Keely's Keets™

Posted by Keely
Article Title: Chip N' Dales Rescue Rangers!
The budgies are doing wonderful, multiplying, and becoming more beautiful and friendly everyday! We have 13 active breeders right now. We are looking forward to being able to use credit cards for the bird adoption fees (it pays for their food :P) on the I phone but it will be a ways off as we don't have an I phone quite yet nor do we have the credit card device. If and when this dose come about we would have to charge a service fee ($2 to $5 ) to cover the credit card companies useage fees. We will see how this pans out and you will be the first to know if we do get credit card useage.

Tiggers two boy puppies found great homes after they were 8-9 weeks old, and we are now looking to keep her from having another litter this coming heat cycle. Silly doggies, every 6 months. :P

Well I, Keely, now have a fractured foot, oh joy. But I am half way healed already, just have to carry a boot around all the time, but hopefully for only a few more weeks. Yet I am not the most hurt/sick one in the family this month. The Brother, was laid up in bed on the couch all weekend and through tuesday sick as a dog. The Mother, my partner in crime, has been going to an allergy clinic to be able to breathe better in all the lovely pollinated winds! We are very fortunaite to have a flexable job taking care of the birds, myself and my family, as fixed 9-5s just don't work with us.

I am pround to officially announce we have a rare mutation in our flock! In our original flock (not from any of the rescued birds) we produced the rare mutation called Mottled! We currently have three male Mottleds all from the same mom and dad so far. We have also started mixing our flock with the unrealated rescued birds. So far they have made some beautiful babies, a little richer in the base color then our birds were alone. The rescued birds are mingling with the original flock quite well, so they are now part of the family!

Posted by Keely
Article Title: So Long....
After longer than I care to mention, I have updated the birds for sale and sold. I am planning on uploading a lot of photos through all the sections, as I have amassed some great baby photos. Untill then, enjoy the photos of the birds for sale & sold!

We have rearranged the hatch certifacates so they are better and quicker to write out.

Tigger had 2 cute little boy puppies this holiday season! They are growing so fast! 8 teet for 2 must be some form of puppy heaven!

Posted by Keely
Article Title: I am 18 now, Yay!
Over the last few months we have gone form having only 8 active breeders to 16. From over zelous mothers to our desire to breeder certain color types, we have multipied. We are having new mothers laying large clutches this time of year, so we have some wonderful (Super DE Duper!) babies coming out all the time. We also bred our first cinnamon color mutation! We are going to keep her in order to breed more beautiful birds like her. I will be slowly (snail pase, probably ^_^ ) updating the pictures as I can, keep checking back!

Posted by Keely
Article Title: Birds N' Birthdays
Tomorrow is my mother's (Linda) birth day! Happy birthday Mom!

I must apologize for not saying anything on or updating this webpage for over a month now. We are very much still in business and have birds-a-plenty. I do have a very good reason for not keeping up with the site, however. Firstly, if one has noticed we are working on a better system for the images and such, still in progress though. Yet in this last uneventful month for the web page the actual bird room has been very busy... being remodeled! It sounds easy now but a lot of things had to be fixed up before the bird room was worked on, which has taken a lot of work and time. Neighbors moved out, brother moved over, sewing room was made, bird room was prepped, then a door-way was cut between the old bird room and old sewing room to make 1 big bird room. We have come a long way. (Will post pictures somewhere soon) During all this we have switched out almost all the breeders for more couples with the rest of the breeders following. (They were all ready to leave after having/raising their babies, around the same time.) So we don’t have any eggs at the time of this writing on 7/7/09 in the nest boxes. But we are expecting some very, very, soon, along with the current chicks left, growing up and fledging.

Posted by Keely
Article Title: Tabs
The web page is now more compact, with pages inside other pages. Check it out. It needs a little refining, which I hope will come soon, but it is working quite well for now. The new stories page will have stories of events that have taken place in Keely's Keets Aviary. The care infromation was majorly changed/updated. After a two week refrain form babies fledging we fleged 6 babies yesterday, and should have a more consistant flow of fledgings. We got our first visual violet from Blossom and Airplane!

Posted by Keely
Article Title: It's April!
Douvoix hatched 5 of 5! Friday and Saturday we banded two babies both days. Both babies, both days were siblings, first set from Avacado and the second set was from Douviox. Thursday has hatched two more albinos. Booberry is sitting on her eggs. Blossom is going to start hatching her kids very soon. Estra's have all hatched and are growning up really fast. Kennisha is laying eggs. Spring is teasing us still, but I think she is close to start brooding/laying eggs. All is going well. Twitter is now appearing on Facebook.

Posted by Keely
Article Title: 12:16 pm
Wait, it was just the 23rd a few minutes ago! Nothing too exciting...except MORE BABIES FLEDGED AND HATCHED! I have finally, as of 20 minutes ago, got the site master to get the tabs working on the site again! And in a timely manner too! They are prettier and work a bit faster than before. Yet it still lags because it has to load all of the images the tabs hold, and not just what you see in that tab your on, as I would have liked. Now that is all taken care of I will start to add more pictures to the photos page. Like the carrot kid pictures I took tonight. UPDATE 12:29 pm: just noticed that the lightbox (pictue viewer) is broken on the breeders page past the Moms tab as well as the photos page past the Eggs tab! Why does it never just work! Care page works prefectly...

