Glossary

Term

Descriptions

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Budgerigars

A Budgerigar is most popular parrot in parakeet class, they come in wide variety of colors and two most know sizes wild and exhibition Budgerigars.

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Wild Budgerigars or budgies

Type of this small compact bird about 18cm in length is beautiful little parakeet, possibly the best known and most popular bird bred in the world today. Known as Wild budgerigars. they come in a wide variety of colors

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Exhibition

Budgerigars

These type of Budgerigars are much larger than their wild cousins and they also come in a wide variety of colors, with excessively puffy head feathers Exhibition budgerigars, they known as English Budgerigars, show Budgerigars and Exhibition Budgerigars.

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Feathers

A feather is one of the epidermal growths that forms the distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on a bird

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Beak

The bird's bill; the protruding mouthpart of a bird.

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Cere

Waxy or fleshy protuberance at the base of the bill of some birds

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Blood feather

A new feather that has not finished growing in and still has a blood supply.

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Flight feathers

Specialized contour feathers found on wings and tail. Long, primary flight feathers are attached to what would be the equivalent of our hand area; shorter, secondary flight feathers are attached to the "forearm" area.

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Pinfeather

A feather just emerging through the skin.

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Molt

Periodic shedding of feathers, which are subsequently replaced by new ones.

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Crest

The long feathers on the head that raise or lower according to mood. Cockatiels and cockatoos are the best known examples of parrots with crests.

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Vent

The external opening of the cloaca.

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Cloaca

The common chamber into which digestive and urinary wastes discharge.

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Feather plucking

Removal of feathers by the parrot usually attributed to boredom, stress or dietary deficiencies.

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Double Factor Dominant Bird

A double factor dominant bird has two X chromosomes containing the dominant mutation.

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Single Factor Dominant Bird

A single factor dominant bird has one X chromosome containing the dominant mutation.

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Dominant Bird

If one parent is pure-bred for the dominant color, all the young will take on that color. The pure-bred dominant suppresses all other colors even though the offspring (babies) carry other colors in their genetic material.  Colors hidden in genes can emerge later in certain pairings of particular birds.  The wild color of cockatiel, called a Normal Grey, is dominant.  So, if two birds are pure-bred Normal Grays, all their children (offspring) will be Normal Grays.

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Recessive Bird

If two recessive colored birds are bred, the offspring will also be of the recessive color.  If a dominant bird is paired with a         recessive bird, all the offspring’s will take on the color of the dominant bird and the recessive genes will be hidden (to perhaps show up in offspring in the future depending future pairings of particular birds).  Recessive mutations include:

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Laid egg: 

Process, in which the mother hen is laying the eggs, or producing them.

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Fertile:    

Eggs with a viable embryo

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Infertile:  

Infertility is the failure of a pair of birds to produce eggs with a viable embryo.

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Hatched:

When a chick (baby bird) opens up the shell of the egg to move about. Called hatching.

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Sex method DNA, Visual, S/S:

You can sex the birds (tell if they are male or female) by DNA sexing (looking at their DNA chromosomes, the things that makes up what a bird is), visual (being able to look at the bird and know what sex it is by looks), or S/S, surgical sexing (making a small incision in the side of the bird to look inside the bird to tell what sex it is)

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Clutches:

A clutch is the amount of eggs or chicks a mother, in more detail the number of eggs laid or chicks raised together in the nest at any time and this number can vary between different birds, usually between 3 and 6 eggs/chicks.

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Inbreeding

Inbreeding had been used intensively to build up the numbers Of the

exciting new colors, cock will be free to breed with his mother or sister

, and a hen with her brother or father. Other available mates will in any

case be uncles, half brothers, cousins etc (Not recommended)Lays

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Banding or Ringing

Is when someone puts a band around the leg of a chick to identify the chick?

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Offspring

this is just a term used for the babies produced by a pairing of animals.  It is the new genetic stock that has “sprung off” from, or to “come off from” the parent’s genetic stock.  If you married and had a child, the child would be your offspring.

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Fledgling

Young bird that has feathered but is still being fed by its parents.

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Culling

Culling means to get rid of inferior genetic stock.  Fish breeders do this, bird breeders do this, as do breeders of all kinds.  Some breeders “cull” their inferior stock by selling them into pet homes which are homes that only want a pet and that aren’t going to breed

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Sex-Linked

This means the inheritance of a particular factor is dependent on sex.  Cinnamon is a sex-linked mutation and if the male parent is a visual cinnamon, any visual cinnamon offspring would be female

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Sex-Linked

Recessive

Means that the recessive gene for a particular factor is associated with the group of genes that determines the sex of the offspring.  Sex-Linked mutations include:

Opaline, Cinnamons, Lutino and Albinos, Lacewings, Slates, Texas Clearbody

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Splits (heterozygous)

This means a bird of a dominant color has a hidden color mutation which can be passed on to its offspring.  For example, a Normal Green Budgerigars could have a hidden gene for the “Lutino” mutation and thus would be a “Normal Green split to Lutino”.

