Oct 18, 2011 13:38:18 GMT
ron
Normal Violet
Posts: 130
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Post by ron on May 24, 2021 14:34:42 GMT
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOUR GRANDCHILD. LUCKY GRANDAD TO ENJOY A RARE AND PRECIOUS MOMENT. CONGRATS ( WHATS HIS NAME, IF I MAY?)ALSO THANKS FOR REPLYING WHEN SO PREOCCUPIED WITH NATURES BEST GIFT Tommy usually except when he's up to nae good then gets his proper title Thomas very lucky to have been a big part of their lives, took 5 of them on a camping trip last year with my daughter and also on a caravan holiday, tiring but great fun and they want to go camping again this year so I should be back out running to get a bit fitter so I'm ready haha.
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Oct 18, 2011 13:38:18 GMT
ron
Normal Violet
Posts: 130
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Post by ron on May 24, 2021 15:20:31 GMT
Budgies - How human can you get??
what an experience and what a saga - at least tells me a lot about how animal behaviour can be so like anyone elses. But yes i agree entirely with Marianne that should Blondie persist he shall have to go isolated in a prison cage. Sorry to the team to cause them so much concern. Glad to see you writing that about Blondie, I suppose another aspect of this we have to think about Indrajit would be if we say blondie was not directly to blame how much could his behavior and constant harassment of the mum have affected her? the job she was doing was hard enough on her without the stress of fending off an unwanted intruder. Do we factor this in as having an impact on her and so could have indirectly had consequences for the chicks?
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Oct 18, 2011 13:38:18 GMT
ron
Normal Violet
Posts: 130
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Post by ron on May 25, 2021 14:09:58 GMT
Hi Indrajit, glad to hear they doing alright. Bit of a missunderstanding there I didnt mean they were born healthy and kicked out because of stress caused by his harassment, rather could the stress and energy sapping actions fighting him off have resulted in the young being born unhealthy? Anyway its good he's occupied elsewhere now and the young are progressing well. Haha well it takes all kinds to make this world. Taking 5 grandkids camping was chaos, two 5yr olds a 3yr old,2 yr old and a 9month old baby still dont know why I agreed
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Oct 18, 2011 13:38:18 GMT
ron
Normal Violet
Posts: 130
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Post by ron on May 26, 2021 6:55:14 GMT
Morning Indrajit, The truth we will never know but on the info at hand would safely say we came to the right conclusion and that would be blondie in some way played a part?(I am still banging that same drum my friend ) yes she is a tough wee bird and that medal would be well deserved but i'm sure she would be happy with peace to get a good rest and plenty healthy grub to build her back up and yes no nest bowl in sight . a smile from anyone of them makes my day the youngest just starting to talk and her first 2 words were mum and ganda and if my daughter asks her 3yr old if he loves her he says yes but love granda best
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Post by mona on Jun 8, 2021 14:40:42 GMT
It's a hopeless situation for your birdies. You tend to ignore everyone's advice to separate the parents and their kids, to study their behavior.
I would even add that the nest boxes are very dirty on the exterior & I'm sure the interior too! Overall hygienic and living condition of your birdies is not good. It needs daily cleaning. If not anything else they can die of infections too. Babies are sensitive and tender. Check the cage bars too - I think I can see rust there, which is fatal for birdies if ingested.
Plus that much dirt and poops can cause respiratory infections in human too.
Kindly do the needful. Nothing personal here, but the condition of your birdies and the care they are getting upsets me.
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Post by ffiscool on Jun 8, 2021 17:14:43 GMT
I am not sure how I had not read all of this, but am now caught up. If Blondie is being remotely blamed, then I do not understand why he has not been moved to the prisoner cage, as was mentioned a few posts back.
Regardless of whether he is to blame, why is it ok for him to be allowed to continue to stress out the father of the new chicks etc..
clearly a troublemaker, and I would have thought the parents/chicks wellbeing would be far more important than anything you are trying to work out or understand. Yes behaviour is fascinating, whether birds, humans etc etc, but it is not ok - in my opinion - to not remove the offender.
