FEATURE
paired with two also from Europe. The previous breeding season the older hen had bred successfully with her previous mate, as she had done the year before. Each year she had reared her first round and failed to hatch anything from her second. She herself was bred by a friend who uses standard grass parakeet boxes for his Mountains – I gave her the same. The other two pairs had previously done nothing with 14” x 7” x 7” double boxes that had been specially constructed for Mountains. I have previously bred my birds in these but now doubt whether they are necessary – some of my birds are currently showing equal interest in standard budgie boxes.
Knowing that the hens of all three pairs had been reared in grass parakeet boxes, I resolved to use these for the ’09 –’10 breeding season. The breeding units would be created by simply sub- dividing the flight cage with two sliding partitions.
unit.
In November ’09 I had 3 pairs that had been together for some months. Pair 1 was an adult hen that had bred previously but lost her mate and had a new one brought from Europe. Pairs 2 and 3 were two birds of my breeding
Since the cage could be quickly sub- divided in the event of fighting I decided to set the units up but leave the birds together and see how they behaved with nest boxes now available. The only difference was that I fitted five boxes to the cage front to give extra choice. The boxes were all standard grass parakeet boxes but four were new and one was that used in previous seasons by the Pair 1 hen. For the first couple of days I checked constantly to make sure there were no territorial fights. There were none – in fact the opposite happened – all six birds
BIRD SCENE 29
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