Breeders! Help!

[colourbyhands]

I would really like information about breeding birds, and personal experiences.
A friend of my boyfriend breeds birds, but there all dirty, and to small of cages, and luckily the babies go to good homes, But i just want to help!
The poor birdies, I really hate to see them like that. They get lots of love and affection, just not really good taken care of.

So if I told her about it, she would deffiantly clean up her act (ha-ha)

My boyfriend and I are HUGE bird lovers, we even have a couple of our own :)
Only two, mine(parrotlet) and his(CAG)

I previously owned other birds, but now I just have my little p'let.
So I really want to know though, What are the perfect birds to start off breeding? And what do you need, I know you need basically all the time out of the day. What do you need, just everything.

Granted I need a book on it to fully understand.
And I'd rather have a book and personal experiences of breeding instead of trying to find a html. But if there is an html, please send it!!

I'm not intrested in breeding, but I would really love to know.
I want to help out that women with her birds.


Thank you!!

[Rahni]

What sort of birds are you talking about? Breeding birds can be the easiest thing in the world, or the hardest. Are you talking breeding to hand-rear, or just breeding aviary birds? If you were to start out breeding aviary birds, i would suggest budgies (parakeets) or cockatiels. Budgies breed like rabbits, so they would be the easiest in my book.
The most important things are to remember are upping the calcium levels and providing more greens. Also for every pair of birds, have two identical nest boxes with saw dust in the bottom. This saves you having to muck around after the babies are hatched and clean it out, just swap them into the other, cleaner box and the parents will never know the difference. This is a good time to carry out your inspections too, and the least stressful for the chicks and parents.
If I were to start breeding budgies, first off I would get a decent sized aviary (say at least 2 metres long), and get about 3 pairs. I would then get 6 identical nest boxes, and put three in the aviary at the same height. I would then be feeding them extra greens and extra calcium, and leave them to it.
About 2 weeks after the eggs have hatched, I would then swap the boxes over to the fresh ones.
Aviary birds (unless previously tame or hand reared) need no human interaction whatsoever. If anything it will only hinder nesting attempts. The less you interfere, the better. Even handreared birds might start being a little more stand-offish when there's a nest box in their aviary.
Breeding to hand rear is a lot more complicated, or rather hand rearing is. Lots of things can go wrong- bacterial infections, the chick being too hot or too cold, sour crop, crop stasis, dehydration, general poor development, etc. This is when bird breeding becomes very time consuming, as young chicks need feeding at very regular intervals. I have not hand-reared before, so perhaps someone who has will be able to provide more information. All I know is that there is a LOT of work involved, a lot of potential heartache and sometimes a lot of money too! (vet trips, etc)