Hello Kathy!
Sunday March 15 1998 09:32, KATHY JOHNSON posted a message to DEREK BRICE:
 KJ> I had a female budgie who had her FIRST clutch at age TEN. She was
 KJ> only bred once (this was an accidental breeding), and she lived to be
 KJ> nearly 13 before succumbing to a big tumor on her liver.
Our "PIXIE" seems to have stopped producing fertile eggs already,
and she's only 4 years old.
 KJ> As for closest relatives, I asked an avian genetics expert from
 KJ> University of S. California (Dr. Cathy Tofts) about that a few years
 KJ> ago. She said that half-siblings is as close as should be bred
 KJ> together for more than one generation. But she did say that if you do
 KJ> create genetic problems with inbreeding, what's mostly going to happen
 KJ> is dead-in-shell eggs way before you'd see deformed babies hatch
 KJ> and survive.
We purchased a LUTINO female from one of our larger local pet stores
and she used to stretch BOTH her wings at the same time, where as all
other Budgies do them one at the time, so I wondered if that was as a
result of inter-breeding.
We haven't had any babies now for several months, because all our
unrelated pairs have either got too old to breed or just don't want to.
The problem here is lack of space, so we can't get any new stock until
our old ones pass away, and they all look in fine health at the moment.
Bye For Now,
Derek
                 FidoNet: 2:440/7.58       +       2:257/145.1
                 INTERNET:  derek.brice@pacific.trak-one.co.uk
                            derek.brice@relegation.pelican.org
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