My Life with Lovebirds

I got started into lovebirds when my brother-in-law gave me a pair of peachfaced. At first, I didn't mind the pair and our maid took care of them. A few weeks later, the pair had 3 eggs which hatched about a month after. That got me curious and I started to take care of them and asked advice from my brother-in-law on caring and breeding of the birds. Then more birds came as my brother-in-law gave me more from his collection which were mostly eyerings. That started me on eyerings. I found them more colorful than the first pair of roseicollis and I tried my hand at breeding them. Then I found some bird websites which I joined and learned more about birds and where to buy them. That got me into buying birds to build my collection of breeders. That also induced me to set up an aviary in our garden. I remember being told by a well-known breeder that if I want to breed the more expensive birds, then I should have an aviary. It was true because, in the meantime, I lost some birds that escaped from their cages which were inside my garage. With the aviary, I started buying dominant pieds, opalines and fallows but I had to scrimp so that I could buy them. Now, I already have the result of breeding them. Early this year, my breeder-friends visited my aviary and they observed that my pairings were "magulo." I sat down and read some more about breeding and I then I fixed my pairings. And that started me into "projects" like breeding opalines and dominant pieds with low mute birds and trying my hand at breeding opaline fallows, albinos, pied slatys and personatas. Now, I realized that I need to have some focus and not go into breeding all kinds of new mutations. Although I have made some progress in my projects, I will have to decide on exactly what I want to accomplish. I did come up with my breeding targets for 2010 which I will review before the end of the year. This means I have to streamline my breeding program and give up some of the birds I have collected and bred and which I have kept in the hope of using them but without any clear breeding program for them. These are some of the birds that I have kept in flight cages which I would like to share with other bird lovers.

By Jun ULBP member