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Oct 18, 2011 13:38:18 GMT
ron
Normal Violet
Posts: 130
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Post by ron on Jun 9, 2021 17:28:57 GMT
Hi Indrajit so we are here again , now we can sit here and go through as many different scenarios as you can make up and paw over why each 1 could have happened but the simple truth is the last 2 dead chicks could have been alive had you taken some advice and different steps along the way. The desire to analyze and understand the behavior of the budgies involved should not have come before ensuring they had the best conditions/enviroment you could have provided them with and I truely hope that is not why you discarded the advice and left Blondie in there but at times in this thread that is what seems to come across in your posts. You know my view was Blondie should have been removed and similarly we can stop there as to why these deaths happened as in my mind there's no doubt he was to blame either directly or indirectly. Think she was a young hen and if so having her first rounds under these conditions would have been quite brutal for her and surprised she coped so well but to be honest Indrajit I really dont feel we should or wish to comment further on why/how the birds behaved as they did because for me it detracts from the fact theres 3 dead chicks and also its simply hiding/covering the real reasons behind blondie and the young hens actions which were down to the enviroment you put them in.
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Post by ffiscool on Jun 9, 2021 18:29:58 GMT
Succinctly said
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Post by Hezz on Jun 10, 2021 0:41:05 GMT
It is well known amongst any budgie breeders that a hen will, can and most definitely will, kill any of her chicks still in the nest if she wants to, or is pushed into, starting another clutch. That point is not up for debate, it is a well-known and documented fact, and is common in many bird species, not only parrots. Many raptors will feed their own offspring to a stronger sibling, for example. To project human traits onto animals is unhelpful in trying to understand the biological processes of the animal world.
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Post by mona on Jun 10, 2021 14:22:50 GMT
It's just normal. You don't need to hate the female for her natural behaviour or even blondie. Back to back clutches are harmful and has it's own consequences. My female had been chasing my injured male budgie, but it's just that she needs all the attention like a lil kid & couldn't sympathize with his condition. She's not at fault there, it's just natural.
Comparing to humans, there's some reason to have a gap between 2 pregnancies.. so, as a learning experience, you should avoid this pair to have another clutch and lay more eggs. Plus keeping the breeding pair separate with their chicks in future.
Also, even if they are old enough to lay eggs, I would always compare budgies to 3 year old kids.. Morality doesn't always apply to kids.. There's no correlation. Every bird has it's own personality and survival of the fittest also doesn't fit into the role of morality.
Hoping that these experiences will help you understand that animal and human behavior are different & educate yourself on what should be the best for your birdies, so that there's no loss of life.
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Post by ariella on Jun 10, 2021 17:30:42 GMT
You mustn’t think of your female as morally sinful. She acted under a great amount of stress, which she should have been protected from. We can not and should not compare animal actions to human morals. I hope you will continue to care for the mum and not discard or disregard her because you feel she is sinful and therefore unsuitable for breeding or nurturing.
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Post by ffiscool on Jun 10, 2021 18:25:28 GMT
One last thing. I read in several other posts on this forum that hens can be quite ruthless when they wish to for various reasons including stress from interfering bullies, ingraines unhappy traits which disqualifies them from being allowed to breed, inexperience of young motherhood etc and Hezz has put the seal on the issue by pronouncing that hens CAN kill their chicks in some circumstances but for me that behaviour is unacceptable and i am sorry to have had to witness it. it has left me revising some presumptions i had because im not a pet lover only but one who is keen to apply morality even to the animal world and their actions not far removed from our own and of course we are no saints when compared to them either. So I have decided to remove mum as my Avatar and replace her with dad the dutiful father who has done no wrong yet. Sorry for the moralizing with which many in this forum i know will not agree. but as Ron said it takes all kinds to make a world. amen
You actually don’t know exactly what happened. The stress the mum was under was immense so even if it was her, she may not have been in her right mind. But I think it’s irrelevant which budgie did what, it’s sadly happened. The stress from Blondie could have caused it, might not. Too much laying etc etc. Taking the mum off your avatar is obviously up to you, as long as none of the budgies actually get less care or attention if you think they were to blame.
