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Exhibition Budgie Spotting and Grooming
During our December meeting, Keith and Larry taught us a few techniques
to spotting budgies. Here is a brief overview of what we learned to get
our birds looking their best for show time!
1. Get the right grip on the bird. Your thumb should be on the birds left shoulder, your index finger firmly on the top of his head and your middle finger on the bird's right shoulder, as seen in the photo below. You may even want to use the other fingers for the bird to hold with his feet to keep them out of the way.
2. Most folks like to use tweezers with the scissor handles for better control. Here is a photo of different tweezers you can try.
Start at the cheek patch and work your way to the bottom of the mask pulling
straight down and holding the center of the feather so you don't break or
strip the feather.
3. You may want to pull the obvious spots first like small spots, shadow spots, etc. You want to get down to three large spots on each side. You may want to spot only one side at a time, to give the bird a chance to calm down and settle their feathers. Then you can determine if you have missed any feathers. This also is less stressful on your budgie. You can go back later and spot the other side.
4. Do not spray your birds with water AFTER you have spotted them, they may drop other spots that you don't want them to lose. It's best to spray them daily for a few weeks before the show, then stop spraying them when you are ready to spot them.
5. You may use a toothbrush or an eyebrow brush to brush out pinfeathers. You can also gently break up the sheath of the pinfeather first with an emery board type nail file.
6. Any blood or dirt may be washed out with contact lens cleaner solution. The type that removes proteins will take blood stains safely out. Most of the multi-purpose cleaner solutions will clean well unless you have a badly bloodied head; in this case, it is better to use the contact lens cleaner solution.
Here are some photos of Courtney and Paul giving it a shot for the first time, with Larry and Keith keeping a watchful eye over the proceedings.
Last modified:
1/9/06
