Breeding season 2006

I started the 2006 breeding. I’m breeding 44 puppets and approximately 35 male birds in 44 cages. Normally, every year I start breeding the first week of February, but because the world championships didn’t continue this year due to bird flu, I started one week earlier. I set the light immediately at 15 hours, so it will be burning from 4 AM till 7 PM. I do this during the first 5 weeks, till the birds are broods and I can start putting nests where the birds will be breeding their eggs. When a bird breeds an egg I take it and replace it with a fake egg. I repeat this up to 4 times. Then I switch the fake eggs back for the real ones so that all eggs will hatch out the same time. The breeding takes about 13 days. Disturb the birds as little as possible. Raising the birds will take approximately 30 days and most of the time the female birds start making a nest again. I use to put the nest with the male on the cage floor, which will give the female a new opportunity to start building a nest and lay an egg. The puppets usually lay 3 to 4 eggs (sometimes 5). After 4 days I check if the eggs are fertilized. I hold them near a fluorescent lamp. If they are fertilized you can see veins. That was a short explanation to breeding. In the pictures you can see breeding Lizards and nests with fertilized eggs

Here you see breeding puppets on their nests at the pictures on the left and the right. And some nests with fertilized eggs.