It is an event not to be missed!

Guest Speaker – Brian Sweeting

Apart from the thousands of top quality birds benched for fanciers from all over the world to admire, there will be a seminar on the Saturday morning, with one of our top and successful fanciers Brian Sweeting as the guest speaker.

The seminar will kick off at 10.30 a.m.

Brian’s topic, through a power point presentation, will be “Make ‘em Breed”.

Tickets are £10 each and include entry to the seminar, light refreshments plus entry to the show on Saturday only. Those who attend the seminar will be invited to watch judging of the Best in Show and other major awards.

The Judges

While Brian is busy delivering his presentation there will be 15 judges busy judging their respective colours – they are:

• Alan Adams
• Ghalib Al-Nasser
• Jeff Attwood
• Lyn Bancroft
• Nigel Beevers
• Dave Collier (USA)
• Jerry Donovan
• Dave Herring (B.S. President)
• Colin Lamb
• Jim McGeehan
• Geoff Moore
• Norma Philips
• Tony Pope
• Cy Thorne
• Mick Widdowson

The section judging will be in the capable hands of the following:

• Dominic Avo
• Ron Payne
• Ray Steele
• Terry Tuxford (who will be invited next year to judge the colours)

85th Anniversary

To help celebrate the Society’s 85th Anniversary, each exhibitor benching 8 or more birds (excluding sales) will receive a suitably inscribed clock memento to mark this milestone occasion of the society.

Gala Dinner

The Saturday evening Gala Dinner will be returning to the Holiday Inn (formally the Moat House) and entertainment will be provided by Barry Cheese, a popular comedian.

Tickets at £25 each can be booked with Pete Hutchinson by sending him a SAE (stamped addressed envelope) and a cheque payable to “The Budgerigar Society” to:

• Pete Hutchinson, 125 Moss Lane, Macclesfield, Cheshire SK11 7XE
• Tel: +44 (0)1625 420269

Auction of Promises

On Sunday afternoon at 1.00 pm Geoff Capes, assisted by John Alcock, will be on the hammer with the ever popular Auction of Promises – with many quality birds promised from top leading fanciers together with many other superb items and promises.

This has been so popular over the years and it generates income towards staging the next show.

Tombola & Club Show Raffle

Throughout the weekend Norman & June Cox, helped by Jackie Fox, will want you to visit them at their great tombola stand with lots and lots of prizes to be won.

So go to them and have a go and be one of the winners!

Don’t forget also to participate in the Club Show Raffle while you are there.

Trophy Presentation

The finale will be when our President Dave Herring takes to the trophy stand to present the array of 91 trophies to their prospective winners. Will you be one of them?

There are a lot of incentives for exhibitors apart from competing at the highest level. The Jim Moffat Charitable Trust is allocating its usual £1,250 for the major winners divided as:

• £300 for Best in Show
• £150 for Best Any Age
• £250 for Best Young Bird
• £150 for Best Opposite Sex Any Age
• £250 for Best Opposite Sex Young Bird
• £150 for Best Junior

The Budgerigar Society will be presenting Georgian Crystal to the major winners and the Any Age section winners will each receive Georgian Crystal and £30 while £25, £20, £15 & £10 will go for 2nd – 5th Best.

The Young Bird section winners will each receive Georgian Crystal and £45 while £35, £30, £25 & £20 will go for 2nd – 5th Best.

The junior sections will get Sports Vouchers, a framed certificate and £20 for the winner and £10 & £5 for 2nd & 3rd Best.

Patronage

Patronage has been received from all 10 area societies and the show is also the club show of the following:

• Clearwing Budgerigar Breeders’ Association
• Crested Budgerigar Club
• Lutino & Albino Budgerigar Society
• Rare Variety & Colour Budgerigar Society
• Spangled Budgerigar Breeders’ Association
• Variegated Budgerigar Club

Trade Stands

Apart from all of the above there is an array of Trade Stands at the show for fanciers to be able to stock up with all their needs before the commencement of the breeding season; of course not forgetting the large number of birds that will be in the sales section.

