It has been snowing and cold for far too long in Belgium. And I so much wanted to start breeding in the outside flights. Even more so after a visit to @stef who had all his breeding cages filled.

Found this budgie comic that seemed appropriate:

http://cagedcomic.com/2013/03/08/uncaged-3-the-snowining/

So I better get the 'sunny' thread going now that the weather only shortly drops below freezing each day. It spurred me to clear out two of the small outside flights. All outside flights were connected as one big flight during winter.

The 'sunny' breading season is for using a few young hens and mainly breeding some of the rares. This year that means fallows and recessive pieds. As I said this time of year I let them breed in outside flights. The rares aren't so extreme so they are active enough for it. Also exact pairings don't matter as much.

In flight 1 I put in a pair of outcross greys: older cock and a young hen. I may drop in an extra cock and a few extra hens from the same line in this flight later.

In flight 2 I put 3 fallow cocks, a sky hen, a cobalt opaline hen split fallow and a cobalt hen I think is split fallow (my records fail me again ). I still have to add a fourth pair: a split cock and a fallow hen. Not the best birds but trying to breed lots of fallows so I have a few for test mating and showing. And perhaps one or two from this flight will be better than the parents.

I plan to fill two or three more flights later in the week:

A flight with two recessive pied cocks and a few hens. If I can find split recessive pied hens or hens that are potentially split that are ready I will drop those in first. Not really quality cocks, but again just an attempt at breeding a certain quantity.

One with my two best split fallow hens: two sisters and daughters of one of my best hens. They will go with some of my best main line cocks (related). Hopefully this will result in a few nice ones (and hopefully split fallow).

One with with some side line pairs.

This is how the garden looked during most of the 2013 year so far:

More pictures to follow later.

Bert