (Germany) as well as in South Africa where he now lives. So you all have a big advantage.

So let me assume you have bought three cocks and four to six hens, as not all will be in condition to breed simultaneously. The cocks should have been selected on the basis that any one can be paired to any of the hens you have chosen.

Watch the hens closely, as it is the hens that have to be caught up as they rise up to a peak of “itching to breed” and are chewing branches at every opportunity. I prefer to place the hens in the breeding cages with the boxes open, so they get used to their new territorial area for 48 hours before the cocks are introduced. Then you get great fertility results. Your season has started.

Looking Ahead

Assume you have now bred say 16-24 chicks.

Remember to feed them as well as you did when they were still with their parents. So many fanciers drop off the vitamins and soft food intake and wonder why their birds are not big after 18 months growth. You should be able to have big birds, certainly if they are Normals, by the age of 10 months and then you will know that by 18 months you will have a massive handful later on.

You now have to select what to keep and what to sell. With the income, go back to the original sellers and buy just one super bird – far better than any of the first group. You then move this bird, a cock being the obvious choice, into the genetic pool you have started. Then in the following season get him paired to as many of the best hens available as is possible, while transferring the fertile eggs out to other less important nests.

Now the excitement starts as the quality being produced suddenly shoots up and in nest after nest some great chicks start appearing. Other fanciers now become aware of your stud and begin to come round and try to buy from you. A great time, but keep it going and refuse to sell what  you want for next season – bearing in mind you need one third cocks and two thirds hens. You are on the way to the top!

Conclusion

Never forget, that when you get serious setbacks, you are in livestock and they have a habit of losing their breath – permanently. That is the time to forget it and in 24 hours go back on “the Attack!”.

A beginner faces many problems. At shows, all he/she sees are rows and rows of birds. He/she can spot the winner of a class and those unplaced, but filling in the gap and knowing the reason the sixth bird beat the seventh is beyond him/her. He/she knows perhaps a little about nutrition and he/she has some idea that his/her children grow more quickly with a sound diet. He/she wants to get involved in the hobby, breed some birds and get the pleasure of the “hands on” feeling of being in charge of a real stud.

What is a Stud? A true stud is a group of inter-related livestock which all possess similar high quality features which are highly desirable to everyone. If these parameters do not exist then you possess a “collection” and no more.

Looking at Detail

My advice is to spend the first year looking around. In that year you will need to study birds and by that is meant close study, not a fleeting glance. Every bird possesses fine detail. Each one has a different feather density and pattern. They have differing lengths, widths and direction which all combine to create quality, or otherwise. Feathers can make or break the showbird or result in the stockbird, the latter possessing more faults than the former. Until you can foresee an Ideal Budgerigar, which is slightly ahead of its time, from every aspect and feature, then you will be breeding budgerigars which will soon be left behind in the pursuit of excellence.

The author is on record for spotting a critical measurement in quality birds that he had not seen in 25 years of practical breeding and showing. That said, nobody else had spotted it either. The point is that you think you are looking at show features, but often you can miss the obvious. Only experience can overcome these difficulties, with a near obsession for the hobby.

Initial Purchases

So Mr/Mrs Beginner you’ve done your opening homework. What do you do now after your gleaming aviary is finished and is ready for stock? Certainly your travels will have left an impression, but you may not have thought about which style of bird you want to breed. It is no use buying a selection of good birds. They have to be the right birds with the right faces. When you look at a person it is their face you look at first of all. The same applies to budgerigars.

Look at the Ideal and look for birds with the qualities that can push the budgerigar ahead of the Ideal. Some fanciers will possess birds that have some of those features. Concentrate on them and buy them or their older relatives which may be cheaper. Buy this bird with width, that bird with length, those with type and so on. Try to buy every feature that is needed in YOUR IDEAL. If one feature is missing then the house of cards will fall.

Spots are very important. You can breed outstanding birds, but if the spots are small the impact is lost. A bird without large spots is like a man in a suit without a tie. Both are unfinished. Learn the hereditary faults such as hinged tails and short masks. Think about buying some select three year old cocks that you have confirmed, bred well in their last year. They will go on to breed very good birds and the outlay will have been much less.

Always try to buy young hens initially, and subsequently breed your own, if at all possible. Everyone needs hens. Remember it is the hens that have a strong bearing on spots and it is the hens which give more problems than cocks when breeding.

