Many if not most of us that have taken up the hobby
of breeding Exhibition Budgerigar breeding have started by buying
a few pairs birds of birds. After reading a some old books and listening
to what the more experienced breeders have to say, we embark on what
we hope is the path to producing some baby budgies that will be good
enough to win a best novice at the local show and if we are really
keen best novice at an out of town show.
Most of us quickly realize
that we once we are past the basic husbandry we do not have a clue
what we are doing. This is perhaps a good effect because it causes
novices to flock to bird meetings and to travel to the expert’s aviaries
to learn something about what’s missing. The net result of all this
activity is usually owning more birds and growing feeling of “not knowing”.
Buying budgies and keeping budgies is easy so
most beginners can build a flock in short order but the art of pair
selection to produce winners is elusive. So we either seek the advice
of the experts or continue the approach of “throwing mud against the
wall” or random selection in the hope of creating a winner. This feeling of despair can be delayed for a year or so if the novice
is lucky enough to have a generous mentor who will help with the selection
by supplying matched pairs of birds but despair will follow, as the
next generation gets no easier to select.
What is it that we
novices are missing that will allow us to progress? I will call this
missing characteristic “Selection Judgment” without defining what
I mean by that term for the moment. I would state that reading books
or being helped by a generous mentor couldn’t cause the learning of
this skill or ability. Although these activities do help maintain
the novices interest while they “figure out” what to do. Figuring
it out is also not a productive path and I know this only from my
life’s previous experience.
I will call the concept of “Selection Judgment” a “distinction” and proceed by illustrating what is a distinction is by referring to a distinction that most of us already have called “Balance”.
Balance is not taught it is learned. In our first
attempts to ride a bicycle, we fall off. If someone holds the saddle
and runs behind us as my wonderful father did for me, we can stay
on the bicycle longer but eventually that person gets exhausted and
we fall down. After repeated tries to peddle the bicycle and to stay
upright, failing each time, we suddenly develop the ability to stay
upright and peddle with amazing skill until it is time to stop, but
stopping is yet another distinction beyond balance. The moment of
clarity, the “Ah Ha!!” is the moment we have learned or got the distinction
“balance”.
Now back to budgies.
When do we know when we have this distinction? We in fact don’t need to know anything about this distinction. We just need to get it. For Example: I didn’t know anything about “Balance” when I got the distinction “Balance” while peddling my bike I just got it. No amount of spoon-feeding by experts will enhance the novice’s progress; in fact, spoon-feeding probably delays the novice’s development.
What probably works to enhance the
novice’s development is to allow the novice to make selections, then
have a conversation about those choices in the context of none of
the choices made are wrong but some are better than others. For example:
When I purchased my first exhibition hard-feather, red-factor canary
cock many years ago from Frank Davis of San Jose, he lined his selection
room with eligible birds. He then set the stage by telling me that
the birds ranged from $75 to $150 and that there were two birds, the
best ones, that if I didn’t pick them out of the crowd I would not
be allowed to buy them. So he upped the anti on me. I studied the
birds and made my selection with a bit more focus than I normally
would at the age of 22 years. We then had a conversation about my
choice. I had picked his second choice in the group. What was amazing
is that I had not selected his number one bird for the very same reason
that he selected it as number one, ticking. He then proceeded to teach
me about how to use subtle ticking (Variegation) to keep depth in
the ground color of one’s color bred stud. Forty years later those
lessons from Frank are still fresh in my mind and he has been dead
for twenty five years. As an aside two or three months after my selection,
Frank showed me the dead body of the ticked cock and congratulated
me on my choice. Thus planting the idea that there are no wrong choices
just the some choices are better than others and only time will tell.
Those
lessons and many others like them are necessary to develop a context
in which to get the complex distinction ““Selection Judgment” are
the grist of personal growth. At this point I wish to differentiate
between “Tips and Tricks” and “Selection Judgment”. Tips and tricks
are part of the context that one must create to be able to get a distinction.
That is similar to the riding of the bike and falling off part of
the earlier analogy.
Setting the context for the getting of a
distinction requires a period of high expenditure of energy with few
visible results. Any amazing results produced in this period are probably
by chance and since the breeder does not have the distinction there
is a high probability that those results will be squandered. Once
the breeder has the distinction, however he or she is in a position
to create their own “luck” or good fortune in the breeding room.
Champion
breeders who really struggle to keep up probably do not yet have the
distinction “Selection Judgment” in place.
Illustrating this path to
success, and there is no recipe here, creates an interesting observation.
The purpose for programs at bird club meetings are to allow the breeders
to develop a context to have the next “Ah Ha!!”. Yes, I said the next
“Ah Ha!!” there are levels to a distinction for example: an Olympic
Slalom Skier has a far more massively developed “Balance” than a kid
cycling down the street.
This work fits into filling the needs generated
while in the period of high expenditure of energy with few visible
results. In other words when the words of the judges makes sense,
you’ve probably got it.