Hills District Branch

Hills District Branch BSNSW inc. Established 1974 NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 2010

Position Name Address P/Code Phone Email Address Chairman Vice Chair Show Manager Events CoOrd Alt Delegate Vice Chair Ass t Show Sec Secretary Mgmt Delegate Treasurer Show Manager Show Secretary Ass't Show Sec Ring Registrar Ass't Show Sec Publicity Officer Ass't Show Sec Ass't Show Sec Editor Events CoOrd Librarian Catering Officer Mgmt Delegate Trophy Steward Peter Dodd Craig Buckingham Harry Charalambous Kathy Manton Ian Manton Mark Chidel Cliff Spare Graeme Gordon Ross Selig Mark Valvason Jeff Mansfield Santo Calabrese Andre Ozoux Paul Brett Jo Zammit Ray Galbraith Brian Findlay 7 Rocca St Denistone East 44 Barellan Ave Carlingford PO Box 990 Wahroonga 44 Clifton Rd Marsden Park 44 Clifton Rd Marsden Park 27 Avondale Rd Pitt Town 10 Olive Lee St Quakers Hill 35 Watkins Rd Baulkham Hills 617 East Kurrajong Rd East Kurrajong 130 Chapel Lane Baulkham Hills 59 Broughton Rd Strathfield 65 Tallowwood Ave Cherrybrook 79 Morrison Rd Gladesville 3 Spring St Kellyville 7 Grevillea Drive St Clair 5 Gardiner Rd Galston 14 Brabyn St Windsor 2112 9888 5631 peter_dodd@iprimus.com.au 2118 9872 9392 ultimateexpression@bigpond.com.au 2076 0417 209 416 harry@planassist.com.au 2765 0411 835 757 hillsbranchsecretary@bigpond.com 2765 9627 7748 iankathymanton@bigpond.com 2756 4573 6133 mchidel@tpg.com.au 2763 9626 0300 clicky.bill@optusnet.com.au 2153 9639 9603 sangra@bigpond.net.au 2758 4576 7093 rosshon@tpg.com.au 2153 9862 6644 pomeroy@excelbm.com.au 2135 9861 0393 jeff@ascon.com.au 2126 9875 2647 santoc@bigpond.net.au 2111 9816 5914 idandre@iprimus.com.au 2155 9629 3210 paulandval@bigpond.com 2759 9834 6541 dav_jo@bigpond.net.au 2159 9653 1538 boxer73@bigpond.net.au 2756 4577 9535 Auditor H& H Charalambous Member CoOrd Lloyd Mullens 23 Flinders Rd North Ryde 2113 9802 0780 M'ship Registrar Peter Dodd Webmaster Daniel Child 11/105 Hammers Rd Old Toongabbie 2146 0410 628 691 fordano@hotmail.com Floor member Andre Ozoux Floor Member Floor member Floor Member Laurie Cauchi Richard Abraham Ken Mitchell 311 South St Marsden Park 3 Edwards Rd Middle Dural 22 Salter Court Harrington Park 2765 9628 4285 2158 9651 3689 2567 4647 4444 ken.denise.mitchell@gmail.com Return'g Officer Paul Brett Trustee Craig Buckingham Trustee Daniel Child Services Mgr Stuart Williams 7 Kerry Rd Schofields 2762 9627 1415 birdboxesgalore2@bigpond.com

FROM THE EDITOR Congratulations to Hills member and Cadet Reporter Ross Scoop Selig on his outstanding results at the Southern Cup Young Bird Show at Nowra. Ross took out Grand Champion Bird with a Normal Grey Green Cock with the same Bird winning Champion Novice Ross also won Champion Novice Opposite Sex with an Opaline Light Green Hen and Champion Novice Unbroken Cap! Ross s winning bird is on this months cover. Please note that the Hills Branch Christmas festivities will take place on December 5 at 12.30 pm at the Maison Manton 44 Clifton Rd, Marsden Park. Hills members and their partner or significant other (please note only one or the other will be allowed) are cordially invited to take part in the festivities. WE MUST HAVE NUMBERS AT THIS MEETING TO CONFIRM OUR CATERING ARRANGEMENTS. October 2010 Guest Speaker Keith Nichols Sex Linked Varieties Judge Mark Chidel November 2010 Matt Campbell Geoff Woods December 2010 No Meeting Christmas Party December 5 NIL

