Exactly one year ago a blue spangle budgerigar
was hatched in my aviary, Feb 2006. As this baby grew, it developed
the familiar head feather texture of a feather duster. He was the
third of the season and was not expected in that clutch as both parents
came from different breeders. All the previous examples had been grey
green and had died shortly after weaning while attempting to compete
with other babies in the weaning cage. As his coloring was very attractive,
I resisted suggestions to euthanize him. Upon weaning, I left him
in the breeding cage and culled the parents, as I had no plans to
breed more feather dusters. While in this cage he was not able to
reach the Bird-Zerk feeder containing the parakeet mix attached up
the side of this breeding cage but fed quite normally on the dish
of oat groats and out of a Planit #10 Mason Jar feeder sitting in
a plastic sushi tray to catch spilled seed. The seed mix in the Mason
jar was 80% small golden millet mixed with 5 percent each of Canola
rapeseed, Quinoa, Amaranth and Harrison’s Parakeet pellet. His water
came from a Mason jar chick drinker and our high calcium content (19
grains/gallon) well water was always treated with 2.5cc of V.18 per
gallon of water.
He stayed in this breeding cage for several
months and was pretty much ignored, except for feeding, until the
start of the next breeding season, Nov 2006, where upon I needed to
use his cage. I very purposefully moved him to an identical cage with
all the feeders/drinkers in exactly the same location. I didn’t bother
installing perches in this cage because he never/couldn’t use them.
He has been sitting on ˝’ X 2’ welded wire and the edge of the dish
his whole life and has not soiled himself significantly.
He ate
the oat groats quite voraciously for several months but at about eight
months he stopped eating oat groats and ate only the millet mix and
fresh Romaine lettuce provided daily. Other than that I basically
ignored him as my stud had grown to some 500 birds and I was also
occupied with taking care of the other 750 animals and birds on my
ranch.
The golden millet mix was an experimental seed mix
that I designed to be fed to pairs raising babies in an attempt to
expose the new generation to new feeds and to supply more of the amino
acids required for feather growth than traditional parakeet mix could
supply. I have found golden millet very palatable to budgies and excellent
for starting most weanlings. After weaning, I did not feed this bird
any canary seed at all and I never tube fed it, although I often do
tube feed struggling weanlings to give them a nutritional boost. I
didn’t take the time to do this with him. Interestingly he does not
spend all his waking moments eating; apparently, the early satisfaction
of his amino acid requirements did not leave him in the feeding deficit
that one normally hears reported about feather dusters. Since
one of the previous feather dusters had died right after I had trimmed
its facial feathers, I didn’t bother trimming any feathers on his
face or vent.
He currently weighs 54 grams and has never been
thin or emaciated. In about September he started to molt and judging
by the pile of feathers I removed from his tray, he did a complete
molt. But his appearance did not change and I did not see any pinfeathers.
I
have been completely surprised by the vigor he exhibits in his survival
as I ignored him for most of his life expecting him to die almost
any day for months. This bird is not used to being handled and was
very uncomfortable when we photographed him. But he did eventually
settle down on my hand and perched quite normally with the strength
of a healthy bird. My assessment of this bird within the context of
my breeding and evaluating birds for the past 55 years is that it
is no more diseased than a Silky Chicken, a Japanese Onagadori Fowl
or Parisian Frill Canary.
Other than his limited capability
for movement and bazaar appearance he appears to be a completely normal
budgie so I was taken aback by what I read on the web site of Creation
Magazine, a reference discovered during a Google search for “feather
duster”. Where it was claimed that Feather Dusters were somehow happening
as the result of a punishment from God. (http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v24/i1/budgie.asp)
This
bazaar claim by what must be a “conservative” religious group triggered
thoughts questioning what other misconceptions there are about feather
dusters that live on because most are either euthanized or fail to
compete with normal budgies at an early age. This early termination
occurs without any real study of the issues involved, because it is
believed that they cannot make any legitimate contribution to budgerigar
type breeding. This is not necessarily so, please read on.
The
successful raising of this single feather duster to a condition of
excellent health does not constitute a scientific study and many of
the claims below are simply my educated conjecture from the success
of this accomplishment.
Several ideas emerged that I found interesting
and perhaps some are worth repeating. In my quest to design a seed
mix that was as nutritionally complete as any soft food that I am
aware of, I had indeed been able to provide sufficient methionine
and lysine to allow nonstop feather growth without any signs of muscular
or bone degeneration. This was actually really good news as budgerigars
as a species are dry seed specialists to the extreme and whole seeds
maintain their nutritional content far longer than ground or crushed
seeds.
Also it may be apparent that claims that feather dusters
have lethal genes are now quite suspect as it is most likely that
system failure due to malnutrition in the overly traditional feeding
habits of our fancy is the cause of death rather than any glandular
malfunction. This is both in the social competition and nutritional
content of our diets.
I see confirmation of our idea that perhaps
the long-term fad of feeding a high percentage of canary seed to budgerigars
might be more of a public statement of social/monetary means rather
than an expression of good nutrition. Since canary seed is usually
two to three times the cost of millet it is perhaps considered better
because it is more expensive. In fact canary seed is quite deficient
in methionine, a necessary component for feather growth, by comparison
to millets.
Now on to the real irony, I had the realization that
the feather duster could be considered to be a very extreme case of
budgerigars with the double-buff feathering now so desired by our
type breeders. I am now convinced that the feather duster would make
an excellent experimental animal to develop budgerigar diets to facilitate
reversing the failure to thrive of our high-buff birds. Thus removing
what is probably the major barrier to consistent production of foot-long,
type-bred budgerigars with an excess of feather around the head and
shoulders with buffalo horn shaped eyebrows. The genotype for this
exaggerated phenotype probably already exists. But our current diets
are insufficient in critical amino acids and do not support the full
development of this phenotypes feathering. It is logical that this
exaggerated phenotype could have more extreme dietary requirements
than the birds described by Watmough and others, for example.
Feeding
adequate levels of Lysine and Methionine to our budgerigars of show
stature via the more stable whole seed approach might also have the
effect of granting a longer life span by reducing the daily dietary
stress experienced by our birds eating traditional diets.
.
If for
a moment we budgerigar breeders would stop taking ourselves so seriously,
I will propose that when the fancy gains the wide spread ability to
raise feather dusters that we do just that and also that we make a
place in the sun for this much maligned mutation that we must be responsible
for having created. We could do this by allowing a novelty class for
them at the shows. Thus, turning a perceived liability into a public
relations asset. Please don’t allow the judges to pronounce their
choices over this class as we have already judged this mutation far
too harshly over the decades. Perhaps some scheme of collecting public
opinion on the most pleasing or cutest would be more appropriate in
contrast to our very serious exhibition pursuits.
