Catching up with things.

Hi there all,

Well, I have to apologize for what its worth. This year has been nothing short of hectic. At the beginning of the year we had to prepare the Appartment for sale, go through the sale process, move house to our Families vacant place for the time being until we find our house to buy and begin looking around for the right place to buy....whiew! Plenty of things to do and not much time to do it. I have being still playing around with my Bengalese in various ways and I hope that I can fill everyone in on my movements and recent ideas in all things Australian Bengalese Finch or Aussie Bengo!

I am quite humbled that I have regular traffic on this Blog from around the world and this sincerely helps me to kick on and share what I can.

Thanks for tuning in!!

Paul

Articles in ABK

I have been fortunate enough to have two articles that I have written about Bengalese in the last two issues of Australian Bird Keeper for 2012.
Big thanks to ABK for giving me a chance and assisting in the promotion of the Bengalese finch in Australia.























http://www.birdkeeper.com.au/

New Benglalese Colour Chart.

JMC is the Bengalese and Lonchura Society in the Netherlands. The UK book "The Bengalese Finch" originates from this group.

www.jmc-lonchura


These read from left to right;

- Self Chocolate, Self Chestnut, Self Fawn, Black Grey

- Chestnut Grey, Red Grey, Dilute Self Chestnut, Dilute Self Fawn, Dilute Chestnut Grey

- Dilute Red Grey, Chestnut Clearwing, Fawn Clearwing, Chestnut Grey Clearwing, Red (Fawn[Admin]) Grey Clearwing

- Chocolate Pearl, Grey Pearl, Cremino, Grey Ino, Pink-Eyed White (Albino[Admin])

- Pied, Spotted White Headed, White Headed With Cap, White Headed With Eye Markings, Black-Eyed White

- Crested "Bonten", Frizzled With Breast Frills "Chiyoda", Frizzled With Neck Frills and Crest "Chunagon", Frizzled With Breast Frills Neck Frills and Crest "Dianagon"
 
For all Frilled Bengalese, the "Quotation" comments are the Japanese names as Japan is the origin of these particular Frills.

Bit of a Disaster

The weekend before last here in Sydney was a stormy one and I didn't think much of it until my friends wife where my new holding aviary is being built messaged me and told me that the Aviary had tipped over.........unfortunately, my friend has been on holidays for a bit and the Aviary was not secured well enough to support against the very heavy winds.

I was a bit heart broken when i got over to their place. But after a bit of man handling the poor old girl straightened up ok.

Needless to say the Aviary received a dozen 400mm tent pegs for good measure. Live and learn.
The only thing of consequence really is the tracking on the doors it a bit average now to say the least so that will need some work when my friend gets back and we can get back into it.

The saga continues....

Moving Forward with Breeding

My posts have been a bit "light on" over the last few months so I have to catch you all up on some things that have been happening.
A good friend of mine has agreed to let me keep an Aviary at his property at Dural so that i can continue to breed and purchase stock for the future. So that is very exciting and at this stage the Aviary that I have bought is almost finished and in the mean time I am keeping my birds in one of his holding flights.  This is my aviary partially finished which is two 1.8m X 1.8m aviaries joined together.

So that is super exciting because now I can actually keep more than just a few birds and take the time to develop some good stock for next year when I will hopefully move into a house with my wife. Good Stuff.

So once that was settled I felt confident in approaching some of my Queensland friends about picking up some Bengalese from them. It was then decided that I would meet up with James and Tim at the Grafton Bird Show at the end of March.

This is the Grafton Hall where the Show was held

Numbers were reported to be half that of the previous years at the Show

Here is James keenly watching over his Bengalese being judged by Steve.












So it was excellent to catch up with Tim and also meet James for the first time. Tim had recently picked up some pairs of Dilute Gingers (Pastels) and he brought me down the birds that he did not want. James also brought me through a good number of his Chocolates and Chestnuts.

Out of James Bengos that he gave me, he gave me one of his show birds (above) straight off the bench on the day which was very nice of him.

Through James we visited a local Bengalese breeder in Grafton. It was very nice to meet Arthur and he had a good number of pied and Self Bengalese.

It was really great to discover another keen Bengalese breeder. Above is one of Arthur's holding flights. I picked up a pair of Chocolate Selfs from Arthur but unfortunately his birds were quite stressed from the drive back and one died the next day. It was a real shame because his Bengos are very good.
All in All it was an excellent weekend. 

So here is a picture of my happy family at Dural...

