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Social Evening & Bring and Buy 2006 The Members Social Evening and Bring and Buy sale was extremely
successful and a great time was had by all. At
the end of the evening we had made £262 from the auction and £36 from the raffle!
Thanks to everyone who attended and donated items. The auctioneer was our very own ‘Del
Boy’, Ricky Watts, who did a marvellous job. Thanks
also to Chris, for the lovely buffet and drinks that she brought; they were thoroughly
enjoyed by everyone.
A special mention must go to Mike Ball’s two daughters, who
kept the bidding going and must have cost him a fortune by the end of the evening!
Well, that was our last meeting of 2006 which, I’m sure you will agree, ended the year on a high note. Next year I have provisionally booked the hall on December 21st so that we can hold a Christmas Social Evening if you the members wish so. However, we can’t do this without the continued support of all of you so please carry on attending and supporting your club as you have done in 2006. The A.G.M. will be held on |
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The Members Show was not supported as well as it should have been
which was very disappointing to the people who put in all the work so that everyone could
enjoy a good social day and show off their birds. However, it seems that lots of clubs are
suffering the same fate with the lack of interest from its members. This will end up with some of the committee members
saying that ‘enough is enough’ and then there will be no local club for you to
attend; you will have to travel further a field and hope others will do the work for you!
Please respond and enjoy your club because those of us ‘workers’ don’t mind
doing it if you come and support us in our efforts to provide you, the members, with a
first class budgiegar club. (Tony Cash)
With that off my chest I would like to thank Mick Freeborn for judging the show and not claiming any expenses. His comment on the quality of the birds was very encouraging. He said ‘of the amount of birds here, the quality is excellent and enjoyable to judge’ which goes to prove the standard of birds from Northdowns members has been maintained.
Thanks to our Chairperson for providing & donating all refreshments and preparing and supplying us with bacon rolls during the morning, followed with a real ploughman’s at lunch time (helped by Stella as usual, one of the back room girls).
Thanks also to Ken Trapnell who donated his winnings for the day back to the club funds and to our President, Gerald Binks, for coming and awarding the trophies and his usual chit chat etc.
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Colin Callaway & Mac Macready The meeting started
with the sad news of two members passing away. The first was Maureen Pickett, and
the other was Mick Mapston a very well respected judge and breeder and very active member
of our club. Both will be very much missed and a minute’s silence was observed in
their memory. The members were
reminded of the date of our members show, Saturday 29th October. The Judge on the day will
be our former president Mick Freeborn. We then had a change of
speaker, as the winners of last years B. S. club show were unable to attend for personal
reasons. However, in their place and at very short notice we had two fine fanciers
from Southdowns, the ‘Workers and general do-it-all people’, Colin Callaway and
Mac Macready. I am sure when we last saw them they did not think their offer to do a
talk at our club would be taken up so quickly!
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Mick Freeborn's BBQ
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June
2006
We
started losing some birds and when Linda checked the boxes she found mould in them where
they had not dried out properly. She re washed
the boxes, etc., and then dried them out on the radiators and Duramitex was sprayed into boxes. We also had a problem with using
newspaper on cage floors, which on investigation with local printers we found that they
had changed their ink products, which was now toxic to the birds.
Kaytree
exact. Soft food is hand feed to chicks using crop needles and rubber tubing and during 10
– 15 years have only killed 2 by choking. Only part fill crop and wait 3 – 5
seconds before removing tube and they won’t spit it up.
He had a very good G Bowley Pied 02 cock which didn’t breed for us the first year but made up for the following year, so don’t get disappointed with your birds, you must perceive with them. Ave
looking pair bred some of his best greens which done well at 2003 BS show. Went to the German show, then visited Joe Mannas’ aviary. Spotted 2 barheads which Joe said 125 euros each (he told Joe he couldn’t afford them) they were brought by another friend / fancier there and given to Terry as a gift. [Just shows you that all is bad with this wonderful hobby of ours]. Went
back to Frank Silva and liked Grey cock, Frank was very good to them. And everyone has got
them back quicker using odd birds good and poor etc. Many
super birds on slides including Joe’s birds at end from 1995 by Les Lockey. Joe’s comment = a charming bird to go to a coarser feather bird and he can tell by touch of feather!
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| YOUNG STOCK
The meeting opened and our guests for the evening, Ghalib and Janice Al-Nasser were introduced. Ghalib went off to do the judging while Janice gave a talk about how she started breeding birds in the third bedroom of the family home, buying birds mainly from the local pet shops because they didn’t cost a lot of money. She eventually moved them out of the bedroom into the garden and carried on to breed brightly coloured birds.
