Dave Cottrell

Part 2

In part 1, I wrote about changes to my working life, (giving up my pet shops due to severe asthma), and the additional time this would allow for me to spend with my birds. I stated then (Back end of 1997) that I had high hopes for the 1998-breeding season, especially with my stud of Recessive Pieds. Just how did the breeding season and the following show season develop? The answers are given in the following article.

My second year in semi-retirement progressed reasonably smoothly during the breeding season. Over the last 10 years I have managed to rear between 70 and 100 youngsters to independence, with each year giving serious problems of one sort or another. I admit that my birds were left very much to their own devices, checked daily and given seed and water, with a soft-food offered when I had time. During 1997 and 1998 I spent much more time with my birds, offering Growrite softfood mixed with carrot twice daily and Vydex supplements on a regular basis in the drinking water. As a result of this increased attention I managed to breed and rear a reasonable number of recessive Pieds of a quality that gave great hopes for the future.

I had lost fertility in my 1990 Convention winning line of recessive pieds, struggling to rear one visual pied per pair per year over the 1992 – 1995 period. In 1996 I introduced a number of spangle hens to this line, retaining nearly all of the non spangle youngsters that would be split for Recessive pied. It was these splits that have transformed the fertility in my recessive pieds, and thus helped to produce a number of very useful visual recessive pieds. In one generation, by the introduction of the spangle blood, my fertility returned, and I was once again producing visual pieds in reasonable numbers.

Being at home for most of the day meant that I could sit and watch my birds for much longer periods. As a direct result of these lengthy observations, I have altered the layout of my aviary slightly, removing a couple of plywood panels from the side of the indoor flights. This might not seem a major alteration, but the increased light has drastically altered the amount of activity in the cages near to these flights as well as in the flights themselves. I have also introduces a siesta period for the birds around noon, allowing the birds a 90minute quiet period with no visits and all of the lights turned out. The activity in the aviary when the lights come back on in the early afternoon has to be seen to be believed. The majority of the hens leave the nest to feed, and this gives the cocks the opportunity to tread the hens, which resulted in a higher proportion of fertile eggs.

1998 resulted in 140 youngsters being reared, some 120 of these bred in the first half of the year with an additional 20 youngsters bred in November and early December and wearing old rings. The quality of the early youngsters was very encouraging, with two of these babies picking up challenge certificates. The first, a well-marked recessive dark green cock picked up the certificate at Blackpool B.S. 2 star championship show. This is a very long bird with excellent wing and body markings, but I feel a little heavy in the markings in the cap. The second, and a cousin to the cock is a wonderful wide faced recessive cinnamon greygreen hen that was successful collecting the young bird certificate at the National Exhibition in December. All in all I was extremely pleased with my breeding season and the following show season. My youngsters were only beaten once on the show bench, and that was at LC&NWBS area championship show when Ron Millar took the young bird certificate. Ron’s youngster is one of the best recessive pieds that has been shown in young bird classes for a couple of years and the fact that it took a rare variety / bs club show double said enough about it’s quality.

I am an avid reader of avicultural books and magazines, and managed to obtain a set of articles written by George Lewsey, the countries leading breeder & exhibitor of Zebra and Bengalese finches. George and his wife Jill has been using Vydex products for many years, but had used the products in a different way to that recommended on the containers. The Lewsey partnership had included the Entrodex and Ascorbivite into the soft-food, adding Carbosol only to birds being exhibited. This sounded a much better system than changing all of my drinkers daily, so I tried this method during 1998 and was so pleased with the results that I have now adopted it for all of my birds. Water intake increases drastically when chicks are in the nest, but the amount of soft-food given to each pair per day remains constant, so by putting the Entrodex and Ascorbivite in the soft-food, a much more balanced dosage is administered each day.

For the 1999 breeding season I retained nearly all of the visual pieds that I bred in 1998, mainly because they are either good visual pieds or are nest mates to quality youngsters.  Early results were quite promising, and half of my first round youngsters were visual recessive pieds. I had a heavy workload due to my involvement with the Budgerigar Society, LC&NWBS and Clwyd B.S., and this coupled to a number of judging engagements and a family holidays left very little additional time to exhibit my birds.  I did manage to put a few birds into show cages and was very pleased with the end results, picking up 3 pied challenge certificates. The 2000 breeding season will be very interesting, and I look forward with anticipation to working with the stock birds now in my aviary.