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Pure-Bred Bird (homozygous)

They possess only the genes for the revealed color (the visual mutation of the bird).  All recessive colored birds must be pure bred birds.  Dominant colored birds can carry a masked gene for a recessive color.

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Controlled or Cage Breeding System

Controlled breeding is the method used by all breeders of exhibition budgerigars. Controlled breeding, as the term suggests, is the bringing together of the cock and the hen of the breeder's choice, and allocating a specific breeding cage (i.e., one pair to a cage).

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Uncontrolled or Colony breeding System

Uncontrolled breeding is also called colony breeding. In this system more then one pair breed in one cage.

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Vet

Vocational Education and Training, Similar to a doctor and they can work as a veterinarian.

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Avian Vet

An avian vet receives specialized training specifically on the unique anatomy and physiology of birds and is required to complete continuing education in the field of avian studies.

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Egg bound

Egg binding is the inability of a hen to pass a developed or partially developed egg that has become lodged in lower oviduct or cloaca. A partially developed egg can have either a soft shell or no shell

Poor nutrition, stress or laying too young are thought to be possible causes.

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Parakeet

Parakeet is a general term for a small, long-tailed, slender-bodied parrot,
Budgerigars are a specific type of parakeet and originate from
Australia. These are commonly referred to simply as parakeets

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Pellets

can be a good base diet for a bird since manufacturers are constantly improving their diets and each bite a bird takes will contain good nutrition and a blend of many nutrients.  No bird should be on a 100% pelleted diet but they can provide a healthy base diet for many avian species.

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Seed

while insufficient in overall nutrition, seeds do play important roles in the diet of many avian species.  Offering a variety gives the bird a foraging opportunity which is good mental stimulation and some species do well with the high fat content found in seeds.

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Cuttlebone

The skeleton of the cuttlefish used for beak honing as well as a source of carbonated calcium which is not as absorbable as the bicarbonate calcium.

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Grit

An important ingredient in the bird's diet. It aids digestion of the food by grinding the seed within the stomach. Grit is small pieces of rock, shell, or other hard substances ingested by birds to assist the gizzard in the process of digestion.

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Spray millet

Branch of a small-seeded grass often sold as a parrot treat.

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C

rop

Thin-walled, elastic sac in the esophagus where food is temporarily stored and can be regurgitated to feed chicks. In parrot chicks that have just been fed, the crop is an obvious rounded, distended pouch.

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Scaly face

Inflammation and rough, scaly growths caused by a parasitical mite that burrows the skin area around the beak and eyes, and occasionally on the legs and toes. Most common in budgerigars and can deform beaks if left untreated.

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Hospital cage

Relatively small, temporary, specially-equipped box to isolate and warm a sick bird. Usually completely enclosed by solid walls except for the front and equipped with a built-in heat lamp for keeping the temperature between 85 degrees and 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

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Phenotype

The physical appearance and classification of the budgie.  OR Visual characteristics of an individual determined by genes it possesses and the environment.

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Genotype

The genetic makeup of the budgie.

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Heredity

The transfer of genetic information from parents to their young.

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Genetics

The study of heredity.

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Mutations

A change from the normal and expected.

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Zygote

A fertilized cell.

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Mitosis

The process of cell-division which results in new cells identical to the original cell.

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Genes

Parts of a chromosome. The smallest and most basic unit of heredity.

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Autosomal (Autosomal Recessive)

This refers to an inheritance that is not sex-linked.  The gene for the factor in question is not carried on a sex chromosome. OR Any chromosome occurring in pairs in diploid cells that are not "sex (gender determining) chromosomes."

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Hormonal concerns

The main concern with regards to hormones is aggression.

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Micro chipping:

The small microchip is about the size of a grain of rice and it is implanted into a bird’s breast area for identification.

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Psittacosis

A curable infectious bacterial disease of birds marked by diarrhea and wasting. Also known as parrot fever, chlamydiosis, and ornithosis. Infected birds can be cured with tetracycline

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Papilloma

An infectious, herpes-like virus that usually appears as a small, raised pink or grey cauliflower-like mass in the vent, mouth or throat.

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PBFD

Psittacine beak and feather disease. An infectious virus that strikes mainly young parrots and kills the cells of the feather and beak. Infected birds grow deformed feathers and may succumb to secondary infections, including hepatitis.

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Cross-over

A phenomenon where sections of a chromosome cross one another and exchange portions and, in consequence, genes. The more closely genes are linked, the greater the chances of them being passed together.

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Diploid Cell

Any somatic cell in which each chromosome is represented twice bar for the "Y" sex chromosome.

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Gametes

Sperm or ova.

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Somatic

All body cells except Gametes.

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Heterozygous

An individual in whom the members of a pair of genes determining a characteristic are dissimilar.

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Chromosomes

Gametes

Packets of DNA that carry hereditary information.

Reproductive cells (sperm or egg). Each one contains all the information necessary to create a new budgie.

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Linkage

The phenomenons where the loci for different characteristics are close together on the same chromosomes---the closer they are, the greater the degree of linkage.

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Homologous

A Pair of chromosomes of similar shape and size with identical gene loci.

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Homozygous

An individual in whom members of a pair of genes determining particular characteristics are identical.