In 1980 she went to a local show with her husband and was introduced to the current day show bird, which made her realise that her birds were very poor compared to these. At this show she was met at the door by Alan Smith who took her under his wing (excuse the pun!) and helped her set up with good breeding stock.
In 1982 she showed at the BS Club Show and her birds were in the first three or four in each class, which she was very pleased with. In 1983, at the North Essex Show, she was the Chief Steward and found this was a good way to learn about birds. She was in partnership with her husband, who was very good at DIY within the birdroom, which left Janice free to concentrate on breeding the birds. In those days they only bred normal varieties of birds, moving on to breeding clear wings in 1985. This was the same year that they had Best Young Novice Bird, with a grey green cock at the BS club show. She only found this out at the dinner in the evening when John Bonner said ‘well done’ to her!
Nowadays, with her new partner Ghalib, Janice does the morning shift, checking the birds and topping up the seed and soft food and then during the day checks the nest boxes for any chicks hatching, etc. Ghalib does the evening shift and, as Janice said, it works out as a good true partnership with equal workload. Janice said that they mostly agreed when pairing up but, when it came to the specialist varieties, she let Ghalib decide. She said when they first met Ghalib gave her a pair of crests and recessives to breed with to give her a taste of the rare varieties, which Ghalib specialises in. She then went on to say that she enjoyed meeting people, whether at shows or meetings, but the best part for her was the breeding and management of their birds.
Ghalib then came back and sat
in on the meeting, having judged the birds. Although
at first he seemed like a heckler (bit of fun) he carried on with questions and answers
from the floor, which encompassed the tea break as well.
Ghalib explained some of the BS rules on proposing amendments to the
Ken Trapnell asked about French Moult and Ghalib said it was still around even after studs had culled complete lines with it. After breeding for thirty-five years he still had the odd bird with FM, although some people say that using garlic powder stops it (old wives tale). It was mentioned about Northdowns having an Open Show again, as it used to hold the best in the South of England. Ken Trapnell was quick to say that when Northdons was formed it was agreed that the members should have the benefit of patronage and prizes at other peoples’ Open Shows and not to hold one itself. This did change, as we all know, to the detriment of the society in spite of the funding and hard work by the usual few.
General matters were discussed, re research, Doctor Baker, investment and eventually we discussed the winning birds, with Ghalib giving detailed descriptions of what he liked in the birds and why he chose them in the order he did.
Our congratulations to the main winners of the evening, Ken Trapnell (best champion young bird - sky hen and bar head – green cock) and Brian Mansell (overall best bird in show – grey pied cock). We would also like to thank our officers of the evening, as listed on your last newsletter. Once again, we all showed our appreciation to the speakers for a very entertaining evening. |
Robbie KeeberThe meeting was opened with the chairperson welcoming 3 new
members, Mike Ball & John Mullen and his partner and then giving a short brief on our
speaker.
Robbie started by telling how he came into the
hobby and that he joined the BS in 1971 but with 4 children and a new business venture to
run the birds took a backward step for a while. He said that any one could win at open
shows now, but in days gone by it was always won by a certain group of top breeders with
large studs and top quality birds. These days there were not very many that he would
call large studs about in this country. Also, in those days the Europeans etc came over
here to acquire good birds and blood lines, whereas these day we all go over there to
bring back the ingredients / features we originally sold them, which they have worked with
to produce the type of bird we all wish to have in our aviaries.
The evening carried on with questions and answers
with Mick Mapston starting off by asking Robbie about judging melonistic spangles, frosted
pieds and Easley clearbodies. Robbie said that the people who breed them should be
the judges chosen to judge them as they know what they are breed from and these varieties
/species are being renamed all the time. He said perhaps we should have a class at
the ‘rares’ show for unclassified birds, as some judges would pass over these
birds very quickly and not give them a second look in the run down. Robbie said that
a lot of people had brought in birds from Jo Mannes and not seen a great deal of
improvement immediately, although given time the features and blood that they brought in
start showing and coming out in the stock. Robbie said during his travels in this
country he went to many aviaries that had Jo Mannes birds and there was a noticeable
improvement in the stud over the last few years.
