Improving Your Birds PDF Print Email By Keith Gough This is a question that is asked all the time and not only by new fanciers but by everyone. Carol and I commenced breeding the Australian bird in 1974 and then progressed to the English bloodlines in 1990. Having had a line of birds going for quite a number of years it was far easier to breed some of the better birds as they were all sharing basically the same genetic pool. Then we sold our complete stud and when we decided to come back into the fancy we had to start from scratch. A number of fanciers were very kind to us letting us have access to some of their better birds. They were Henry George, Jean Horrobin, Garry Heuvel and to them we owe a very big thank you. We still had to figure out what was inside the birds we now had (which is the same problem that any new fancier has). Sure we had the pedigrees, but we did not know what fertility there was: if a hen or cock produced the spot or stance: If they were carrying flecking etc in their backgrounds so we have had a real learning curve. We decided that showing in the Open class we could not afford to waste too much time therefore we went out to purchase the best we could afford. That did not mean mortgaging the house by any means but it is amazing what you can purchase for little outlay. We were looking for length of feather and that is what we concentrated on. We didn’t purchase the Champions but rather looked for nest mates of them who didn’t look like the best birds but still didn’t look too bad and had the same genetic pool. The reason for this is that these birds cost less than the Champions. We purchased a few pair of decent birds and fostered out eggs under inferior pairs just to build up the numbers. We then intermixed the pairs in the hope that we could produce enough better chicks to mate together in the years ahead and then try to produce a line of birds after a few years. The things we will not tolerate in our birds are heavy wings as anyone can breed a large headed bird with heavy wings. We have found that when breeding the lesser varieties like the Fallows and Clearwings we have to be very heavy handed when it comes to culling them. We have to have high expectations of them or they will drop in quality extremely quickly. Also, if you are going to use the Normals that are split for a recessive variety then that is what they are used for – not to improve your straight Normals as usually Normals that are split recessive are carrying a lot of smaller genes for feather, mask and spot etc. It has been said since Noah built the arc and still stands today. You must have good Normals in your aviary to breed good birds. Years ago we used to have a three way challenge between Queensland Budgerigar Society, Sandgate Cage Bird Society and Pine Rivers Budgerigar Society. This show consisted of fourteen colour classes and some members of each club made sure they covered all varieties in their breeding room to ensure their parent society had birds to earn points. We were just one aviary doing this and we found that by covering too many varieties we lost all our better Normals. This happened because we were putting them to the recessive varieties that in turn pulled down the quality and we finished up after about five years with no decent Normals whatsoever. A very valuable lesson was learnt. After having been back in the fancy for a few years now, we are still being very selective as we still have a long way to go. We are still concentrating on feather length and head qualities. We are patient and you should be as well. You should not expect to win a Champion of Show every time you exhibit. It can take years between these award,
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 22:05:50 +0000
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