Meet the Member By Ross Selig Brian FINDLAY Position in Club Age Lives Occupation Marital Status Trophy Steward Claims to be 62 Windsor Fitter Married, no sorry, Engaged to Marry for thirty years. 1. What started your interest in Budgerigars? I suppose I was like most of my generation, we all had an aviary and bred a few birds. It was a bit different to today s methods as we all colony bred and had no idea of what we were going to produce, there weren t too many colour varieties. Like most kids I did it to try to make a bit of pocket money. I always had one or two birds, but it wasn t until the mid 1980 s that things got serious, and exhibition birds were bred.

2. When did you decide to start breeding exhibition budgerigars? In the early eighties we had a small farm at Young. On this we had a Suffolk sheep stud and about one hundred and twenty cross breed ewes used for producing fat lambs. My partner Mary bred exhibition fowl and had gold and silver laced Wyndots. She did well with them and was selling trios all over the State. As an interest for myself I built two aviaries and put together a group of recessive pieds which I colony bred. On a trip to Sydney one weekend I had answered an add from a breeder in Penrith. He had exhibition budgerigars and sold me some recessive pieds and a few lacewings. This was probably the start of my passion for the lacewing variety. I then built a small bird room and made some breeding cabinets. We moved to Windsor in the mid eighties and the birds came with us. I went to the Hills Branch meeting one Friday night as they were having a sale, and joined about a month later. It was probably the best time that anyone could have joined a Club as the Australian bird was on the way out and the English ones just arriving. Competition was fierce as apart from myself breeders like Tim Tasi, Andrew Plunket, Mark Chidel and a stack of others were also just starting. One of the best things was that if won an award the other members would always congratulate you, and a lot of really good friendships grew from that time. 3. What bloodlines did you start with? The bloodlines I used to start off with were predominantly Pilkington. When I joined the Hills Branch the English budgerigar had only just arrived in Australia. One of the first syndicates had a lot of well known breeders in including Ian Hannington, Joy Boorman, Russell Keane and John Ritchie. This group imported mainly Pilkington birds. I got my first Pilkington birds from Russell Keane. He sold them to me at about a quarter of the going rate, with other breeders charging up to $1000 per bird. These birds were big birds (mainly greygreens) with wide shoulders, big masks and had that narrow eye look. They did not have the blow that the Binks birds had, but they appealed to me. I bred these together for a number of years, and when numbers increased I crossed them with my lacewings. John Ritchie had been doing the same thing but for quite a while before me. So it was only natural that I would acquire some of his stock, which I immediately crossed with what I had. I bred the Pilkington lacewings for a few more years, then arranged to buy a pair of lacewings from Bryce Grinlington in Melbourne. He had lacewings bred from Bonner imports. These were big birds like my Pilkingtons,but they had real head qualities. I crossed the cock bird over my Pilkingtons and the results were outstanding. They produced some super birds for me, giving me numerous Best Of Variety wins at shows right up until the time I sold out. 4. What are the Bloodlines of your current birds? My bloodlines now are a real mix of various breeders. When I returned to breeding budgerigars I was generously given birds by Craig Buckingham, Mark Chidel and Ken Mitchell. Craig and Mark s birds seem to click well together, and Ken s birds trace back to my old lacewing line, so that was a real help. I purchased two spangle cocks (full brothers) from Joe Darman. The progeny from these are now just starting to come through, and looking really useful. So I have probably two to three different lines to work with. I was also given two birds which crossed well with what I already had, a Darman bred spangle hen from Laurie Cauchi, and a split cock from Rod Waddington.