Birds & Opening Times

Birds will be accepted on:

• Friday between 2.00 – 10.00 p.m.
• Saturday between 7.00 – 9.30 a.m.

The show will be open to the public on:

• Saturday between 3.00 – 6.30 p.m.
• Sunday between 9.30 a.m. – 4.00 p.m.

Admission to the show is £6 per person and a catalogue is £4.

Schedules

All members of the Budgerigar Society will have received their schedules already with the July / August issue of “The Budgerigar”.

Schedules may also be obtained from:

• The B.S. Office, Spring Gardens, Northampton NN1 1DR
• Tel: +44 (0)1604 624549

Schedules may also be downloaded from the Budgerigar Society’s website:

• www.budgerigarsociety.com

Closing Date for Entries

Closing date for entries is 21st September 2010 and these need to be sent to:

• Ronnie Simpson, 22 Homefield Avenue, Morley, Leeds, Yorkshire LS27 0DX

For other help contact the Show Manager Dave Hislop on +44 (0)1253 855894.

Visitor Information

For our overseas fanciers getting to Doncaster is easy.

By Air

• Local airport: “Robin Hood Airport” (only 10km away)
• Manchester airport (approx. 90km away)
• London airports (approx. 250km away)

By Train

• From Manchester International Airport to Doncaster
• From London Kings Cross station to Doncaster

By Sea

• via the port of Hull (approx. 42km away)
• via the port of Norwich (approx. 185km away)
• via the port of Dover (approx. 315km away)

By Road

• via the A1(M) motorway
• via the M18 motorway
• via the M1 motorway

There are a large number of accommodation facilities available in Doncaster ranging from Bed & Breakfast, Guest Houses or Hotels and a full list can be obtained from the Doncaster Tourist Information Centre.

See You There

Come to this wonderful show to join in the activities throughout the weekend, meet your fellow fanciers and just enjoy the amazing atmosphere among like-minded people!

1950s

In those days, nest box designs were the “leftovers” from pre-second world war thinking. They were designed to be placed inside a cage and hooked on to the rear facing cage wall with the nest hole facing the light. Other “leftovers” were like minature desks, where the parents entered via a hole on the top and squeezed down vertically. Watching them emerge was always good for a smile and a laugh, as can be imagined.

My great friend Jim Moffat used these and even up to his passing in the last decade, still had a few pairs using this box design. Old habits die hard!

It was not long before I realised that breeders were, like myself, having many problems, particularly when trying to retrieve the box for inspection, unhooking it, then seeing the hen, or the pair, dashing around and trying not to drop the box with one hand. Needless to say, at best, the eggs were scattered all over the place and many times damaged. The final irritation was when the fancier entered his birdroom, all the hens would come off the eggs to have a look at him. Lots of faces would appear to see the newcomer. This could not continue, as far as I was concerned. So my thinking cap went on.

Nest Box Design Changes

With hindsight, it is easy to look at today’s designs and accept what we have, but back then we were stuck with what we had. I realised that a box had to have the following changes listed below, to avoid the above disasters, but with the added sound reasoning required which would suit the breeding birds, before such a change was made.

So I addressed the following:

• 1 – Overcome the danger of dropping the box.
• 2 – Overcome the problem of massive disturbance and smashed eggs.
• 3 – Overcome the hens leaving their eggs when you entered the aviary.
• 4 – Overcome unhooking the box with the adult birds inside.
• 5 – Overcome the chicks dropping out too soon and either dying from cold before you got home or similarly overnight.

I started with items three and four! Build a test nesting box which could be placed on the outside of the cage, ideally on the front with the entrance hole facing away from the light. This, I hoped, would work.

In the inside I had the usual concave base. This box was up for a full season and when empty a new pair introduced. The result? A massive improvement with more chicks in that box than anywhere else!

