In my case apart from last year -I have never done well breeding them. Once I tried breeding boxes with 8 pair and reared 9 young in total and that ended up being 8 cocks and a hen. I won't even mention all were NSW blues and splits.....LOLWhile I was holidaying for 12 months in the USA forum via emails
they did a lot of text on boiled eggs and gouldian breeding. I had tried eggs before but with not much success. So until there way of feeding popped up -I'd given the idea a miss!.Remember too $bill and wildbill is the same person apart from the fact that I've now been de-valued against the US greenback!
Back to the eggs. last year I started them off early and added mash boiled eggs - say 2 eggs to 2 crumbled up wheat bix plus a bit of my green seeding grasses and white millet with mixed canary seed.
Did pretty good and by the end of the season I had reared about 150 young. What I noticed most some birds fail to feed young only days out of the nest and if not fed and you hear that certain squeak - you know in days you will pick them up off the floor.
I also noticed those same young landed on the food tray and tried to crack seed but it was just a motion with no end results. I found adding the egg and wheat bix mix was a good way to "kick start them" nothing to do with my 2 motorbikes -just an expression
and I saw several eating this mix from a couple of days out and survive. I noticed this especially with young diamonds plus I had less pick-ups.This year I am following the same pattern with the feeding and last years young are now the breeders. Therefore they know exactly what the egg mix is. At the moment I am going through 42 eggs per week on average and it could be closer to the 4 dozen mark.
So far I have not picked a single first fledge young off the floor and that is now with 100 flying and 45 approx in various other nest boxes. I'd say 200 is quite possible this year.... maybe more. Although I've bred LIMES -BLUES and what I think could be the possible new mutation from that cross the majority are greenbacks so the figure is not as exciting as if say - I had all blue and splits and 150 young ....LOL
A couple days ago I checked a nest from a blue hen and split. The young had hatch say 24 hours. 3 blues and 2 greens. I had no trouble seeing the yellow yoke in the young chicks crop from the hard boiled egg mix I had dropped in a few hours earlier. Even without my glasses!
I think this egg idea works for me and work well. Just on last years breeding effort alone I bred more in that year than my previous 5 years combined.
So it's not a case of shouting off on numbers as I'd much prefer if I had 30 or 40 Blues...LOL It's just information which might interest some and worth a go to try it out and others who may think it's a worthless bit of reading...LOL
