Hello everyone! It's only about seven more days until we have some babies down here.
This guy's going to be a first-time father and he's quite intently protecting his nest
but I'm very happy with his hen, I'm really glad we picked her up. I think she's going to
be part of our breeding program for a long time into the future. I have already made a video on
the plans I have for her, but I'm thinking now I might even have to put her with a few more
racing cockbirds and just try and breed a nice little family of recessive red racing pigeons.
Both of these eggs are fertile so I'm expecting, or at least hoping for, two little recessive red
babies in this nest. I'm actually breeding them for a friend of mine who has a disabled son
and his son has been asking for a pair of recessive reds for a while now so I'm happy
to be able to breed them some to race. He does come from a country area out in western New South Wales
and there are a lot of falcons and predators out there so it might be a bit tough out there
for these birds but I really do hope you have success with them, I'd hate to see his son pick up
his new favourite colour and then have them lost in racing. And it's not long now until
these guys hatch either, I think this egg (only one of these eggs is fertile) but I think this
egg will hatch one day before the red pair. If you look at the hen sitting on the perch here you can
see a little bit of the fluff underneath there and that's actually why I don't like these nest felts
the birds do seem to get a little bit of the fluff caught on their toes and I don't like that at all.
After this round of babies I'm not going to use these nest felts again, I'm going to stick
to the pine needles. I do have some happy news down here though little Gus's persistence has paid off
and I have seen these two mating up so it shouldn't be too much longer and they'll
finally be a little egg down here and I'm really looking forward to seeing the babies out of this
pair. Little Gus is a beautiful boy the hen is a very well-bred hen and he does carry brown
and that's what we're aiming for here we'd love to see a little brown daughter out of this pair.
These guys have taken quite a long time to settle but I'm expecting her to lay
this afternoon actually, she's been sitting in a nest bowl most of the day,
and I'm pretty sure this evening she'll lay her first egg. I'm surprised how long it took these
guys to settle down, these are going to be slightly late bred babies now, but I'm quite happy that they
finally settle down and are going to lay. You can see the box isn't quite as clean as I'd like
and that's because before the birds settle it's really difficult to clean the cage without them
jumping about and getting a bit stressed, but once they're on eggs they settle right down and I can
clean the cage very easily, so I'm looking forward to that looking forward to these guys being
settled and being able to clean up after them. It's not all good news though, we do have two eggs
in this nest but unfortunately only one of them isn't fertile, and weirdly that's what happened last time
I was breeding with this hen as well, we only got one baby or one fertile egg in that nest as well
so I'm not sure if there's something wrong with her or if it's just a coincidence but we do only
have one fertile egg in this nest, it's okay though the baby will still definitely be heterozygous for
barless, I'm just hoping it comes out to be a dark checker like the father. I'm not actually sure what
colour his mother was so there is a chance that he actually carries a base pattern that's not dark
checker so we might get a different coloured baby out of him. I'm not going to be too worried if it's
a different colour but obviously the dark checker is what I want for the braless breeding project.
One thing I noticed about this hen is that she always carries her wings underneath her tail
it's not really a stance that i like in racing pigeons and i don't think her baby stands like
that so hopefully that's not a trait that sticks around in the family I, don't want to see too much
of that in the future. And finally the old boy is on the nest and the hen is just chilling over here.
Have you noticed how much darker this hen has gotten in the last year?
It's been, yeah I got her in November so it's been a year now since I picked this hen up
and she was almost white when we got her and now, what would you say five percent
color? And she's slowly going get darker and darker as she gets older.
And if we get a little almond out of this pair we'll definitely be racing it, it's not going
get a free ride just because of the colour. Anyway guys, I hope you've enjoyed my little update today,
another six or seven days and we should get our first babies hatching
and I'll be sure to keep you guys updated then!