Breeding budgerigars this year reminded me of the racy days of the 1960s, when you put down a pair of birds and got 5 or 6 fertile eggs from each nest, and reared 6 or 8 from each cage over the two rounds.

In those days heads were the most important feature as it still is today.

For many years, our advertisement in the year book claimed the bold statement:

“Bred for Head, Winning with Type”

Type was important and you were advised not to breed buff to buff.

Fanciers of that era would be blown away by what is the norm on the show bench today.

2010

This last season, we started pairing birds the earliest ever, because there was so much scrapping in the flights particularly amongst the hens.

Five hens were chosen primarily for their fitness and in 2 cases their poor breeding results in 2009.

They were put in the breeding cages on the 20th July with open nest boxes. 3 days later the cocks were introduced. Four of these 5 hens went to nest and laid.

The Earthquake

On the 26th August, we paired up another 6 pairs and the first of these laid on the 4th September, the day of the earthquake.

On the night of the big “rock and roll”, my wife got up at 4 a.m. and woke me to look at the sky.

It was a brilliant clear blue with a bright quarter moon lighting our back lawn.

Half an hour later all hell broke loose as we leapt out of bed. The noise of breaking glass and falling crockery was horrendous.

When that subsided, we could hear the birds in a frenzy of uncontrolled flying just crashing madly about in the breeding cages and flights.

I turned to Fay and said:

“That is the end of our budgie hobby”

We had 6 show cages in a line at the back of a shelf 50 mm wider than the cages and at shoulder height.

They fell to the ground, but only received minor damage to the cages although the fronts were badly damaged and needed straightening.

The mess in our lounge and kitchen was a mix of liquids, glass, vases, china, and pantry solids.

No power for 24 hours.

The street corner was cordoned off as a power pole was down. We checked on our neighbours and went back to bed.

Daylight Breaks

Come daylight we were up and taking stock.

4 retail shopping areas within a radius of 2-3 km, had severe damage and in one case the whole complex has been bulldozed.

At about 8 a.m. I went out to the birds.

The first 4 pair had young and the hens were in the nest.

The results were:

• 23 eggs
• 14 fertile
• 12 young
• 1 dead in shell
• …and a feather-duster

There was very little chirping.

I turned the radio on, gave them their daily silver beet and the birds soon returned to song. I think they were glad to see me!

Post Earthquake

Between the 4th and 12th of September the second six pairings started to lay.

The results were:

• 35 eggs
• 32 fertile
• 16 young
• 10 dead in shell
• 6 died

By early October the first 4 pairs were laying their second round, one cock with a new mate.

The results were:

• 26 eggs
• 24 fertile
• 14 young
• 5 dead in shell
• 1 died
• …and a nest of 4 scuttled

Then early in November the six pair of August pairings started laying again and other replacement pairs for cages that produced nothing and a replacement for a lovely large sky hen that must be barren.

The results were:

• 33 eggs
• 32 fertile
• 18 young
• 14 dead in shell

A high percentage of dead in shell we attribute to the December aftershocks culminating in the big one on Boxing Day (26th December). During December we had another 4 pairs laying.

The results were:

• 28 eggs
• 24 fertile
• 18 young
• 6 dead in shell

2010

Total results for 2010:

• 145 eggs
• 126 fertile
• 78 young
• 36 dead in shell
• …and 12 deaths

5 nests have had 7 or 8 eggs each and 2 other nests 9.

We have had extremely good fertility this season.

The high percentage of dead in shell we attribute to the aftershocks – 36 dead in shell and another 12 young dying is a very high percentage (33%).

On one occasion I was out in the garden beyond the flights, facing the aviary and actually saw the aviary house area lift as the quake rolled through and under me, quite spectacular!

I went into the breeding room immediately. Not a sound from them. The hens with chicks were out of the nests, but those with eggs were still in the nest boxes.

How Did This Happen?

So, what was happening at night when some of the worst aftershocks took place?

What has contributed to the high percentage (87%) of fertile eggs?

What have we done differently?

