Junior JOSH BROWN has strong ideas about keeping the size down in his colour budgies, and that has governed how he’s selected his pairs this year. Also, some new and different birds seem to have appeared in his collection
IT IS A little while since I wrote something for the paper and I am pleased to report that I still have my colour budgies! They are good fun and over the winter I had the hard job of trying to get the numbers down so that I only had a few pairs for breeding.
With colour budgies it is very easy to have a nice colour appear in a nest and then think: “I like that. Maybe I’ll try and keep that one and try and breed some more.” That is something I did at first, but then I realised there were too many birds for the breeding cages my dad says I can use. So in fact I only have three for budgerigars at the moment. The breeding team are the smallest birds that I could pair: a normal green hen and a cobalt cock bird; a lutino hen paired to an albino cock; and a violet cock bird to a cobalt hen. With these pairs I am hoping to breed some very small birds plus some colours that I really like, which are violets and inos.
My budgies did not get shown too much last year, but I did take them to Aldershot CBS, which is local to us, and they got some nice comments from the people at the show. They won some prizes, too.
I would have liked to do some more shows with them, but they all decided to moult at the time I wanted to show them. That included the Welsh National, which I like doing as we get to have a night away in a hotel. (See Cage & Aviary Birds, February 14.) The people at the show are very friendly and like to get me helping with the stewarding. This time I helped the foreign bird judges.
Expanding from budgies
I have found that a lot of bird people like to help young people out. One thing that’s happened is that I have been given some other birds: blue celestial parrotlets, African silverbills and star finches.
The star finches are something I really liked the look of when I scanned through some of my dad’s books. However, I only mentioned them to him later on and by then I couldn’t remember the name – so I was trying to describe them by saying “the ones that have a face like a strawberry”. Dad worked it out and I figured it was a good description because of the red and white spots they have.
The silverbills are also nice birds and I like their small size. They make good show birds and I took two to the Welsh National. One of them won best junior foreign, which was great and again I won some nice prizes and some prize money. On top of that I won a raffle prize, which was thanks to some of the people at the show who decided to give me some of their tickets during the draw. In the end I think I ended up with about 100 tickets!
I still like the parrotlike birds the best and I really like the shape and short tails of the two celestials I have. They seem to make good show birds, too, and I took them to the Welsh in desktop show cages, though they were beaten by the silverbills. The two I have are both hens but I am hoping to get them some mates and try to breed some. Dad says I have to think about the space that would take up because the parrotlets don’t mix together like the budgies do.
He also likes the idea of me keeping finches, because it would mean he only needs to buy finch seed instead of budgie seed, sunflower hearts and carrots.
Josh Brown and his family Dave, Vicky and Poppy live in Surrey.
Find more news and articles like this on the Cage & Aviary Birds website. Subscribe to Cage & Aviary Birds magazine now.