From the pictures above and below you can clearly see the difference in size when comparing a Sydney Show Pied and a Show Self Bengalese. They are not the best pics to describe Type but certainly show the larger size of head and general bulk and size of the Sydney Pied. You can see here how much work needs to be done to bring the Self Bengalese up to the same level.

Australian Bengalese Breeders Society

Well I am extremely happy to announce that a small group of ex members of the Bengalese Breeders Society (BBS) have bended together to start an Australian Bengalese Fanciers Club again. It is going to be primarily an online Club or Community to begin with so that we can formally gather our Australian Bengalese Finch fanciers together in a formal way and hopefully in time we can have a physical group also. To follow on from the origional club, the group is named The Australian Bengalese Breeders Society.







Please help support the club and join. You will find a few interactive elements including a forum where you can share ideas and learn from fellow bengalese breeders.

Here is the Link to the Page

www.australian-bengalese-finch.com

Not a Stubborn Hen Anymore

Well my pair of Light Chestnut  and Chocolate Bengalese Finches now have three one day old chicks.

Sooo Tiny  :-)

Chestnut Young 2

Just an update on my little guy's progress.

Cheers

Chestnut Young

Here is a picture of two of the young chestnuts on the right and their mother on the left. They are going well in the holding cage and I think they are beginning to moult.

Proven Wrong

Well, funnily enough, despite my groaning about my "Stubborn Hen", two days ago I discovered an egg in the nest!! So there you go, not so "Stubborn" after all! Yay! I'm looking forward to seeing how many she lays.

Also yesterday I moved the 3 young Chestnuts and their Father into the holding cage and and have moved my Light Chestnut Cockbird in with the Chestnut Hen.

See how they go together.....

Cheers All

Not-So-Summer

The weather has been gloomy, dark and wet for a week..... so the hopes of my stubborn hen getting excited have now been squashed...

poo.

Lonchura

I have been a member of the Aussie Finch Forum for the last few months and I find it to be an extremely helpful online community of Finch enthusiasts (Finchos). The Forum is well established and quite large with an excellent variety of topics (its easy to get lost, there is so much good stuff) with plenty of people that hare happy to support and answer questions. There are regular members of the forum with large number of posts one of the Moderators I have noticed has 8000+ posts to their name!!!!. There is even a For Sale and Wanted classifieds....so sign up and have fun!

I was browsing through last night and looking through some of the reviews for Bird Sales that happen across the country and I stumbled upon a picture of a pair of birds that were being sold at the Cessnock Bird sale this year in May. They were Labled as White Bellied Munias and were priced at $30 for the pair (seen below).

In my opinion these look like Chocolate Self Bengalese. From my experience so far I have never heard of the White Bellied Munia being kept in Australian Aviculture. And have never seen any Australian pictures that look like the White Bellied Munia (Right). You can see how much lower the brown breast line comes down when compared to the scolloped breast of the Bengalese. Do not get the name of this finch confused with the White Rumped Munia that is Lonchura striata (Bengalese), the White Bellied Munia is called Lonchura leucogastra.









There is also a chance that the finches from this bird sale were Javan Munias,  however the Javan Munia (Lonchura leucogastroides) is fairly rare finch in Australia and can be priced up to $150pr. You can see that a pure, wild Javan Munia (left) has a significantly defined line separating the  dark brown/black breast and a white/cream underbody.
The Lonchura in the top photo show quite a dirty looking underbody (the picture quality makes it hard to see any Bengalese markings) and a blended line between the brown breast and the underbody which generally affirm the opinion that these are Bengos. Also the Javan Munia is a fairly petite and small finch and the Finches in the top picture look fairly well sized.

The names for some of the Lonchura family in Australia can be used quite loosely sometimes and I have seen Bengalese sold as "Mannikin Finches" and Mutated Javan Munias sold as "Munia Finches"

It all makes for good discussion but I think that there is a high chance that the owner of these Finches in the top picture had knowledge of the Bengalese origins being from the White Rumped Munia and wanted to give these nice looking little guys a little more value by labeling them with their natural undomesticated wild name. It's just that they had gotten the name a little bit wrong...... not that hard to do I think, White Bellied, White Rumped.........tomaeto, tomarto.

In any case if they are Bengos then it good to see some Selfs floating around out there!!



Cheers All!

My Stubborn Hen

I have tried my light Chestnut pair together for a while, trying to be patient and there just was no real activity noticeable, they would roost in their light nest but made no attempt to build anything decent.
I have had to try and accept that this light chestnut Hen is either too old or possibly a Cock. I found it hard to accept that it is a Cock because after my many hours of watching my finches I have never seen this little guy Sing so I would like to hold the opinion that it is a Hen. I had given up though and was considering moving her on in the future because she seems a bit rough and feather plucks some of the others while in the holding cage.