Robbie was asked what he would do if he was going
to start up again and he replied that he would try and build a family of birds, go to as
many breeders as he could, join a local club and eventually settle with one breeder who
had a good stud throughout rather than one that had top quality birds that dropped away
quickly. He said he would build up a relationship with that person by buying the
lesser brothers and sisters of his best birds, which would build up his family of birds
and would enable him to go back and buy a better bird the following year. He said to
also look to where you would buy in and out cross with a particular feature that you
required to improve your birds as this would also maintain your fertility within the
stud. At the end of each year you must be ruthless in disposing of birds that would
be no good to you in order for you to improve and be competitive on the show bench. Robbie said that the total trimming of birds was
not required, only on the sides with long feathered/buff birds as he had found that it
made no difference to his breeding whether he trimmed or not. Someone asked about a
class for flecked or odd looking birds and his reply was to leave them at home as we were
only supposed to see show birds based on the ideal. With regard to faults in birds,
he said that all faults need to be worked on to eradicate from your stud by working with
different lines of birds or buying in an outcross without that fault. If necessary
get rid of a complete line of birds before it became a major fault throughout your
stud. He said you should stand in front of your birds and look at them to see the
features that were standing out, which should show what was lacking within the
birds. You should then introduce that feature as a new line and, when it was
working, cross it over to your original lines. In this way you would not spoil the good
work already carried out within the other lines. He finished by saying that you only
got out of the hobby what you put into it i.e. Jo Mannes put in 95% of his time and energy
into breeding his birds whereas the rest of us probably only put in about 20%.
The evening finished at |
Ron
Pearce The meeting was opened with the chairperson giving some background
about our speaker and his partner Marcel.
Ron started by saying he went into partnership with Marcel Buhler about two years ago and that the added advantages of this type of partnership is that you learn more about keeping your birds and learn some new and interesting types of feeding habits and how to keep it easy. Also, when over at Marcel’s in
My bird room is approximately 6 metres by 5 metres with all wire
cages, which are being changed shortly. My saying is ‘keep ‘em
alive’, which means taking care of your birds and insuring that hygiene is of utmost
importance, although it doesn’t have to be clinically clean. The nest boxes
used are the same as those of Joe Mannas, all plastic and easy to clean. I spray F10
around the nest boxes, which keep away all undesirables and allows them to be wiped clean
easily. A lot of breeders seem to use several pots of seed in one cage. Most
top breeders feed only one pot because if you have got over 20 breeding cages and you hold
down a full time job this is an awful lot of time and work.
Ron said he had a TV in his bird room because he likes to watch the
sport on Saturday when he is tending to his birds. He changes his drinkers with a
complete set of spares and is not in favour of automatic watering systems, because he
likes to administer various products in the drinking water, i.e. cider vinegar. In normal drinking water he said he uses Aviclens produced by
the Bird Care Company, which kills the algae and bacteria and allows the water to be used
for a longer period. He said if you look after your birds well you will get
good results and, if you inbreed too close on a continual basis, the virility and breeding
results become poor. You must use outcrosses and take particular note of birds that
carry feather problems by looking back in the family records and culling to suit.
When chicks are in the boxes he rates them between one and five, looking to see where the
four and five star bird families come from. If he gets a four/five rated bird in a
nest and the rest are all very poor he normally will not use that one bird.
Controls are all by time clock and he does not change the times at any part of the
year. You do not need a super bird room to breed good birds, just knowledge and
commitment. Some people keep their bird rooms at 18 to 21 degrees whereas he keeps
his around 12 to 14 degrees. Brick bird rooms seem to produce better results than
wooden ones, although with the latest insulation products the temperature drop within
wooden bird rooms is now less, which has proven to give better results than in the past. He said he breeds with 17 breeding cages and over a three period a
while ago he had poor breeding results 41, then 30 and then 20. Super birds but
birds that would not breed well being double buff which made him get rid of all the old
birds apart from a couple and start again with birds from Marcelle, Joe Mannas and others.
He now consistently breed over 100 and have currently bred over 50 at the moment,
with others hatching. On feeding, Ron makes up his own soft foods with various bits
and porridge oats, also feeding petit pois and sweet corn, which has the bird’s
clammering at the cage fronts when he walks into the birdroom! Ron and Marcel have a very good pied line and are getting the
opposite results to what most of us want. By this I mean he is trying to breed good
normals out of his pied line and finds that he is predominately-breeding pieds instead of
normals. Whereas most other people are getting mainly normals when they want pieds. Ron and Marcelle try to maintain a stud of intermediate feathered
birds that carry the other necessary features to improve the stud. Part Two was mainly a question and answer session with Ron showing
us various birds of his own and Marcel’s and explaining the improvements that he
wants to make to the birds. He is very critical when judging variety of bird against
size of bird, as a lot of judges nowadays go for the big bird but don’t take into
account variety and colour. Going back to size of bird rooms you have Joe Mannas
with 110 breeding cages, which he doesn’t leave at any time (no holidays), down to
the late Jim Hutton who was very successful with 9 breeding cages and eventually extended
to 12. The evening finished at |
February 2006 - John Crooks The meeting
was opened with the announcement that, due to bereavement in the family, Ron was unable to
attend this evening but would do the film presentation at next month’s meeting on
Friday March 31st.
