A visit to the UK

I have just arrived home after a three week business trip to Europe. I decided on the this trip to bookend the trip with a couple of aviary visits. Frank and Carol McGovern were my firsts visit mainly to catch up after not seeing them for over 20 years. Frank played an integral part of my importation lot of budgies to Australia. It was also nice to see their son Joseph now breeding budgies as well.
The birds were a real eye opener, massive and lots of feather. The McGovern’s had won best in Show the week before at the Largest Budgie show in the north of the UK Lancs and Cheshire Nth Wales.

Franks brief for my visit was to give me some inspiration and stacks of information with the birds.
I can’t believe how the birds had progressed, with their size and with masses of feather, they were all flying in aviaries and they were as healthy as could be, they breed about 400 birds per year and everything was going well. The best birds I have seen in Australia recently are a quantum leap behind these birds.  The major difference is the management and nutrition these birds get, the aviary is spotless within reason. I have come away with renewed optimism for my own stud of birds.  We run into problems with length and amount of feather, or so I thought. WRONG!!! We had feather growth problems and feathers growing into the eyes, these problems were NOT evident in the hundreds of birds they keep.

So what did I learn, a new record keeping system, much better breeding cage management, sensible use of supplements, a much better feeding regime and to be extremely harsh on birds with various problems. Don’t breed from them.

The McGovern’s are great people, it was such a pleasure to spend a couple of days with them.