I had put the two light chestnuts down in the holding cage for a while and recently I have noticed that this Hen, my stubborn Hen was very active and was clinging to the top wire of the holding cage all the time. I had to assume that it wanted to get back into the breeding cage and to the nest there. I have been trying to breed with this Hen for the last two months since getting her and had no success. I considered that we are now well at the end of Spring and getting into Summer and the weather is definitely fining up and getting lighter and warmer I have noticed a lot more seeding grasses around lately and had started feeding the seed to my young Chestnuts. I have tried a slightly new approach to this Hen and given it another shot in the ring!






I have paired it up with my best Chocolate Cockbird (right), introduced some very good nesting material and every day, twice a day if possible, put a good bunch of some local seeding grasses (above) in the cage with the pair so I can try and encourage the natural atmosphere of a Spring breeding season. I guess that the key here is that the natural weather conditions have become better now and possibly this stubborn Hen of mine just might be moving into breeding condition.






I have been doing this for a week and to my delight this pair of Self Bengos is making an excellent nest. We are not there yet but it is looking more positive now.....

3 Fledged Chestnuts

Well my young Chestnuts have fledged and are looking very nice and healthy. There is definitely a difference in colour between the two darker and one lighter chicks.... I wonder how they will colour up?

One thing is for sure they look like all self and no white (pied) markings....good stuff!

Once they are feeding themselves I will move the Cock and the young down into the holding cage and pair the Hen with a different Cock, probably one of my Chocolates. See if we can do it all over again!

3 Young Chestnuts

So, I am happy to say that I have three healthy Chestnut young. Two are dark Chestnut and the youngest one shown on the right is a few shades lighter.

This photo was taken a week ago and I think that they will venture out of the nest in another week.
I bought some egg and biscuit and still the adult Bengos are not very interested in it. They readily eat and feed with the sprouted seed that I give them and since it is spring I have been feeding them green seeding grasses that I collect from around the local area.

The pair of light/dilute chestnuts in the other cabinet still do not show much sign of settling down to nest but for the time being I will continue to also feed the sprouted seed and seeding grasses to encourage the spring breeding instinct. I am still reserving the opinion that the finch that I think is the Hen is too old for breeding or is in fact a Cockbird.

3 Baby Chestnuts

My Chestnuts have hatched 3 young on the weekend and are sitting nice and tight on the nest. I have been trying to feed them the Paswell soft food mix but for some reason, they wont touch it even when its mixed with greens and sprouted seed. This soft food is supposed to have the highest protein levels when compared to egg and biscuit but when watching my other birds also they have not seemed as keen on this as the egg and biscuit that I have used before. I have just started giving the chestnuts the sprouted seed on its own and they love it. The sprouted seed that I have was bought pre-made and frozen from Rob at Ace Colony Aviaries. I have seen him making it and he takes special care to include the anti bacterial agents to avoid any fouling.   I will probably try the egg and biscuit again in the future.

In my other breeding cage things haven't been going so well. The only other hen that I have which is the light or dilute chestnut has not been displaying as being very broody. I have tried her with a couple of different cock birds with not much success, to the point that I have wondered if it is a hen at all! I had been trying some nesting material in this time that I had found myself and I have now decided that it is a bit too stiff and stick-like and could  be a reason for the reluctance.




Tim had told me previously that it is good practice to give Bengalese seed mixed with a small amount of cod liver oil to bring the Finches into "Breeding Condition". I have since read that the Vitamin D that is in cod liver oil helps the finch absorb more calcium which is important for egg shell strength. I guess that this will trigger something in the hen that tells her that "she is ready"....well I've put this theory to the test and I have paired the two Dilute Chestnuts together and have been feeding this to them for a couple of days. Also today I popped over to Ace Colony Aviaries and picked up some coconut fiber nesting material.

We will see!!

The Bengo Colours

Here is a comprehensive list from overseas of the Bengo colours represented on a poster.

