About Me
My name is Craig, I was born in Sydney Australia. I have had budgies since I was 11 or 12 when my father built me a aviary in the 70's
My first budgie breeding attempt was with a lutino hen to a grey green cock. Much to my fathers surprise I bred 3 chicks straight up, but I was disappointed , No lutinos!? Frustrated I asked to go to a book shop to find a book on breeding budgies to find out why I didn't bred any lutinos. The first book was by Cyril Rodgers and was a bit in depth for a kid. But I persisted and read it over and over to the point that I knew the lingo but didn't understand what it meant. I finally asked my science teacher as to the meaning of some of the genetic terms in the book.
My parents separated in the late 70's and my mother moved us to the Central Coast. I still had a few budgies and collected every book I could find until 1991 I got married and my wife and I was thinking about a pet to share our new house we had just built. She had also bred budgies as a kid as did her Grandfather who had over 600 birds on a property in Cooranbong N.S.W. So we started with one than two........you know how it goes. We had a few tin shed aviaries, like the one below.
The sheds quickly became over crowded at the same time that I found a book that really inspired me to go full on. That was Michael Christians book. The photos blew me away and I was determined to bred Budgerigars as good as the ones in the book.
To do this I decided to expand.
So I had a Aviary that could hold 300-400 birds and I bred them in 40 cabinets in a 4m by 4m shed.
More to come!
So where was I ?
It was the 90's and for anyone into show budgies at that time will tell you it was a very interesting and exciting time! Why? you ask.... IMPORT BIRDS !! Myself I couldn't wait to get my hand on birds from breeders like Binks, Pilkintons and Snells, the chance to bred birds like the ones that I had seen in books and magazines. My import birds come from a number of sources, I was offered a buy in into a syndicate through a club, I bought birds through the Hills auction at the time and I acquired some more through some breeders that could not breed anymore due to medical reasons.
This was a great time for debate and really put everyone on a steep learning curve. Deciding what to do with these import birds. I had decided at a early stage to keep the English birds together and not to bred them with the Aussie budgies. Others believed that combining the Aussie with the English was the way to go. ( wonder what they think now! ) below is one of my import birds from that time a Grey green hen from Finney line.
Anyway I could write pages on Import birds but this page is about me! I bred some really nice birds and was very happy. I was a member of the Tuggerah lakes budgie club, to be honest I'm not really one for the club scene. I don't enjoy showing birds maybe because I'm too fussy. This drove the club present at the time crazy, "when are you going to show those dame birds " he would ask me. But really the only one i want to impress is me!
Our first child arrived a son he loved the budgies. 18 months later my daughter was born.
Never disturb him when he's reading the latest edition of Budgerigar World! HaHa
But he loves getting his photo taken!!
I was winding down from one of the best breeding season I had had when one night a freak storm lashed the coast. We have had storms before but this was one that would change everything. I had secured everything ready for a rough night and rough it was, the lightning and thunder was horrendous. The next morning was clear and quite, to quite! I walked to the aviary not really expecting anything but when I got to the door I saw in the flight a carpet of dead budgies on the floor. I had lost over half of my best birds!! And to this day I don't really know what had actually killed them. they were well protected in the large lined wooden aviary shown above!
I spent a month working out what I had lost and how to move forward with what was left. 90% of my foundation birds were gone !! Not being able to see a way forward I decided THAT WAS IT I'VE HAD IT!! and I sold what was left and pulled down and burnt that aviary. NO MORE BUDGIES.......................Until
December 2007, we had purchased a new puppy a Siberian husky for my daughter. On one of my many trips to the pet shop buying the required puppy food and what not. I saw on the counter a flyer for the local budgie club reading through it I saw that a women that lived 5 minutes from me was selling out. I thought it wouldn't hurt for me to have a look to see how far the birds had come. To cut a long story short I purchased the 50 or so birds that were left. I had no aviary, but she agreed to keep them until i got setup.
So I went to the local shed guy and he custom built my aviary
The net and budgies.
In the mid nighties my brother-in law was electronics technician in the RAAF. One day he was telling me about this new thing coming called the Internet. He said you would be able to communicate with people from all over the world sharing information and be able to send pictures. Instantly I thought of budgies and how cool it would be to be able to talk to the U.K breeders and see pics of current birds. At this time I was subscribe to Budgerigar World magazine and would be almost waiting for the postie for each copy but to be able to get info and pics all the time would be awesome.
It took a couple of decades but that is pretty much what it has become.
Budgie Forums: It's been interesting to say the least.....
People in general don't like to be told there wrong, it's just part of human nature, so this can be a issue with forums, trying to put a point across without putting some ones nose out of joint can be tricky, especially when you point or prediction comes true. But you have to deal in facts if the hobby is to move forward. It's no use referring to articles that were written decades ago and making them gospel. Most are not relevant to Australian climate and the birds are different, different feather different mode of inheritance for certain features, different diet, and so on. So I put quite a few out of the box ideas and made a few predictions on some of these forums, but as I said human nature! It's got to a stage now where people have a little disclaimer stating that," This is just my opinion " in there posts.
But I regret nothing ! The positives massively out weigh the negatives. I made a heap of friends and get emails from around the world. A lot of info has been exchanged and that is what it's all about. Absorb what is useful and discard the rest! My return to the hobby couldn't have been any better and those that dismissed my opinions seem to have changed there tune on many aspects of the hobby. So somethings got through in the end!
Here's to the future!!
Oh I almost forgot!
" This is just my opinion only "
Some posts