Some Possible Theories…

• Firstly

  Our matings also coincided with the majority of hatchings occurring just on or after full moon (i.e. pairing about 3 days before full moon).

  This is what pigeon breeders, who, after extensive studies, found gave the best results.

  In the case of pigeons, it was a question of speed and reduced their losses with their racing stock.

• Secondly

  Although we had used the Massey Pigeon Complementary Feeding Oil spasmodically last breeding season, this season we started using it early in July.

  Although directions were given on the bottle for rearing young pigeons through to racing pigeons, I decided that, as pigeons eat whole grain, putting oil on seed was sufficient for them to get the oil – but not so for budgerigars.

  We decided to allow the oil to soak through the husk to the kernel where it would be more likely eaten by our birds.

  With this in mind I already had an aluminium container 250 mm high and 150 mm diameter with a lid. It holds approximately 3.5 litres of seed when full – ideal for the flight birds and sufficient for the 15 pairs in the breeding cages.

  We poured in 40 mm of plain canary seed and adding a teaspoon of oil on top in a circle and repeated until we had 4 layers of oil plus a cover of seed over the last one.

  Approximately 3 litres of canary seed in total.

  We left this for 24 hours to get high concentration of oil into some of the seed.

  We then stirred it with a flat paddle to mix it thoroughly and left it for another 2 days.

  This treated seed was darker than untreated seed and could be seen to have absorbed the oil. To use this oiled seed we mixed 1 part treated to 4 parts untreated seed mixture. This meant that theoretically 1 in every 5 seeds the birds eat is rich in oil.

  Those of you who have used it will know it is not tacky like most oils and penetrates readily if allowed to stand. We keep a lid on it and it does not appear to deteriorate over the time it takes to be used. The manufacturers say to keep the bottle refrigerated.

• Thirdly

  It is widely accepted that trees and bushes coming to the end of their life will often produce an abundance of flower or fruit in a last ditch effort for the species to survive.

  Could this be the case with our budgies with over 4,000 aftershocks?

  We don’t think so, because other Christchurch breeders would also be having a good season.

  Unfortunately that is not the case and I have not heard of anyone having anything like the fertility we have experienced this year.

Perhaps none of these three reasons have anything to do with the pleasing results we had this breeding season and it is the result of a number of coincidences just chipping in to give us a season to be thankful for.

Postscript

On 22nd February 2011 at one in the afternoon, a third earthquake (of 6.3 magnitude) hits Christchurch, New Zealand.

The depth is a “shallow” 5 km and it is centred near Lyttelton.

The surrounding rock structure of the hills sends shock waves equivalent to an estimated 1.25 times the strength of the September 4th quake – hence the destruction of the entire city centre!

When I wrote “The Challenge”, I omitted a guide that first appeared in my first book – “Best In Show”, published in 1974.

So, I am now pleased to correct the situation with this handy reference guide for breeders, enabling them to know exactly when to assist the struggling chick and particularly when not to intervene!

As we know, opening too early can reveal the chick which still has not absorbed the yolk into its body and it is pale and weak. The outcome is death! Opening too late and the chick for various reasons also dies, unless helped a fraction earlier. Close observation and timing are therefore vital assets to your husbandry.

Remember, if it is the first chick to hatch, leave the empty shell in situ and move the tiny chick to a pair you know feeds small hatchlings really well to increase its chances of survival. Also bear in mind that a pale chick may not make much squeaking noise.

It is the bright red chicks you want. A red chick will be fed as the hen will feed it easily, but if the chick does not call because it is exhausted and weak it may not be fed and will die.

Fanciers frequently blame a hen for “crushing” tiny chicks. Occasionally this is true especially when young hens are in use and have no idea what to do when a chick hatches. However, the most common reason is that non red chicks have not demanded to be fed and consequently look “flattened”.

At my stud at “Tanglewood”, I managed to lay my hands on an incubator. This is used entirely for two purposes, but strangely not for hatching eggs!

It contains large plastic eggs, from Germany in my case, plus a surgical mask that is there to warm up “cold” eggs that a hen has deserted, or, kicked to one side in the nest and also for chicks that have similarly been left to go cold.