Areas to Avoid

Birds at exhibitions possess, in general, one vital feature. It is called SWANK. Without it established in your stock from the start, you will not compete for the top awards.

What are the features that contribute to swank? Firstly, length has to be evident. With length in your birds you can create a smart bird with all the other features, but build up those features on a short bodied bird and all you create is a cobby bird, as it is termed, with which you can do very little. You must learn to appreciate the length of a bird’s body from the top of the wing butt to the perch. This is the feature the author missed for years and it is so important. It dictates the length of body and also the stance. Budgerigars with swank look down, not up. This is partly created by the head feather formation. Some birds stretch upwards and possess an aristocratic look. That’s swank! Avoid buying birds that lie across the perch thus reducing the length just referred to.

Avoid visually poor birds when you first buy, irrespective of the entreaties of the seller that, “it’s related to my Best in Show winner from my best line”.

Avoid purchasing birds from unhygienic aviaries. Birds often carry hidden diseases from such places.

Avoid fanciers who only have a few top quality birds with no depth of quality behind them. You want to buy from aviaries that possess large numbers of outstanding birds because you will want to buy from them again, in future years, to sustain that line.

Beware being sold birds that have had difficulty breeding; hence, purchase young untried hens! Ask the breeder to show you his/her breeding records before you make your final decision. The author has always had the practice, for first time buyers to his aviary, of offering to change any bird that doesn’t breed, provided the bird is returned fully fit. This applies only to the first visit. After that initial help, the purchaser is on his/her own. Other breeders criticise this as being too generous, on the grounds that the birds are often in unskilled hands. In practice, it works out at perhaps one bird a year being changed and it is an endorsement of your reputation at the same time. Look for such breeders.

Final Advice

A very sensible policy is to buy from two studs only. Remember that by buying all over the place you accumulate all manner of hidden faults as well as good visual features. Selecting two studs which possess the style of bird you want to breed, which could even be cross related in themselves, is perfect.

Keep the picture of the birds you want to breed uppermost in your mind at all times and don’t buy stock that doesn’t possess some of the details required to achieve your ambition.

When you acquire your initial birds, be patient with them. You are inexperienced, so accept that and remember livestock doesn’t always behave as you would wish it. If 75 per cent of them breed well, be pleased with that to begin with and learn from the habits of those who have misbehaved.

Reinhard Molkentin, the world famous German fancier now living in South Africa once said, “The outstanding fancier has a vision of a bird of the future. He/she can see special features and he/she selects birds with those vital feather features and puts them together.” Nothing has changed since then.

A common question put to me is “how do I achieve a good fertility so that I do not have two poor seasons that can easily put me out of the hobby?”. Firstly let me address a depressing scenario. Here we have the enthusiastic fancier who has, we can say, 20 breeding cages into which he can drop perhaps 30 pairings over a normal season. If he has small birds he may not have many fertility problems but with the larger big birds, especially hens, it becomes more difficult in at least 80% of the nests. It’s easy to breed with the “mice”, but not with the “rats”.

Our fancier may well be feeding a number of items over and above the standard seed mixtures along with water and some vitamins that he has heard about – but really doesn’t understand. In some cases he’s not really interested and this is very true as I have found that in my book “The Challenge” fanciers love to read the “juicy bits” but when it comes to the two most important chapters in the whole book – the ones on feeding – they gloss over them. They are the vital chapters because without taking them step by step and understanding what is required, then a failed breeding season is very likely. Next stage is depression and that can be followed by “exit stage left” from the hobby. Two consecutive seasons like this and it’s a certainty.

Here in UK is a classic case of one such fancier who approached me for help. He was just not breeding birds of any consequence. You may know him. He is Geoff Bowley who is a quality judge and whose father won Best in Show at our biggest event some years ago. His fertility was appalling. Geoff is but one of hundreds who have called me over time with just this problem. My reaction is immediately to request every single item that goes into the husbandry of the stud in a nutritional sense. I write them all down as they list them. I can then assess what is going wrong and I can say that 90 per cent of cases are solvable instantly. This is based on having studied nutrition in zoology at school added to all the mistakes that I have made myself in the hobby. In my case, and I appreciate that the UK feeding methods are unlike diets abroad, I was searching for a diet that would stand the test of time year in year out.