I had 20 cages at that time. Still thinking about it. I could see that hooking on this box was stupid. Fine for taking over to the bench to inspect, but the parents were difficult to dislodge and if you held your hand under the box, it was cold. I wanted it warm! In fact doubly warm and that gave me another idea.

Why not have a double box, one inside the other with the outer box bolted to the cage? So, I scrapped that first test and re-designed again. The result? Even better! Steadiness with the parents, box solid with no movement on the cage front and with a round perch sticking out under the nest hole protruding into the cage for perching.

The last was also a developing problem as I found that a round perch became slippery with use, so a square perch, as with the major perches in all cages, was fitted. Finally, I had forgotten about the chicks dropping out too early. The new test box was the same as previously in depth from the base of the entrance hole to the concave. Back to the drawing board and try an 8 inch (20 cm) drop. Certainly better and by this time various manufacturers were taking notice and marketing, “The Binks Type Double Nest Box”.

That snowballed and a few years later everyone had them. Then the Binks name vanished – hardly surprising and understandable, but the hobby was breeding bigger birds and was the better for it.

Darker is Better

In 2000, a visit to Jim Laurie in Scotland made me think yet again. He was a breeder who had very thick walled wooden boxes some 9 inches (23 cm) high outside measurement but only a 5 inch (13 cm) square concave in the base. Breeding was fantastic as he had coupled the feeding to my diet and was breeding better results than I was. He was, because of the thickness of the box walls, spraying the boxes every night very heavily. Naturally I was very interested. Could my 8 inch (20 cm) boxes be still too shallow? Time to test again! This time up to 11 inch (28 cm) height (outside measurement), but more of that later.

Jim Laurie had a great knack with budgerigars, as most Scottish fanciers will attest to. With his deep boxes and with five chicks in most of them, they were crammed into the boxes – vertically when the parents were in there! And they were big chicks that you could hardly get your hands round. However, they could not reach the nest hole easily until nearly four and a half weeks of age and that had the benefit of holding back the hens from laying too soon and having those eggs scattered and soiled in the process.

My only reservation was the 5 inch (14 cm) square base. I felt it could be enlarged to the standard 8 inch (20cm) x 5inch (14 cm) size, made 11 inches (28 cm) deep and a small inside stepping block under the nest hole glued in – mainly to keep the eggs restricted into the resultant smaller area in the concave. Remember, the darker the box inside, the better the hens sit and incubate. That leads to more chicks on the perch at 6 weeks of age.

I did this and now have 56 boxes with all these factors incorportated. The result? I breed budgerigars reasonably easily given full attention to other well understood essential factors. Boxes today are a far reach from the very early fanciers’ techniques. They started with a coconut shell!

Note: This article is more fully discussed in “The Challenge” book which is to be recommended as an essential addition to your library. Other successful designs are also discussed.

As most established readers will be aware, I have been in this hobby for 67 years from the age of 12.

In my own area of operations I doubt if there are many who have devoted themselves so much to trying to bring the hobby into the 21st Century, as much as myself. The great difficulty was surmounting the politics of less than 10 others (in my case) who chose to undermine anyone who dared to try. They possessed an ostrich like mentality that wanted to adopt the policy of “We have always done it this way”.

But of course they got the results they have always had and the hobby is where it is today – shrinking! They refused to accept change where change was and still is screaming at the hobby to be effected. Where is the marketing of the hobby? It is totally useless preaching how good the hobby is to ourselves when the public at large know nothing of our existance.

Let me give you an up to date example which I have written about before in other publications.

Take the Budgerigar Society World Championship, for example. Outside the Dome (in Doncaster) is a massive branch of ASDA. There is not even a tiny notice saying this great show is taking place, yet there are hundreds of cars with families inside the zone passing that point. So they don’t even know they could take their families inside a big show and perhaps lead their children into a hobby that could keep them off the streets and enjoy something of what essentially would become their own personal interest.

