As you can see on this sample
Breeding Register, everything is set out clearly and simply. At a glance, you
will able to look up the details of a nest that you had even years before,
with all the dates and details at your fingertips. Keeping a record of who you
have sold each bird to can be very useful in a couple of instances. Firstly, when that person comes to you for another bird (because they were so happy with the first one), you
will know exactly which bird you sold them, which pair it was from and its age. and you will know for sure that if they require an unrelated bird, you
can be absolutely positive that this is what you are selling them.
Secondly, if at some time the purchaser of your bird loses it, as long as your birds
have been ringed with club or coded rings, then when the bird turns up we can track down the owner by contacting you, the breeder, to see who you sold it to.
I think the trick to good record keeping is to keep your system simple and user friendly. Have your register (and a pen) in an easily accessible place, and always put it back in its proper place so that you know where to find it next time. Always record your details straight away; don’t think, "I’ll do it later", because what usually happens is
that you will forget. Then, when you go to look up details when you need them, you
will discover that you never got around to filling them in.
"First egg laid" and
"due date" are two very important entries. We all know how quickly time flies, but if you have a pretty good idea when those eggs should start to hatch, you
will be far more able to pick up any problems such as chicks being unable to hatch
due to the eggs being too dry, or whether the eggs are even fertile. If you know
the due date, you will know when they should start changing colour, and if they
haven't, it is a pretty good sign that they are clear and you need to start over.
If you don't know the due date with certainty, this will be much more difficult
for you to ascertain. You will also know when you have reached the point where
the parent birds need to have their food intake increased in order to enable
them to feed their nest of chicks.
Leg rings play a very important part in your breeding register. Without them, all the good bookkeeping in the world won’t help once birds from different nests but of the same colour are mixed together. This is especially important if you are putting together unrelated pairs for a buyer. It is not good enough to go by guesswork, you need to be able to
guarantee that you are not selling someone two birds for the purpose of breeding that are in any way related.
Otherwise, the amount of information you choose to keep is really up to you. If you like the sample register I have put together,
you can copy it, paste it into your word processing program, and print up a few
copies, placing them in a folder for your own use. It doesn’t get much easier than that.
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Ringing Our Birds
by Laura Turner
As beginners in the breeding world, we asked for a great deal of advice from "the experts".
Whether we followed this advice was entirely up to us, but I feel that the advice I was given has been very valuable. If you ask the right people, you really can't go wrong, but it is very difficult to think of
and remember everything. 
One aspect of breeding that we found difficult was closed ringing our babies at 10-12 days. (We thought that some of them had been born with bigger feet than the rings allowed for.)
Nest of Mixed Chicks:
Normal; Pearl; 2 x Platinums; Platinum-Pearl
But we persevered, and the process actually does become easier, the more babies you handle.
I hand rear most of my baby cockatiels, and have found that record keeping is
essential, and the ring number becomes the most important tool for tracking anything that happens with the birds.
All our hand-reared babies are sold with papers, and the ring is a vital part of this information. When people buy a baby we assure them that if it ever leaves their
home and is found and identified by the ring number, the bird will be able to be returned.
GUESS WHAT?
IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED!
|
Saturday
2.00 pm |
Distraught phone call to us from the owner of one of our
cockatiel babies. SHE'S LEFT HOME! After just 6 weeks. (Very tame, just exploring, but cannot be
found.) |
|
Saturday
2.30 pm |
(After grief counselling)
- phone call from us to the Australian National Cockatiel Society. |
Saturday
6.30 pm |
Phone call to Australian National Cockatiel Society from finder (quoting ring number). |
Saturday
8.00 pm |
Phone call from Australian National Cockatiel Society (Robyn) to link us up. |
Saturday
9.30 pm |
Both parties reunited by phone. (Apparently Jasper spent the night on the pillow of the people who found
him.) |
|
Sunday
7.30 am |
Jasper home! |
WHAT A GREAT SYSTEM!
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CONTACT DETAILS
Australian National Cockatiel Society
P.O. Box 1248
Fortitude Valley, Qld 4006
AUSTRALIA
secretary@cockatielsociety.org.au
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Record keeping is a very important part of bird breeding. It helps you to keep track of individual birds and their offspring, when they bred, how they bred, any details that might help you in future breeding with individual
birds... the list goes on. No matter how much we think we can keep in our heads, there is just
too much information that should be retained. So if you don’t already have some form of
record-keeping or recording system--a "breeding register", you should really think about starting one.