October 2008 Photo Of The Month | Link |
  26th 2008
  Breeding has now started in my birdroom, I have got two pairs that has been breeding for a while now but are nearly ready to finish, I have got another six pairs I can use to fill any empty cages, anyway back to the breeding, I have put six new pairs together about 14 days ago, and they are just starting to produce eggs, there is a good mix of colour's, most of my 2007 breeding was to give me normal split silver javas all the splits have now been paired up with silvers theses pairings will give me 50% Normal & 50% Silvers hopefully the silvers will have a good depth of colour and well marked (fingers crossed).
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  27th 2008
 
  Here we are again building nest boxes for Tom's budgie room, we got up early today and went down to the wood yard for two sheets of 9mm ply and two sheets of 3.6mm plywood, we managed to get all the sheets cut up out doors into strips before the rain started, we have now taken over the garage to carry on building, with the wood cut into strips we only needed to chop these down into the parts we need to construct the outer skin of the nest boxes, each nest box will have a pull out draw to enable Tom to care for the babies and make ringing easier for him, the photos above is showing Tom drilling the ventilation holes.
 

At the end of the day we have finished all twelve outer parts of the nest box, each box has a hinged back so the inner draw can come out, we are going to carry on tomorrow with these draws, come back tomorrow and see where we are up to.

News on my javas each breeding pair now has eggs some have two, the only pair that has not yet! laid is the Agate pair, both of these birds are only twelve months old and their first time to breed, I think they will breed as they have made the nest in the box, so I will give them a bit longer.

  28th 2008
  Another busy day today, we have now finished all the internal nest drawers for the nest boxes also we made twelve extra draws so Tom can replace any dirty draws with a clean one.
One of our club members very kindly cut the concaves in the wood which we had cut up ready to go on the bottom of theses draws, I don't know what the tool was he used to cut the concave but he done a good job of them, all what remains now is to attach the boxes to the bank of breeding cages, I have sent away for some special screws to do this, come back in the next day or two to see how we fix them.

At last! we had enough plywood over to make my last Java breeding cage, this is cage number nine, I only need to give it two coats of paint tomorrow and it will be in the birdroom with another pair of Javas ready to breed, the nest box was made last month when I was making all the other nest boxes.

In the photo you can see the stack of internal nest draws for Tom's budgies.

  29th 2008
  Let's start with the weather, it has turned so cold here today I have taken the birdcage indoors to paint (to my wife's delight!) it's sitting on the dinning table drying, I use Dulux Satinwood satan finish on my cages, this paint stays white longer than any other paint I have used also it is more hard wearing but it takes more time to dry especially in cold weather. The screws we sent off for have arrived today so we will be hanging Tom's breeding boxes tomorrow
  30th 2008
  Here are the screws we will be using to fix the nest boxes to the cage fronts, as you can see in the photo one end has the normal screw thread while the other end has a 4M thread to enable Tom to take off the boxes at any time using the wing nut.
 
  Here you can see how we fixed the screws to the bank of cages, each nest box front has been custom built to fit the breeding box opening on the cage front, the entrance hole and the small parch all line up with this opening, the box front has been extended so that the holes for the bolts will line up with the main structure of the bank of cages, each nest box is identical to each other so any box will fit any cage, with all the screws fitted they will now stay there. We had to drill small pilot holes first so we could screw these bolts in place, we only had to screw the wing nut down the thread until it stopped and then the we just screwed the screw in using the wing nut.
  I think we can say the finale part of Tom's bird room is now complete! all his nest boxes are now in place ready for the breeding season in middle November, just a finishing touch to the nest box door we added a small screw in eye and threaded a key ring through to made a handel to pull open the door, plus a small brass clip to stop the door from opening when occupied.
  Next News Continued on Novebers Page!