This list is from overseas and a large amount of the colours are not available in Australia or the status is unknown. The Bengos that are known to be in Australia are highlighted Red  

Self chocolate 1 (Pictured is the Euro Self)  

Self chestnut 2  

Self-fawn 3  

Chocolate dilute 4  (in the past but presently unknown)  

Chestnut dilute 5  

Fawn dilute 6   (in the past but presently unknown) 

Chestnut clearwing 7  

Fawn clearwing 8  

Self black-grey 9  

Self chestnut-grey 10  

Black-grey dilute 11  

Chestnut-grey dilute 12  

Chestnut clearwing 13  

Self fawn-grey 14  

Fawn grey dilute 15  

Fawn grey clearwing 16  

Cream ino 17  

Grey ino 18  

Self-white 19  

Albino 20  

Marked-whitehead 21  

Marked-with-eyering 22  

Marked-with-cap 23  

Fawn-marked-with-cap 24  

Chocolate-and-white 25  

Chestnut-and-white 26  

Chocolate crested 27  

Fawn crested 28  

White crested 29

Selfblack-grey frill 30

Chestnut Self Bengo.1

One of the less seen colours of the pied Bengalese in Australia  is the Chestnut and because of this the Self Chestnut Bengo is a particularly rare find. The finch exhibitors club of Sydney have judging classes for Chocolate and Ginger (Fawn) at this stage and I can assume that this is largely due to these two coulours being far more common. The Chestnut it would seem is a far less common mutation of the Aussie Bengo particularly when compared to the Fawn and Chocolates. By nature the Chestnut Bengo varies quite a lot between shades of dark/light and red/brown. With my Self Bengalese I believe I have one pair of Dark Chestnuts and one pair of Light Chestnuts. To the left is one of my Dark Chestnuts.  The BBS colour standard describes the desired Chestnut colour as a "Dark Coffee Brown" so I would say that the picture to the left and bellow are similar to this nominated standard.

 My pair of (dark) Chestnuts have gone down to nest now and they have been sitting on 6 eggs for a week now. Time will tell in a few days to a weeks time as to how many eggs are fertile. We shall see......






 Overseas the Chestnut can also be called the "Moccabrown" (seen in left picture)











 To the left you can see the difference between my Darker Chestnut (left in picture) and what can be called a Dilute Chestnut (right in picture)

A Real Beginning

I went to Bruce's on the weekend and caught up with him and met Tim. Bruce was nice enough to show me some of his Chocolate Bengos up close and they were very nice, quite large and had very nice type, one in particular he had exhibited before and it was quire impressive. We chatted for some time about Bengalese and also Zebras. Unfortunately I could not stay long as I needed to get back to Sydney to beat the traffic on the long weekend and also let my new Self Bengos from Tim settle in at home for the night.
They are very nice. There are two chocolates one dark chestnut and three light chestnuts. A few of them were not in good feather and had been plucked by other birds prior so it will be a while before I can take a reasonable photo of them. They are fairly small little guys compared to the show Self Bengos such as Bruces and smaller again compared to the pair of Sydney show pieds that I have currently. From what I understand there is a lot of work to be done to develop most Selfs into such Size and Type.
For now I am very excited to have a couple of Selfs for myself and also pleased that I have a few colours that seem a bit special to me which are the Chestnuts.


So..Yay!. Let the games begin!

How to Breed?

Once I had decided that I wanted to breed Selfs I had to work out how I would do it with my aviary set up at home. At the time my enclosure had multiple nesting baskets for my finches, I only had one pair of Bengos and I quickly learned from my friends that I would struggle to successfully breed more than one or two pairs. Generally, when there are a group of Bengalese in a small enclosure like mine they will all try and pile into one nest on top of each other and because of this often breaking eggs and restricting the rearing process of young finches.

 Aside from that in a group like this it is impossible to chose which finch will pair up together so any effective form of selective breeding is not possible.

I decided that I would build a cabinet to selectively breed my pairs of finches and remove all of the nests and nesting materials from the main Aviary and designate that as a holding flight for my flock. Following this I started the process of designing what I would do. Unfortunately since I am living in a unit my ideas were limited to one cabinet but since the Bengalese Mannikin can breed in quite small cages I decided to divide the cabinet in two. Now best practice is to give them more room than this for their condition and fitness but my plan is to rotate the birds into the holding cage after each clutch and not keep a pair in the cabinet for any long duration. You can see in the top image the Budgie cabinet that I selected and when I bought this I also bought two more of the same cage fronts so that I could use the doors. I  put two doors on the front and one as the divider between the two halves so that the whole cabinet could be open if the divider door is open. Next I made a screen to protect the finches from the local Noisy Miners here in Sydney and I did this by making a fly screen like you would have on your house windows you can buy the materials from Bunnings. I have trialed this with my pet shop Bengos and it works quite well. So at this stage I am ready to go!!