5. What varieties do you keep and what are your favourites? By now you would have guessed that the lacewings are on the top of the list. Unfortunately they take a long time to breed up and there is a lot of wastage. My main objective at this stage is to just breed a selection of reasonable birds regardless of colour or variety. Although I am not predominantly a spangle breeder the Darman cocks seem to be producing the goods. So I will remain on that line and try to use the normals out of this cross with my other varieties. 6. Do you have particular methods you use with your birds, such as medication, feeding, show preparation and training? The methods I use are relatively simple as I start work fairly early. Soft feeding is right out of the question. My birds are fed Budgie Blue seed mix, hulled oats and a small amount of parrot mix. They have cuttlebone and grit with Soluvite D in their water 4 days a week. On the subject of medication, I am a firm believer that if you find a bird sick and all fluffed up, are fairly remote, as by this stage it has gone too far. If found in the early stages, I will dose it with Sulphur 3 for five days. If there is no response then it is up to nature to take its course. The biggest problem with the birds we breed today is that they are a manufactured bird. We breed is mainly for size, feather and big blowy heads. Because of this health, virility and mothering instincts have been left behind and I believe that is half the problem and why breeders get poor numbers of chicks on the perch some years.

Show preparation in my aviary is probably the same as most others. Some birds are kept in holding cages for about ptwo weeks prior to a show and sprayed with warm water every second day. They also get show cage training. The other method is for birds that tend to break flights or tail feathers in a holding cage. These birds stay in the flight but are caught up every second day, sprayed and held in a show cage for a few hours and then returned to the flight.

And that's when the fight started... One year, I decided to buy my mother-in-law a cemetery plot as a Christmas gift... The next year, I didn't buy her a gift. When she asked me why, I replied, "Well, you still haven't used the gift I bought you last year!" And that's when the fight started I took my wife to a restaurant. The waiter, for some reason, took my order first. "I'll have the rump steak, rare, please." He said, "Aren't you worried about the mad cow?" "Nah, she can order for herself." And that's when the fight started... My wife and I were sitting at a table at her high school reunion, and she kept staring at a drunken man swigging his drink as he sat alone at a nearby table. I asked her, "Do you know him?" "Yes", she sighed, "He's my old boyfriend... I understand he took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear he hasn't been sober since." "My God!" I said, "Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?" And that s when the fight started... When our lawn mower broke and wouldn't run, my wife kept hinting to me that I should get it fixed. But, somehow I always had something else to take care of first, the shed, the boat, making beer. It was always something more important to me. Finally she thought of a clever way to make her point. When I arrived home one day, I found her seated in the tall grass, busily snipping away with a tiny pair of sewing scissors. I watched silently for a short time and then went into the house. I was gone only a minute, and when I came out again I handed her a toothbrush. I said, "When you finish cutting the grass, you might as well sweep the driveway." And that s when the fight started... My wife sat down next to me as I was flipping channels. She asked, "What's on TV?" I said, "Dust." And that s when the fight started... My wife was hinting about what she wanted for our upcoming anniversary. She said, "I want something shiny that goes from 0 to 150 in about 3 seconds." I bought her a bathroom scale. And that s when the fight started... My wife was standing nude, looking in the bedroom mirror. She was not happy with what she saw and said to me, "I feel horrible; I look old, fat and ugly. I really need you to pay me a compliment. I replied, "Your eyesight's damn near perfect." And that s when the fight started...

HILLS DISTRICT BRANCH 2010 CHRISTMAS PARTY SUNDAY 5 TH DECEMBER MAISON MANTON 44 CLIFFORD ROAD MARSDEN PARK 12.30PM 4.30PM Call Peter Dodd 9888 5631 BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL

Feeding newly born chicks with dropper There is nothing worse than when you discover that the hen is not feeding the newly born chick. You look around and discover too, that there isn't another hen to help in this task. Since I began to breed budgerigars, it was one of the difficulties that worried me the most, feeling unable to save that small chick that needed food and was not assisted by the hen. With the arrived of hand rearing food to chicks in the Brazil market, this work was facilitate, mainly with 10 days old chicks. With the help of a syringe and a crop needle is possible to inject soft food in their crop. Returning to the case of the newly born chicks, the practices described above are totally impracticable. Because of chick's fragility, is practically impossible to introduce a crop needle or something similar in his mouth, what makes the task of injecting food in the crop very difficult. In this way, the only option that we have is the use of a dropper to administer the soft food to the chick in his first hours of life, and perhaps even during the first and second day. As it is known, the task of feed the chicks in the first days is an exclusive task of the hens, that produce the crop milk, that is a substance only produced by the organism of the hens and that is fundamental for the development of the chicks in their first days of life. There are hens that are long in producing this substance after the birth of the first chick, sometimes taking him the death if we don't intervene. It is very common, after some hours or some days, this "crop milk" to begin produced and the hen start feeding correctly her chick, usually after the second chick was born. To feed the newly born chick, we have to get some of this existent hand rearing foods that facilitate the process a lot. The mixture should be made with water, preferably lukewarm, to resemble the maximum to the "crop milk" that the hen produces. The amount of water should be much larger than the powder, for a mixture to be had completely liquid that can be easily "aspirate" for the dropper. The next step is how to do with the chick. The budgerigar's chicks, with their crooked beaks, don't possess the same characteristic of the canary chicks, that as soon as the hen penetrates the nest, they lift her beaks automatically asking for food. The chicks of budgerigars "ask for" food with their "traditional cry" that makes with that the hen moves them from backs for the ground, making possible the fitting of the beaks and the consequent passage of the food regurgitated for the beak of the chick. We have to do the same way that the hens, when removing the chick of the nest he should be deposited in the palm of your hand, with the backs returned down. In the beginning it is an operation that finds strange, and in a lot of the cases, the chick won't like the created situation and moves trying to return to the original position. Will be necessary the use of the fingers for the maintenance of the chick in the correct position, that allows that you, with the other hand, lean the tip of the dropper in the beak of the chick. In the beginning is a task that seems quite difficult, the chick don't accept the food and in many times it is necessary to open his beak with the dropper, for him to begin to swallow the food. The pressure that is placed in the dropper is also of fundamental importance, a simple touch is enough for the food to leave the tube, and if we do with a lot of force, we wetting the whole chick, losing the whole liquid and not getting our objective. With the time, you will get ability and the task can be completed in minutes. The chicks when are fed more times, they seem to know the procedure already, and start to cooperate. Don't worry about drown the chick, he has the control between swallow and breathe, but it is convenient that you make some pauses during the process. This is a task that should be repeated until the hen start to feed correctly the chick. I'm used to feed them in the morning, before go work, at noon when I finish the lunch and the night if is possible until twice, the last time, minutes before turning off the lights of the birdroom.

Most of the time, along the first day the hen begins to feed the chick, but every day that passes is more difficult to maintain the chick with the help of dropper, because he starts to depend of larger amount of food, more frequently. Another factor to be outstanding is the most similar than these hand rearing food are from the natural "crop milk" generated by the hens, they will never substitute integrally it. Please note this is taken from an overseas source and the grammar is not perfect

MINUTES OF THE COMMITTEE MEETING HILLS BRANCH - B.S.N.S.W. (Inc.) Meeting held at Dural Country Club, Dural on Tuesday 12 th October 2010. Meeting Opened 8:10pm Peter Dodd presided Present Ian Manton, Kathy Manton, Graeme Gordon, Craig Buckingham, Santo Calabrese, Ross Selig, Ray Galbraith, Cliff Spare, Harry Charalambous, Peter Dodd Apologies Andre Ozoux, Mark Chidel, Brian Findlay, Ken Mitchell, Richard Abraham Moved: C. Buckingham Seconded: S. Calabrese Previous Minutes Moved that the minutes of the previous meeting as printed in the Newsletter are a true and accurate record. Moved: H. Charalambous Seconded: R. Galbraith Business Arising From Previous Minutes Nil Treasurer s Report All accounts approved at previous meeting have been paid. Income from last General/Committee Meeting Show Cage Raffle $86.00 Accounts paid since last General/Committee Meeting Westpac Merchant fees $24.00 North Rocks Recreation Centre (October rent) $78.00 Accounts received for payment C. Spare reimbursement for show cage labels/stickers $251.88 Moved that the Treasurer s report be accepted. Moved: G. Gordon Seconded: R. Selig Correspondence Out Nil Correspondence In Nil General Business Annual Show BOV rosette (Mark to order), millet sprays and bird products to use as prizes for Variety awards. Moved that we provide rosettes, millet sprays and bird products as Best of Variety Awards. Moved: S. Calabrese Seconded: C. Buckingham Grand Champion Award Medallion, framed photograph of Grand Champion, trophy and prize donated by Ray & Pam Galbraith. Reserve Champion Award Show cage, trophy and prize donated by Ann & Rob Smith. Champion Old & Major Awards Trophy and show cage. Opposite Sex Awards Trophy (smaller) and show cage. Brian Findlay to order trophies also seek new buttons artwork from Daniel. Peter to see if Don Burke is available to present awards.

