thought to be necessary by many who use the “Chicken System”. With an elite management system such as this, large numbers of birds can be bred each year. One significant weakness is susceptibility to virus disease. Antibiotics is the word used to refer to antibacterials which are drugs that mostly kill bacteria. Some antibiotics control fungi and a few other disease-causing organisms. Antibiotics do not control viral diseases. As with humans, budgies suffer from many virus diseases (e.g. polyoma virus and other feather-loss viruses). Up to now, we don’t have much in the way of virus-killing drugs. To repeat, antibiotics, as generally used, do not control virus diseases. Another significant problem with the “Chicken System” occurs when new budgies are purchased by the person using this system. ONE new budgie with a few new diseases (and they all have them) amongst a whole flock with impaired immune systems can cause havoc and many tragedies.
The Big Worry
As I have said, budgies produced by the “Chicken System” tend to have unchallenged immune systems. That is, in theory, if you buy one or two and put them in a dirty set of aviaries with disease around, they will likely die. No experiments have been carried out to test this, but the basic theory here is rock solid: use this method and you will produce very vulnerable babies. This is precisely why the commercial chicken people run their farms like Ebola Clinics in the USA. To visit these
08 32 BIRD SCENE
Another very big worry is that by using the Chicken System, genetically weak birds will survive to pass on their bad genes to their babies. Each generation of any animal species produces weaklings that evolution usually weeds out before they can reproduce. This is a very good thing, but it doesn’t happen with the “Chicken System”.
farms, you must suit up like health workers at the Ebola clinic. They can’t risk any disease contamination at all as their birds could not cope with it. Is this the world that we budgie breeders wish to live in? Another very big worry is that by using the Chicken System, genetically weak birds will survive to pass on their bad genes to their babies. Each generation of any animal species produces weaklings that evolution usually weeds out before they can reproduce. This is a very good thing, but it doesn’t happen with the “Chicken System”. Although wild budgies seldom recover from diseases, in captivity where they have constantly encountered diseases due to close confinement, it stands to reason that budgies must be beginning to develop a better ability to recover from or to resist diseases more. This has been borne out by my tests on my bush (i.e. wild) budgies – they don’t deal with diseases anywhere near as well as my healthy 100 years captive-bred budgies. The birds that die from disease in a well managed budgie
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