Ron Payne's Budgerigars - The Moonraker Stud - Budgerigars
Aquiring Birds to Create a Quality Stud - Ron Payne - March 2005
How much should you pay for a Budgerigar? This is a question that constantly exercises the Budgerigar Fancy. At one end of the scale you have people who cannot afford or are not willing, to pay more than a few pounds. However, at the other end are a few top Champions promoting the idea that you have no chance of success unless you pay hundreds of pounds for one bird.
It is possible to make a case for both attitudes - depending upon circumstances. Let us start with the raw beginner, putting his or her foot on the first rung of the Fancy ladder. It costs enough to set up a birdroom these days, without spending a fortune on birds, so I would favour a low-spending approach. A realistic beginner, who is prepared to work at the hobby, can get off to a good start without spending more than £15 to £20 per bird, which is little more than twice the price of a pet Budgerigar. The secret is to find the right experienced breeder, get to know him and to buy his lesser birds.
Recently and at the time when ridiculously high prices had been quoted in the national press, a beginner I know bought the surplus of a successful Champion for £10 a bird. That having been said, we all know newcomers who want to make a big impression on the show bench in their very first year. They set out to buy winners and inevitably have to pay higher prices.
Moderate prices
Paying moderate prices need not apply only to beginners. During my early years in the hobby and in fact up until the time I became a Champion, I lived in East Anglia. One evening I was judging a small members' show and was very impressed by the quality and gave the top award to a superb Sky-blue cock. I got to know the breeder of the Sky-blue, a beginner, and learnt that the winning cock had six brothers - none of which approached its quality, though they all came from an excellent Champion bloodline.
A year later, he let me have the three worst brothers - not at all the sort of Budgerigars you would have expected a Champion to buy - for £10 each Those three cocks founded a super family. One of the grey cocks I bred from this family was a registered Champion.
It is a pity that first year Beginners are thrown in at the deep end as far as shows are concerned. They join clubs and are pressurised by show officials who are only interested in retaining a certain level of BS patronage, to fill their show cages. This results in them putting birds into shows before they are really ready to do so. As a consequence of the predicable failure they lose heart. It would be better if first year Beginners did not have to compete for their first or even second show season. A first-year Beginner section could be created by reallocating a year from the time currently spent at a higher status level.
There are those who reject this idea on the basis that it would be difficult to administer but we live in the age of computers.
It should not be too difficult to create a programme that produces a list of Beginners who are in their first and second years.
Other sectors of the bird fancy monitor their members and can tell them when it is time to move up - something the BS should consider.
Patience and a bit of luck
Patience and a bit of luck can help you to get useful Budgerigars at reasonable prices. While living in East Anglia, I received a telephone call from someone who kept pet Budgerigars, who became a good friend. He asked me to assess his stock from the exhibition point of view. Even being kind, I had to tell him that only five of his 150 Budgerigars were even worthy of consideration. Three days later he telephoned and asked me to go and look again.
What a surprise awaited me. His 150 pets had transformed into 40 moderately good exhibition Budgerigars. It seems that he took all birds to a dealer, just after a Champion had off-loaded his surplus. My friend swapped his pets for these and got off to a wonderful start in the exhibition side of the hobby. He was winning CCs in his first year and registered a Champion Dark Green cock while still a Beginner. This might be 'once in a life time luck', but it did happen. No happy ending though as he sold out when he moved away some years later.
In my experience, the clever Beginners use the knowledge of the person they are buying from. Instead of arriving and saying, "I want to buy a Budgerigar" they should say, "I have brought this hen with me and would like you to find me a suitable cock bird to go with her." Another good approach is to ask to buy a matched pair.
So what about the occasions when it is necessary to pay large sums for a Budgerigar? That should only happen when you already know what you are doing. Even when you have built up a stud of good standard, there will still be features that need to be improved. Then you may need to sell 50 birds at £10 each to buy that super bird.
A more likely situation is that you will have Budgerigars that someone else wants and an exchange can be arranged, without money changing hands. When you are a Champion, you have to be prepared to let a bird go in order to acquire that special one you need.