Deserted chicks may often look dead and white, but it is surprising after a few hours how some can recover using an incubator. Remember it is vital to attempt to save every chick for your end of year tally and some of those could be Best In Show possible contenders.

I take a laid back attitude preferring to look at the end of season total rather than getting depressed about losses over which I have no control. By the same token I am obsessed with good husbandry throughout and certainly this has a direct bearing on the end results.

Feeding

This is where it all begins. There is a familiar adage that “You only get out, what you put in”. So very true, but, as I have written before, this can be overdone or conversely underdone – both with disastrous results.

I do not propose to dwell on this, suffice to say that if you have a copy of my publication “The Challenge”, then I urge you to really spend time on reading the two most important chapters – both are on feeding. The chapters are pitched in lay terms so my advice is to read both above all the other “glossy popular chapters”. They are the basic key to success without which you cannot achieve success in the hobby and these chapters also contain examples of International diets that have proven themselves over years of trial and error.

Bad feeding and poor husbandry both combine to give a poor season. Remember that.

Starting The Season

There is no doubt that the start to any season is the most difficult. I can tell that the birds are ready to breed by looking at the behaviour of the hens as well as their condition. All my flights have the sexes mixed year round. This is because the current year stock learn their sexual habits very early. If you keep the big hens separate they just sit in the flights and get overweight with predictable poor results. Mix them and keep them active.

You will have gathered that I ignore the fixed ring issue date we have in the UK (1st January), which I have tried to alter for 20 years (to no avail) because of the climate changes that have affected the start up period dramatically. However, there is hope on the horizon as the Budgerigar Society Exhibition, which is our most important show, is now held annually in the last weekend of September, resulting in a 3 month gap before our rings arrive and our birds, as a generalisation, need to be paired immediately after the show.

Pairing

The larger the stud the less the losses, whatever they are, affect you. If you are in livestock you have to expect tragedies – especially during the breeding season.

My pairings are made in a strict procedure. I place four birds to a show cage, sexes separate, all down the full length of the birdroom three cages high. This puts all under slight stress and shows up the faults particularly with type and stance faults.

I also select each pair on the basis of ideal choice first and pedigree second. Never the other way round. I certainly never pair birds by selection from the flights. I want the show cages to reveal their true qualities if they have any. Not all do and that applies to every aviary!

Laying

I have, like many other breeders of top quality birds, found that, unlike the post second world war birds which laid in 7-10 days, the massive birds of today take longer in many cases. Indeed, 21 days is not uncommon before the first egg appears, especially with maiden hens.

I have also established that with modern feeding techniques one can pair such birds earlier than the advocated 10 months minimum age. I can often see hens at 8 months that are raring to breed – so up they go and are successful. The downside is that such hens are difficult to start feeding their young due to inexperience and relative age, but I will come to that later.

Remember, I, like many other breeders, have totally enclosed aviaries and no outside flights.

The First Clutches

I now assume you have nests in with eggs everywhere. Fertility is the big hurdle and the worrying time. Bad fertility and you can suffer.

Again, coming from long experience, this is caused by you and your feeding and your poor husbandry. You are the provider. This cautionary comment applies to very low fertility over 60 per cent of your pairings – at least.

Looking on the bright side, let us assume the reverse situation and all has been done that can be done and 60% of the stud is fertile – perhaps even 80%. You will never achieve much more and certainly I always have to carry out what I term a “Cabinet Re-Shuffle” a couple of times in the early stages of any season for a variety of small reasons.

Disturbance

I recently had an e-mailed video from an airline pilot (Liam McGuiness). He has fitted up a webcam on a nest box to watch the habits of a pair. It was highly noticeable that the cock is a real interference as eggs are hatching, treading all over the place and on the small chicks and on the top of the hen.

Cocks that tend to sit outside the box are much to be desired. McGuiness stated that:

“The cock does feed the chicks, one is a day old chick and the other a three day old.

