Q1: Please explain your feeding regime – including any extras you may give for the breeding season, and do you stop these extras at the end of the breeding season?

GSB:

Keep a variety of seeds so that the birds can select what they want, but keep the canary seed content high as it contains the highest protein.

Extras are a multivitamin (Abidec here in the UK) and vitamin B12 (Cytacon here in the UK), plus the seed mixture is given a low dose of cod liver oil (vitamins A & D) all year, to ensure that the birds’ metabolism is high and they then breed well, rather than sit there and do nothing.

I also give Hormova and essential minerals.

Routine is year round. Budgerigars object to changes in diet.

Q2: Please explain the importance of giving grit in our birds’ diet

GSB:

Whatever else you may have read about grit not being needed, forget it.

Nature provides an organ in the digestive system called a gizzard. It is a very strong muscular organ with a tough lining. Its purpose is to muscularly move and – provided there are two types of grit being provided (soluble and insoluble) – it will work perfectly to grind down the seed intake so that it is easily digested.

No grit – no proper digestion.

Grit must be replaced weekly – no longer than that.

No grit — no teeth!

Q3: What single product do you consider the best you have used throughout your breeding career? Also do you think it is still a strong contender among the other maybe more modern, products?

GSB:

Undoubtedly Hormova – not Hormoform.

It is sold by Harkers in the UK and used by some European breeders.

It recently changed its base powder from a red appearance to white. Some breeders find the birds reject this and I have passed that back to Harkers and they are looking to change it back again.

I thought it would make no difference and said so – but I was wrong.

Fed in finger drawers, the overall vitamin content is perfect and I first saw it 55 years ago in Joe Collyer’s aviary. Fertility and chicks were there in bucket loads.

Many modern products are made by well meaning manufacturers – but they are in the main, not budgerigar breeders.

GSB: Apart from an overall treatment in the first instance, if it has never been done before, you should not treat again unnecessarily.

The sensible action is to isolate ALL new arrivals in a separate room and treat them immediately before release into the main stud.

Your outside flight must also be covered on the roof to prevent any indigenous infected birds excreting into it and thus infecting your disease free stud.

There are countless examples of fanciers ignoring these basic rules and budgerigars being lost in good numbers

When buying a bird, what should I check before parting with my hard-earned money?

GSB: Firstly examine the bird closely. Is it tight in feather or loose feathered and huddled? Catch it and check for the following:

1. Is it clean round the vent area and with no stained feathers?
2. Is it full in the hand and has bright eyes?
3. Look for and feel for any cysts around the lower gut area and in particular examine the wing butts where cysts are easy to miss.
4. Feel the crop. Is it normal with some seed inside it or is it bloated – which raises a question about the bird’s digestive tract?

My aviary is completely enclosed. What should I do about the lack of direct sunshine with its vital vitamin D factor?

GSB: Vitamin D that is lost in this way should be replaced artificially via multivitamin solutions and / or cod liver oil bought from your pharmacy.

Should hens be taken to shows?

GSB: Hens are generally more easily stressed during transport and while being moved around inside the exhibition. I suggest that you take them to no more than two to three shows only and certainly not three day shows.

On arrival home from a show, give them every care and attention and allow them access to food and grit before extinguishing the lights should you arrive home late.

Do not overshow them and they will subsequently breed well.

Grits

I begin with grits.

So many fanciers do not pay sufficient attention to the supply of grits to their breeding pairs while they are involved in the very important process of rearing their families. Whatever the “clever” writers about our hobby say (i.e. that grit is not necessary), they are absolutely misguided in their views.

Nature has provided birds with a very hard and tough muscle in the zone below the crop – the gizzard. This holds the grit when it is present and it has the capability of movement. As a result, the grits that the bird consumes (and there has to be grit in an insoluble form and soluble form) act in a “mechanical” way to grind up the seed grains – in a similar way that wheat is ground up in a mill for bread.

Without those grits, the bird will live but will not be able to function properly in a metabolic way. Therefore the chicks that the pair is feeding will in turn lose out and will appear scrawny in some cases or may look satisfactory but never attain full growth.

One has to remember that today we strive to breed bigger and better birds. General feeding apart, you must always provide grits which possess granite like particles (insoluble) and shell particles (soluble). Not only should it be given but it must be changed every week to every pair.

Budgerigars will always take off the top layer of grits. They rarely dig down when the particles on the top of the bowls have been reduced to “dust”. Budgerigars are very selective where grit sizes are concerned and require 1-2 mm grains (at least) in front of them.

Ever noticed that when your birds have been out at show, the first action they take is to head for the grit bowl? That should tell you something.

Soft Foods

I now turn to the feeding of soft foods to the breeding birds.

There are countless systems and mixtures that breeders put together or buy in a proprietry form from suppliers. Common ones are Deli Nature Biovit and CéDé Budgie Egg Food to name but two.

Fanciers will work away hard at providing such protein-rich soft foods while breeding is in process, but then tiredness cuts in when the chicks are in the flights approaching their major moulting period. The soft food is then dropped at a time when the developing birds need every nutritional support if they are to attain size in the long term. I work at this all year round – each day and every day! If you went to the aviaries of Reinhard Molkentin and his son Holger, you would see exactly the same principle being injected on a daily basis.

What is the other major advantage, I hear you say? Well it’s very simple. Not only will your original “chicks” have attained size but they will be very healthy, strong boned and with plenty of muscle around them. They will also be in a perfect metabolic state to breed super chicks themselves – that is the benefit of all the work you have sustained throughout the year.

Lastly, your birds, when they are sold, will in turn breed well for your fellow fanciers and if they do well they will be back next year for more. The question they have to ask is do they do what the Molkentin’s and myself do every day thereafter?

Cage Cleaning

A common question I’m asked is how often do I clean the breeding cages?

I am known for always having a smart appearance to the aviary when people walk in, but I like to keep fanciers away from the aviary when I am breeding since I will not disturb them at this time.

So I use the “deep litter system” which really is a convenient term for doing nothing about cleaning out except for the large female droppings. Its benefit is that nothing is disturbed when birds are sitting on eggs or chicks.

It is very common for me to allow some visitors in to the birdroom towards the end of the season, only to find one or two chicks that have been crushed by the sitting hens getting agitated by strange noises. Keep visitors out. They can always come later.

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.