Nevertheless, members enjoyed listening to the late change of speaker, John Crooks (Burne & Crooks), in a face to face with Rick Watts who was asking John questions with regard to the way he came to start in the hobby. He also asked him about the way he progressed over the few years (before going into partnership with Shelia) to become a very successful breeder and winning many Best in Show awards. After going into partnership they have continued to win many ‘Best in Show’ awards as well as ‘Top Breeder’ awards and also winning Best Spangle at the 2005 BS club show.
John said stock was brought in from Pat & Gren Norris, Gerald’s Mannes family, John Smith & directly from Joe Mannes, which had knitted in well with Sheila’s stock and had brought about four families of birds, which create their own out crosses for the time being. On his second trip to Joe’s he purchased 6/7 birds one of which was a flecked opaline green hen with a nice head & shoulders, this bred a large sky cock which was then paired back to Joe’s/Sheila’s bloodlines & bred their successful Spangle family. This, over two seasons, bred over 30 chicks of which they kept 10 good quality spangle cocks. John’s aviary is approx 35` X 10` with 36 breeding cages & Sheila’s is 36’ x 6’ with in excess of 30 breeding cages, he said they try to breed 300 chicks a year between them and with a base stock level of some 500 birds their time is taken up completely.
John gave members a very frank and honest account of the partnership’s breeding, feeding and management and the way they consistently pair up the four winning families of birds and have no hesitation in re-pairing the same pair the following year if producing quality chicks, pairings would be selected on pedigree first and then visual and they use buff hens before a year old other wise they will not breed well for you.
John said
he had learnt a lot from Sheila on genetics and pairing of birds and with John’s
enthusiasm in showing the birds this has brought Sheila back out onto the show bench. He said
that show time meant preparing some 50 / 60 birds as a show team of which they liked to
bench in excess of 30 birds to cover all the classes of colours they breed .On the day of
a show he may be up as early as 3.30am with lights on in the bird room to allows the birds
to feed before sorting out the show team of the day. While still
breeding some cages are broken down to accommodate young stock with view to start
selecting show team for coming year. [Which proves the dedication by the partnership]. All members
enjoyed a very good informative meeting. |
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The meeting was called to order at Mick
Freeborn then asked Gerald Binks to come forward and receive the Chain of President for
coming year. Gerald
thanked Mick for all he had done in helping Northdowns BS survive and become a good,
active, friendly bird club once more. He said
he had been busy over the past couple of years, but now had time to put something back
into what he called his club and said how nice to see a founder member at the Continued below................
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Chairperson report: Chris Angus-Smith said she had enjoyed
the year very much and that having good speakers made it even better. She went on to thank
her committee for all their hard work during the year. General
& Membership Secretary’s report: Tony Cash started with an apology for not
keeping to protocol and club rules with regard to calling the He confirmed
that the hall was booked for the year 2006 on the last Friday of each month, with
the October meeting being our Members show on Saturday 28th 7.30-5.30 He said that
all patronage had been given out to clubs who applied for it, although one set was
returned because of virus rules canceling their show. The
programme is currently being sorted by Ricky
Watts with some very interesting names being banded about? [As soon as I know, you will] The
secretary then took questions from the floor and hoped he satisfied all in his answers. Treasurers
Report: Will Bien apologised that his accountant was away and he hadn’t
received the final accounts in time for meeting. He continued
to give a brief of current bank figures as follows: Current
Account £400.00
Savings Account £1,040.00. He said
there had been trouble with the bank and signatures and that he had been there several
times to try and sort it out. However. The
accounts would be distributed as soon as they had been audited. The
Chairperson stepped down so the President took the chair for the election of Chairperson: Election of officers shown on the Officers page. As the Well done to
all as we raised £31 on raffle and £10 on refreshments during the evening. Your Treasurer will be at February meeting to collect your subscriptions. Don’t
forget to come and see Ron Pearce’s slide show of Marcell and his birds, bird
rooms and more; it’s the same show they gave in |