The hen has to work hard to protect the chicks when her partner flies in. You can see her leaning into him as he tries to barge into her to get at the chicks. She tries to keep the chicks beneath her while he is treading everywhere. In his attempts to get close to her he wraps his wing around her while he bullies her into submitting into being fed.

He gets very frustrated and disturbs her far more frequently than is necessary. Sometimes he rushes into the box, climbs all over her and then rushes out again. Chicks can easily be crushed at any time through these disturbances.”

Transferring Eggs

Some advice – do not handle eggs unless absolutely necessary. Your hands possess germs on them all of the time. They are one of the most infectious parts of the human body and will pass germs on to the egg surfaces – these are porous and you then wonder why some eggs have been addled, or dead-in-shell has occurred just as hatching is starting.

If the transferring of a clutch is unavoidable, wash your hands in warm water first.

Then take full note of two areas.

1. Where the eggs are positioned in the clutch to one another. Careful examination with a laser torch will show that the earlier fertile eggs are located on the outside of the clutches where they are placed by the hen to allow more gaseous exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen to take place. Moving those eggs to another nest, without thought, into the middle of the receiving nest, can result in the death of the embryos.
2. Before I move eggs I mark each with a felt pen dot on the top surface so that that are placed in the same correct rotational position in the new nest.

We have begun to start chasing for our chick target result at the end of the season.

Hatching

Starting with dead-in-shell as the negative possibility, that again is poor feeding coupled with perhaps the Australian dryness requiring regular damping down in your birdroom. However a dry atmosphere is only about 10% of the dead-in-shell problem, at most. The rest is diet input.

We can have irregular hatching – by which I mean some chicks arrive bright red in colour and full of strength to call for food. Others can just emerge, pale in colour but they are exhausted and do not call. A hen faced with this will just ignore them until they are flattened. Not her fault – in this case it is yours! There are occasions where you find an egg(s) just struggling to hatch which requires help by you to assist. There is a chart in “The Challenge” advising you when to intervene safely.

If your chicks are red and active and get full crops you have your diet correct. Make a note of every mortal item that you are giving and the methods you have used to achieve such success. You will need that list in later years. Be sure of that because you will inevitably forget something that had brought you to such a high pinnacle earlier. I know that from my earlier years.

So, the hens are feeding and they are being fed but in a nest of five or more there are problems arising. I personally like four chicks per-round-per-pair – so moving chicks to less occupied nests has to be done. I do not like to do this as the crop milk from the original parents is different to the fosters – but one has no choice.

Keep a close eye under a nest of four chicks that have one or two late bred day olds underneath them. Again they are red, perhaps fed well and survive under the weight of the bigger chicks. But you have to move them both to save them, and if you do not the larger chicks will eventually be the first to be fed anyway and your small ones will go backward.

Returning to other nests, you will see the chicks are becoming scrawny in appearance. This means the hen(s) have a nutritional factor (F) missing from their crop milk. Exactly which factor one doesn’t know, but as soon as you see it in the oldest chick, move all out elsewhere. I mark my records with (F) for future reference.

I do recall that Robert Manvell wrote me a letter years ago in which he said he found that if there were too many nests with scrawny chicks, the addition of vitamins within a syrup base, such as vitamin B12, if overdone, can give rise to this problem. I agree with that.

Changes

I have made changes to my nest boxes periodically but based around the box-within-a-box principle. Some seasons ago I felt that the shallow boxes, some 8 inches deep, were too shallow. The chicks would exit too early and the hens were laying their 2nd round too soon.

Chicks were having to be returned and eggs were thus scattered and lost. With the end target in mind, I made the boxes 11 inches deep and the problem was solved. The chicks cannot reach their exit until old enough and the hens delay their cycle. More eggs saved!

Conclusion

If you want the results, and remember you need a full nest of chicks from which to choose the two best and sell the rest, then you have to work for it.

The aviary has to have priority in your day and time given to it.

I trust some of these practices that I employ at my home in England prove an incentive as well as giving all readers some sound tips on reaching their annual target year-in-year-out.

Remember – write it down when you have it spot on.