Can You Teach An Old Fancier New Tricks?

When a very nice grey spangle hen wouldn’t a) mate with her partner or b) produce fertile eggs, despite being breeding fit, CLIVE WAKEMAN was at his wits’ end. Then he sought out some advice from the breeder he had purchased this particular bird from, and things finally started to change for the better.

BUDGERIGARS

ONAN aviary visit in 2015 to Arthur Piper’s set-up in Cornwall where I saw some very nice birds, one in particular stayed on my mind – an unused 2014 grey spangle hen. So I rang Arthur when I had got home, we talked about it, a price was agreed and I went back a week or two later to pick the hen up.

Shortly after getting back, I paired this hen with my first chosen cock because she seemed to be in tip-top shape and breeding fit. However, she never attempted to enter the nest-box. I actually changed the cock bird I had with her three times and, although she seemed to get on with all of them, she never once made it to the box. There were not even any feathers inside to suggest she had tried it. After a period of about 12 weeks I broke up the last pairing and put her in a flight.

She still looked as fit as she always had, so I paired her up again about a month later with exactly the same results. I split them up and tried her with another two cocks with about a four-week gap in between. Then one day I entered the birdroom to find her missing. On checking the nest-box I could not believe my eyes. She had actually laid an egg.