Social Night on Saturday before the Annual Show 7:30pm dinner, The Ranch, North Ryde. Book judges attending the dinner into Stamford Hotel, North Ryde. Judges fee to be $30.00. Approval from Judges Committee for an overseas judge, David Ingo from New Zealand. Christmas Party 5 th December 2010 12:30pm Manton s Home 44 Clifton Rd, Marsden Park Confirmed numbers required by end of November entrée and mains, Manton s to purchase fruit salads. Manton s to organise 1 x Port-a-loo. Kathy Manton to invite Warren & Cathy Wilson, Bruce & Nola Bradford to Christmas Party. Seed Price list for Georgie s Ark. Possibility of organising Georgie s Ark to provide a bulk delivery of seed to interested members. Quality Avigrain seed is a reasonable price to Hills members. Meeting Closed 9:50pm Peter Dodd CHAIRMAN Kathy Manton SECRETARY

September 2010 TABLE SHOW POINTS OPEN / INTERMEDIATE / NOVICE R Selig L_Mullens C Buckingham L Cauchi Variety Normal Green 5 4 5 Normal Grey Green 5 5 Normal Blue 5 8 Normal Grey Blackeye Lutino 5 Albino 5 Clearwing Greywing Cinnamonwing 8 1 5 5 Double Factor Spangle 5 5 Opaline 10 3 Opaline AOSV 13 3 5 Clearbody 5 Lacewing 5 Yellowface 3 8 5 5 Spangle 7 8 5 6 5 5 Dominant Pied 1 5 8 5 3 Recessive Pied 10 3 Crested 17 AOV AOC Old Birds Cock ASV/ASC 5 Old birds Hen ASV/ASC JUNIOR ASV/ASC J Mansfield Total 17 27 39 17 0 20 26 24 25 0 20 19 Ray Galbraith D & J Zanmmit D & D Zammit B Findlay C Buckingham M Valvason T Hancock

Best in Variety Judge : Dave Sterritt Date : September 2010 Variety Open Novice 1 Normal Green R Galbraith ---- 2 Normal Grey Green Bucko M Valvason 3 Normal Blue T Hancock D & D Zammit 4 Normal Grey ---- ---- 5 Blackeye ---- ---- 6 Lutino ---- L Mullens 7 Albino ---- L Mullens 8 Clearwing ---- ---- 9 Greywing ---- ---- 10 Cinnamonwing ---- D & D Zammit 11 Double Factor Spangle B Findlay L Mullens 12 Opaline L Cauchi R Selig 13 Opaline AOSV Bucko M Valvason 14 Clearbody ---- L Mullens 15 Lacewing B Findlay ---- 16 Fallow ---- ---- 17 Yellowface T Hancock M Valvason 18 Spangle Bucko M Valvason 19 Dominant Pied B Findlay D & D Zammit 20 Recessive Pied R Galbraith G Gordon 21 Crest D & J Zammit ---- 22 AOV AOC ---- ---- Best Cock Bocko M Valvason Variety Opaline AOSV Spangle Best Hen Bucko D & D Zammit Variety Opaline AOSV Spangle Name Variety Best Open Bucko Opaline AOSV Best Novice M Valvason Spangle Bird of the Night Bucko Opaline AOSV Opposite Sex Bucko Opaline AOSV NUMBER OF BIRDS Open / Inter 41 Novice 23 Old Birds 1 Junior --- TOTAL 65