Inside the hall, I would delegate experienced fanciers to be introduced to them to explain what the hobby is all about and what a challenge it is. It would also be promoted around the local papers – all of them! It would be promoted on local radio and even TV – but where is the attack on this area? Basically nowhere.

This is not an attack at all on the Budgerigar Society. Today all nice guys, but all looking inward instead of outward. At my age it doesn’t matter to me personally, but I sometimes cringe at what might have been today if I had been fully backed in the mid 1980s. I have mentioned this item for several years now to the Budgerigar Society – but still nothing is done. It is the first thing I do when I drive in to the Dome area – look for the show promotion.

The same applies to all shows. In the south, I see exactly the same. Nobody is delegated to take a grip and given a free range to take action. It really is a great shame after so much effort goes into the show build up by the hard working officials, whom I always greatly appreciate having run the massive Budgerigar World shows on a personal basis.

To Budgerigars

To quote my great Scottish friend Jim Moffat who sadly is no longer with us, “I am still as keen as ever on quality budgerigars”.

In recent years since stepping aside as the Budgerigar World editor and writing “The Challenge”, I have attacked the birds like crazy and have been prepared to travel anywhere, even long distances of 6000 miles, to get what I want in terms of outcrosses.

Some folk have said I am expensive but in what I term the REAL purchasing outcross world, I am not in the same class. lf you have not travelled around much you would not realise what is being charged for what essentially are visually beginner / novice type birds.

You have to use your head, go alone or at most with one friend ideally, and never in a coach! In a large group you are helpless and you can get carried away trying to buy from someone with a famous ring number or whatever after travelling a long way. So be advised. Within numbers you cannot negotiate. Remember that.

At Tanglewood

As everyone knows you cannot stand still in the hobby. From recent visits to two top shows in the south this year it is abundantly clear that apart from perhaps six birds at most, quality has plummeted on the bench and that is out of 500-700 benched.

There are a few breeders who have woken up that they have to attack quality now or give up. That is why I have attacked that myself and built up a great depth of quality so that breeders know they have a good chance of getting something to improve what they have at home. There are few aviaries around with the quality depth – perhaps only 10 in total in the UK.

Where the Moffat birds were concerned when I was gifted 50% of the stud by Jim and his family, there were some super cocks among them. They formed the basis of my red ring line today which has been taken to greater heights after working in new outcrosses. The hens at that earlier time were not quite as strong but still ideal to breed with. Jim was always looking for hens whenever we went anywhere. I wish he could see his line today. I wrote as much to his wife a short while ago saying as much – but it cannot be.

Moffat line aside, I was, and still am a grey green fanatic. The grey greens carry the size and quality so well that if you can win a big grey green class in the champion section, or intermediate section, you can go on to be a serious contender for Best in Show. So I bought in grey greens initially from Daniel Lütolf in Switzerland. I lost some which was a blow but pressed on until in 2005 I bought three young cocks which all did brilliantly and set the pattern for what I have today. They are all massive birds, great depth of mask and big spotted with 80% with round spots. Width across the cere level is excellent now and in my terminology “the buffao effect” is present in good numbers and increasing fast numerically.

Modestly he says “I am now in the position that I am uncertain where to go to bring in essential birds to prevent losing size and punch that is now fixed to avoid losing size, as happens, if you don’t outcross.”

Lütolf is a breeder who buys all over the place and produces super birds in the process and turns out massive big headed stock, which I find very interesting.

A Change of Style!

At this point the reader will begin to think “This is a different Gerald Binks to what I am used to. He’s boasting about his stud.”

I agree it is not my style at all but it arises from Robert Nawarauckas, persuading me to write about myself and my birds for the first time in my writing life.

I have never pushed or have ever been promoted in any UK magazine in this way, so allow me a bit of licence please for once in my latter years.

Two Points

Two matters to mention.

