FEATURE
birds as slim as possible, fat budgerigars do not produce such good breeding results and they are prone to an early death. I placed different coloured plastic split rings on their legs in March and for a day I kept them in a Sonia cage so that I could study who had paired up to whom. This worked well and I wrote down the newly forming pairs, at this stage I had not decided whether to cage
breed them or place them in an aviary. It took me some time before I decided on the way I would breed with them; it was in a large aviary measuring 9’ x 18’ ample room for four pairs. It was not until May, yes I know that is a little late in the year but as their breeding aviary had access to natural daylight (not light through glass) I wanted to wait until the outside temperature warmed up. To be honest when I caught them up to transfer them to the breeding aviary they were very much on the heavy side especially the hens which was a bit of a disappointment as I was hoping that the winter feeding regime had kept them fairly lean. As I am always willing, in fact quite enthusiastic, to try slightly different approaches to breeding I decided to offer both typical Budgerigar nest boxes with a wooden concave and upright parakeet nest boxes with a wire ladder down to the base which was covered with wood chippings. It was quite interesting because three of the pairs selected the parakeet option and only one hen went for the typical Budgerigar nest box. With a relatively large aviary there was plenty of wall space to hang the nest boxes on the wire, what is important is to ensure that the tops of the boxes are at the same height, the higher the box the more popular it will be and fighting can occur to secure the highest. Picture (above left) of breeding stock in their aviary.
BIRD SCENE 11
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