|
|
|
Making
a case for not keeping too many Budgerigars George Jenkins Every serious Budgerigar breeder will tell you it is quality that is important and not quantity, however, ask a breeder how they are doing during the breeding season and they will tell you how many they have bred - and not how good the youngsters might be. Budgerigar fanciers have been indoctrinated that breeding Budgerigars is about breeding numbers of youngsters and not quality of those youngsters For the keen exhibitor it is far more important to produce 30 quality youngsters than 200 inferior young birds. It is easy to say but it only takes one top quality young bird to take the top award to the Budgerigar Society (BS) club show. Quality is the prime factor but breeding numbers of these quality birds indicates the depth of quality in the stud. It
takes a lot of time to breed good Budgerigars. If a working fancier has 24
breeding pairs and produces 100 youngsters a year they have plenty of work to
undertake to care for those birds properly. If they start to become ambitious
and increase the number of breeding cages they either have to find more time to
spend with the birds or they begin to do everything less well. The care and
attention given to each pair is reduced, and consequently, perform less well
themselves. A
keen exhibition breeder needs to be looking for quality all the time. It is not
a numbers game. Unless a novice or beginner has an exceptional amount of time
they would do well to restrict the number of breeding pairs. Most novices will
find it difficult to find more than a limited number of pairs of the required
quality to breed youngsters for the show bench. It is difficult for most
champions to find more than a dozen top quality pairs. There are always
exceptions but most novices have a restricted number of quality birds and in
nearly every case it is the better quality birds that produce the best
youngsters. Budgerigars
should be pleasure and not a full time “hobby“ cleaning and working to keep
the birdroom clean. Time for relaxation and pleasure need to be found, some
fanciers will tell you that they are far too busy working with their birds to
enjoy them. The conclusion is that they are keeping too many birds for the time
they are able to commit to their Budgerigars. It
is nice to pair up, have a few spare birds in the flights if something should go
wrong, but the flights need to be almost empty to take the breeding season's
youngsters. Only breed with quality birds and never pair up birds on the chance
they might produce something good. Top breeder's Have proven that breeding
quality youngsters every year is about breeding with quality-'stock - and not
about the number of pairs. [MAIN PAGE ] [G. JENKINS PAGE] |