Firstly I no longer have any involvement or control over the Budgerigar World Magazine since I passed it over to Gwyn Evans at County Press in North Wales after the first 100 editions. I felt that I had to do so, both for being let down by the previous printer at a critical time, but mainly because I was feeling that I had come full circle with writing about the hobby and a fresh person should take over the editor’s role – which of course happened.

Secondly, I have not shown for many years, as is generally known. Why you ask? Well I became very disenchanted when on two occasions I was in competion at topmost national level to win Best In Show, BUT the establishment regarded me as Mr Budgerigar World and couldn’t swallow the thought of Mr Budgerigar World taking the top award and in one instance put up an awful old fashioned keyhole exhibit up instead. I couldn’t see the point after that of showing if certain folk were putting their personal vendetta politics in front of what was morally right.

Happily those few are no longer to be seen. Derrick Bowley and Mick Freeborn will verify this at any time, if asked. Both were disgusted and those involved never regained their credibility.

It is a fact that all who come here now will at some point start saying “Gerald you have to get these birds on the bench and get over the past”. So far it has not happened, but I have bought new Basil Thomas made show cages recently so I am perhaps weakening a bit. 2010 may see a difference?

The Challenge

In 2006 I was flattered to read that a signed first edition (in good condition) of “The Challenge” was advertised at £240. This was of course before the 2nd edition came out so I guess the demand value will be less for a first copy. The new edition created another 8 months work, but has already nearly sold out. I am not certain if I will produce a Third but time will tell.

There are two chapters in the book I would draw your attention to. These are the chapters on feeding. They are the most important chapters by far, as they are the clues to successful breeding. Two consecutive bad seasons and you are virtually dead in the water and may leave the hobby.

Why do I mention this? The reason is that I have continual e-mails and calls asking for help. When I ask “Have you read those chapters?” the answer is normally in the negative. Readers love to read and look at what they regard as the “juicy” bits, but don’t get down to feeding since they glance at them and feel they are a bit technical. They are not and are easy to understand in plain language. So if in trouble – get serious!

Scottish Fanciers are Travelling

These days I am pleased to say that some serious Scottish breeders have realised the quality here and are visiting annually. So far they have all been satisfied with results and recently I heard that a skyblue bred from a BA23 bird had won Best Breeder at a major show.

Reflecting on travelling a distance to buy new stock, what with fuel costs and B & B’s, I will sell, say 5-10 birds and buy one. I have done this all my birdlife having come from humble beginnings. I realised early on that it was useless buying within a distance of a 100 miles as all the stock was basically inbred as it was just circling around and it was only when I broke out of that mould that I made progress.

Today, I travel any distance to get what I want. I have just been to Germany again – a round trip of 1200 miles to obtain new birds. There are others like Roger Long, Les Martin and Brian Sweeting who do the same and it’s great fun and pleasure in seeing great birds around Europe and in my case also South Africa.

What is totally worthless is travelling in a big coach with 30 others and drawing lots as to who has the first choice on any birds available. You cannot get to personal grips with the breeder really well and it’s all a scramble. That is not the way to spend hard earned bird money. Another thing – what is the use of buying new outcrosses if your feeding system is at fault and is not reproducing numbers at home?

Tora ! Tora ! Tora !

You will all recall the film about the Pearl Harbour debacle during the second World War – “Tora ! Tora ! Tora !”. The title (effectively) meant “Attack, Attack, Attack”.

That is my attitude to this hobby and there are quite a few who do likewise – but not enough. So many just “drift” as I term it and the quality of the shows has dipped as well as numbers benched. Fanciers will only bench their best and if they feel thay have not bred the quality – the answer is obvious.

The BA23 Stud Quality

Unlike periodic fanciers who enter the hobby, have quick success and it goes to their heads, I prefer to let the birds do the talking.

This article is well illustrated. The birds can speak for themselves – you like them or you can fault them, as all birds have faults. The challenge is to reduce them to the minimum and that is the great pleasure of the hobby.

Enjoy – as they say.