Searching for the perfect diet

After the 2nd World War in 1945 the UK hobby just survived with a few dedicated fanciers with relatives who were fighting being pressed to bring home seed in their kit bags whenever possible. Forget the kit – just get the seed!! The birds were terribly small but bigger than the wild variety. Head qualities were non-existent. By 1975 however the British had forged ahead with the massive improvement in head qualities including depth of mask, spot size, backskull, but until recently not width of face with directional feather.

So how did the UK, now joined by Europe, improve everything? The answer lay with two areas – Nutrition and Selection – and thinking what exactly could be ahead in time but not yet achieved. You had to know a budgerigar’s features to the millimetre to be able to do that. The credit for these forward-thinking stages goes to names such as Harry Bryan, Angela Moss, Frank Wait, Maurice Finey, Joe Collyer, Doug Sadler, Alf Ormerod and Margery Kirkby Mason to name but a few. Binks was around but no more than that. Progress depended, they all agreed, on nutrition and everyone had their own haphazard ideas. All sorts of vitamins and mineral salts were thrust into the birds. Everybody had a biscuit tin full of seed mixture to which was added 12 teaspoons of cod liver oil and then a product called Kilpatricks Pigeon Minerals was added. This contained a multiplicity of minerals but mainly salt and carbon. The tin was shaken and the blackened mixture was given after 24 hours. That was THE most successful post war diet and into the 1950′s that still existed, but it was dead easy to breed budgerigars by the bucket-load. I never forgot it but by the 1960′s new products entered the markets which looked better. After a while I realised that even though they looked good they were made by “chemists” who understood their chemistry but they didn’t know anything about budgerigars and what they really required to make them highly fertile and far bigger than their ancestors.

Now I come up to the year 2000 and beyond. Size, feather growth and directional feather is all the rage. Few fanciers have the latter and to obtain them requires a big dip in the pocket. For many years now I have gone back to basics with a high vitamin A & D inclusion in the diet and this is where the Geoff Bowley’s of the world go wrong. Their birds look fit when you see them, but the big birds of today demand this high dose to give them the vital energy to reproduce instead of just sitting there or laying infertile eggs. I personally still use cod liver oil but in a lesser quantity at two teaspoons to 12 pounds of seed. I also use the Kilpatricks Minerals and it has shown me how important minerals are over and above grits and cuttlefish bone. “Binks has, I suppose, bred a fistful again” is something I hear occasionally. So Geoff Bowley was given my diet in full. He applied it fully and after a few months on it his birds were put down to breed. The results were terrific and he wrote it up in a magazine. However two years later I heard he was doing badly again which I found astounding. When I found out the reason it was Geoff who said “I really couldn’t get on with the cod liver oil, so I dropped it”. I was staggered but it proved my point 100 per cent. Today I find that if your birds have the right diet balance there is little need to trim the vent area. Thick feather there doesn’t matter if the birds are bursting with energy.

The Importance of Grit

This is a subject that is a bit obscure to many fanciers especially when they read articles by a few veterinarians “that grit is not necessary”. I find this point of view bizarre. Nature has provided birds with a toughened muscular section of their digestive tract called the gizzard. It will only function given grit in both soluble and insoluble forms. E.G. Sharp granites and shell grits. No grits and the gizzard lining becomes ulcerated and breaks down and another distressed bird is found on the floor soon to die. Take shows for example. What is the first thing the birds go to on return home especially in your country where they are away from home for longish periods. You know they go immediately for the grit pots. The “grit not necessary brigade” is very wrong in my personal view for giving out such bad advice. Birds do not have teeth so that is replaced by a gizzard and its contents. No “teeth” no proper digestion and nutritional conversion.

Let me turn to the presence of grit in the aviary. Ask yourself, “How often do I top it up or replace it?” Chances are you just see the grit there and think the birds turn it over except that they do not! What they do is choose the particle they want from the top surface and the smaller particles are rejected and a dust accumulates. You will have seen this I feel sure but have you replaced it regularly enough. In flights it is so easy to overlook this important management practice. It also extends to every grit pot when the birds are breeding. They do the same and the bowl looks fine and full but the birdbrains only take the top layer. Remember the swallowed good grits are expelled once they are worn down in the gizzard and require replacing. If none is available then the chick rearing process is affected and dead or scrawny chicks may be the result. You are the sole provider for your stock. Any failing will be reflected in your breeding or health conditions. There is no substitute for quality husbandry.