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Post by blueelephant on Jun 10, 2021 20:43:14 GMT
Where to start!
What you are seeing when a parent bird kills or ejects one of its nestlings is the result of many 1000's of years of evolutionary biology. It is a trait that has developed because is leads to parents being able to rear more young.
Successful parents (with genes that favour certain behaviours that result in their success) pass these genes onto the next generation. Unsuccessful parents (with behaviours that mean their offspring don't survive) don't pass their genes on. So successful genes increase in a population while unsuccessful genes gradually die out. This is natural selection/survival of the fittest.
If a parent bird has 4 chicks in a nest but does not have enough resources to successfully raise all 4 of those chicks then you have a problem. By resources I mean food, but also energy. Food availability is not a limited resource in an aviary setting but energy of the parent is. So in this scenario with 4 chicks there are two things that could happen - a parent could feed each chick equally and put equal energy into each of them and then all the chicks end up dying because there are not enough resources to go around. OR the parent can favour certain chicks - usually the bigger ones, and abandon/kill the smallest one. This is a better strategy. The parent successfully raises the maximum number of chicks that it has the resources/energy to do. 3 lots of its genes are passed on. In the other scenario where resources are split equally no genes get passed on.
You have to consider that a parent bird is not necessarily just interested in its current brood of chicks. Genetic fitness is based on a birds lifetime reproductive success - so over its lifetime how many chicks does that parent successfully fledge - how many of its genes does it pass on to the next generation over those multiple breeding attempts. Putting all your effort and energy into your current brood and then dying because you are so exhausted is not a good evolutionary strategy as you only get to breed once - you loose all future opportunities to pass on your genes.
You have a female that has bred twice back to back in fairly stressful circumstances. She probably has a very poor body condition and depleted resources - she is exhausted essentially. She could sacrifice herself and risk dying with the effort of trying to continue to feed a small chick or she could cut her losses and hope that in a future breeding season she will be in better body condition and able to fledge multiple future young. These are not conscious decisions a mother will make. They are evolved behaviours that have been selected for over many 1000's of years because they are successful (in terms of an individuals lifetime reproductive success) so the genes that code for these types of behaviours have been passed on through the generations. You suggest a mother killing a chick is a failure of maternal instinct, and then compare it to other animals where you say this would not happen. In birds this is actually very common, because it is a successful reproductive strategy in evolutionary terms.
In breeding budgies in an aviary setting humans can and usually do intervene to help a parent bird out. So not allowing birds to breed back to back so they have time to restore their depleted body resources. Taking stressors away like interference from other birds that are not the parents (dealing with such things takes energy on the part of the parents so will lead to less successful breeding and at least some of the chicks dying).
If you want to learn more about evolutionary biology of birds there is literally an entire lifetimes worth of literature out there that you could go an read. It really is fascinating stuff and I would highly recommend it. You sound very interested in this type of thing so I think you might enjoy it. You would certainly learn a lot more about the subject by reading than by watching what happens in your aviary.
If you want to look after and potentially breed budgies then I would take on all the advice people have given you about how to support a pair of birds to do this and successfully raise the maximum number of chicks by intervening at the right time for the best interests of the parents and their chicks.
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Post by ffiscool on Jun 10, 2021 21:45:31 GMT
So we’ll written and explained. I think it might fall on deaf ears though.
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Post by Hezz on Jun 10, 2021 21:45:48 GMT
I have certainly seen a cat eat its offspring, whether this was due to abnormalities or not, it certainly was not hunger.
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