Following its first adult moult in late May the sky blue dominant pied cock struggled to gain full fitness.  Despite this, however, I managed to exhibit him four times during the summer.  At these shows he won the Young Bird Challenge Certificate every time and was placed in the Champion Young Bird line up but he failed to win any of the major awards due to lack of condition.  He qualified to become a registered champion at the BS World Club Show.  Having seen him at his best prior to the summer show season, I was confident that he would gain a major award eventually but did not dream that that it would be at the club show.  I had to work very hard on him during the week preceding the show spraying and combing out pinfeathers in his head and shoulders.  At the time of writing this he has gained full fitness and is much improved from his ‘forced’ condition at the big show.  He is paired to my young cinnamon grey hen, which also did well for me at the club show winning the Challenge Certificate for the best cinnamon blue series young bird.  They made a friendship in the stock cage when they were being prepared the club show and proving that ‘love-matches’ work - they have a nest of full eggs.

He was hatched on 19^th December, one of five babies in the first round.  Unfortunately two of his siblings died during weaning; they failed to feed themselves when they left the nest box and their parents refused to help them.  Despite this setback, he is one of fourteen chicks bred from the pairing and has two sisters and one brother that are superior in quality to him.  All the second and third round eggs were transferred to foster parents.

The younger brother, yet another sky pied, is a tremendous bird.  I doubt, however, that he will ever make the show bench.  He is big and rough and I consider him to be the best bird that I have ever bred.  He is a bit too young to breed at present but will be ready early in the New Year.  The two hens are both cobalt pieds and are already paired up within the line.  There are also several very good brothers and sisters that are normal sky blue and cobalt.  I have also kept his mother and aunt; they will in time be paired up to their respective nephews.  At the time of writing this they both have full nests of fertile eggs.  The father was a normal cobalt which was exhibited at Worcester BS show in July where he took the Challenge Certificate on his only trip out.  Sadly the bird died just a few weeks ago.  The mother is an opaline sky pied which is a super breeding hen, very big and powerful with a huge face, deep mask and large spots.  All ancestry of this family can be traced back to the only pied I ever bought, a sky blue.  I bought him from Ken Spraggs and all Ken’s pieds were bred from Eric Lane stock.  My line is predominantly Lane to this day.  The outcrosses I have brought into the stud have made little impact over the years, with the exception of a new spangle line, which I am developing.  The quality of this new blood stock has already been improved by using the normals bred from my pieds.

Why do you think that Dominant Pieds have been less popular in the past decade?

I am not sure that dominant pieds have been less popular over the last few years.  The shows that I attended this year had entries of pieds in very good numbers.  At the club show this year dominant pieds had the fifth largest entry.  For this reason, I believe they deserve to have separate challenge certificates for the green and blue series.  This would probably lead to a further increase in entries as many fanciers having blue and green series pieds have their own show at home, taking the best on the day.

Did you set out to breed good pieds or good budgerigars and the pieds just happened to excel?

I was fortunate to have bought a good quality cock from Ken in the beginning.  I was driven by my desire to breed a Best in Show that was considered to be a pretty budgie.  At the time in the mid to late eighties the birds that were winning top honours at many of the major shows throughout the country were mainly huge, rough and quite frequently flecked.  My challenge was to breed that type of bird whilst keeping to the BS ideal.  I always without exception paired my very best normals to dominant pieds, as my dream to win major awards with this variety could only be achieved by breeding this way.  The genetic background of all varieties within my stud can be traced to the pieds.  I have built quality throughout by using them as outcrosses, particularly to the red eyes that have won many major awards at the highest level.  Three years ago I made a conscious decision to add cinnamons to my stud.  Up until that time I always sold any cinnamons or opaline cinnamons that I bred.  Nowadays I pair the cinnamons bred from the pieds together.  I have since then produced many exhibition budgies that have won major awards from these pairings.  Returning to the question I guess I set out always to breed good budgerigars, whatever their colour.  However, I choose my breeding pairs to maximise my opportunities of breeding pieds.  I would not, however, use a poor budgerigar (even if it was a pied) to achieve this.

What is your preferred pairing to produce pieds?

I always, as said previously, use my best normals to produce top quality pieds.  This generally improves my chances of producing youngsters with good colour and normal markings as I prefer to see any dominant pied to be of the normal variety.  However, over many years of line breeding I now find myself with a family that have very little body variegation.  This is the downside of concentrating on producing fully spotted birds that always seem to be chosen above those without a full set of spots on the show bench.  It is usually the case that a fully spotted bird does not have a great deal of variegation.  I have made some progress over the past two breeding seasons towards bringing back a greater percentage of body markings by breeding from a particularly good opaline pied that was fully spotted and had very good variegation.

Have you ever paired Pied to Pied and if so what was the result and if not why not?

I have only paired pied to pied twice.  The first time was in 1989, the year following my first major success on the show bench.  This pair failed to breed for me so gave up on the idea as most experienced fanciers at the time advised me against it.  They considered that doing so would produce smaller birds without any normal markings.  The second time I paired pied to pied was last year when I paired two green series pieds together.  They produced several very fine birds, which were not all pieds I might add.  One young cock was a normal grey pied that was virtually all white.  His sister, in the same nest, was also a grey pied but had no body markings at all.  There were also several normals that were nice budgies and were equal to my normal quality.  The poorly marked double factor grey pied is paired up at present to see what can be produced from him.  Hopefully they will all be pieds as I need to build up my numbers of this variety, as I do not really have the quantity that I consider necessary to secure the future of the line.

What was your general impression of the club show?

Although I quite like the show hall, I feel that it is nowhere near as good as the Race Course.  I don’t think it is big enough to hold this major event.  On Sunday, in particular, the hall was so crowded that I felt the birds were placed under pressure due to the gangways between the staging being so narrow.  Because the many components of the show were so spread out, it did not have the ‘buzz’ that I remember at the Race Course. 

I think that the show committee did a fantastic job however.  We are so lucky to have such committed members who work tirelessly for our benefit.  The layout of the show hall was great, albeit crowded.  We need a hall big enough to hold the birds, sales birds, trade stands and specialist societies together under one roof.  I am sure, this would also make the show team’s job much easier.  I would also like to see the show date moved into late September or early October.  This would, I am sure, increase the numbers benched.  As most championship shows take place in July, August and early September, it is difficult to keep the show team in show condition.  Apart from that one always has the breeding season in mind and whether showing birds so late in the year will affect their breeding chances.  The ring issue date is also an issue that governs when most birds are put down to breed for those fanciers who concentrate on breeding for the main show season period from July until mid-September.

   

Maybe the perfect pair??