Posted by Keely
Article Title: Happy, Happy Days.
I cut my finger, and my monitor passed over the big circut board bridge, so I am using a temp', works for now but I can hardly read text. I am spoiled with fancy equipment. Though, I am blessed with an awesome, tech-savy, older brother whom is getting me a new monitor. Some more pages are in the making for the web site so expect to see some more soon.

Blossom and Airplane had all of their babies hatch this round. Joy and SweetPea have produced our first 'Neon Green' budgie in almost a year. They also had 100% fertility this clutch. Joy was pulled out this evening and her youngest babies were fostered out to Avacado and Thursday. Leaving SweetPea to take care of the oldest babies and fledge them before he can join his mate in the flights. Nomoblu and Gris Azule now have 4 eggs and the mom won't let me see them! Jr. acts like she had never had kids before, she is so happy and healthy. All is well.

Posted by Keely
Article Title: Ino
We had our first in-home-born albino on Friday The 13th! We are also getting some other colored birds in our 'green streak'!

Posted by Keely
Article Title: Birthday Blues
Keely's Keets' web master (and brother) just celebrated his 21st birthday!

On the 9th, the Birthday-Boy's birthday, we had two babies hatch, Avacado's 4th baby and Joy's 6th. Estra, this clutch laid 8 eggs and 5 had hatched on time but three eggs were left. We candled the eggs about 5 days after the last baby hatched and we thought they may still be fertile and left them alone. A day or two later we had Estra's 6th baby hatch! It seems that egg number 6 and 7 were infertile and 8 was just a little too comfortable in her egg! However, Estra's 6th is growing rather rapidly and is also very comfortable at the bottom of the birdie 'dog pile'!

We after some long days of waiting, trying and being rather up set about the whole situation, we took back all the remaining sick fish and recently dead. I wish it had ended better, for the fishes sake. I will never ever buy any living creature from a chain pet store again and urge anyone wanting somthing that breathes, to find a local breeder of your desired spieces.

Posted by Keely
Article Title: 100th Banding!
We just banded our 100th baby bird tonight! Estra's 5th baby got the honors of being the 100th baby to be banded at Keely's Keets Avairy. We have had over 100 babys born here, but not all were banded in the beginning. I don't see how we could have done, what we have done with the birds, without the banding and record keeping, it is as vital to our birds as seed is! (Don't you just love similies?)

Posted by Keely
Article Title: Up and Running!
The site is looking complete finally. We now have most of the pages fully functional. Pictures are working and working well. I will be adding more than just the breeders in the photos page. The Birds and Go Green page both show what birds we have for sale currently and they will be kept up-to-date.

Estra laid 8 eggs, 4 of which have hatched. Joy also has laid 8 eggs and they are incubating. Avacado has 7 eggs. We placed Spring and Brown Sugar back in a breeder cage yesterday, hopefully they will start laying their first clutch soon. We also put Thursday and Chaos together a little while ago and they now have 4 eggs. They are also the quickest to breed pair we have currently. I keep a track of the dates we place the breeders together, remove them, and when they lay their eggs. So from the time the couple was placed in a breeder cage to the day the mother lays her first egg, Thursday and Chaos are the quickest at 7 days.

After we have had need, twice now, to incubate eggs we bought a incubator with an automatic egg turner; so we know the eggs, when they need to be incubated, will be safe.

Tigger's 4 puppies are just now walking, have their ears and eyes open, and are starting to wrestle.

Posted by Keely
Article Title: First Post of The New Year!
I know, it's been 2 weeks since last post! Time flies. Anywho, Tigger had her pups on the 5th, she has 4 big, beautiful, brown girls that are getting bigger by the second!

Jr. and her new husband (She was widowed in a terrible accident a few months ago.) hatched their first baby yesterday.

Over the past two weeks we unsuccessfully tried to artificially hatch two of Booberry's eggs. She had her first baby hatch and there were some problems so we removed Booberry and her husband Icecream to rest. Candled her 4 remaining eggs, found two to be infertile and the others were the ones we tried to incubate ourselves. Just in case there was something wrong with the chicks and because we had no other parents still hatching their young at the time (No one to foster to, that is.).

This past week we thought that our 12 breeder cages were a little too much. Too high, too low, and too many of the parents in the cages not breeding. So we sent the non-breeding parents to rest in the flights for a bit and removed the top and bottom rows of breeder cages. Leaving us with 7, one couple we had to leave on the top because they were still breeding. So, we were planning on having just the 6 middle cages. But then a new couple , Thursday and Chaos, wanted to be parents and were showing their love for each other in the flight cage. We had to place them on the top row in a breeder cage. Thus, we are back to 8 breeder cages. We are now planning on being more flexable with how many cages we have up with breeders in them, actually breeding.

The pictures are now working and I am going to be putting photos up as I can. Stay tuned in to see the 'parent birds' I always talk about, and pictures of babies, birds for sale, and fun photos of Keely's Keets Parakeets' antics.

Posted by Keely
Article Title: Year-end Baby Special!
It's almost 2009!

Just 2 full days until the ball drops and the clocks change. Our cages and water bottles are extra clean in preparation for the new year, and today was a very special day in our aviary. But first let me tell you how excited I was about a week ago when we got our new flight cages in and put them together.

We wanted to clean our 'Singles Cage' which had become quite dirty. Having the most birds in it, we did not want to catch every single bird and put them in the new and clean flight cage. So we came up with an idea: putting the cages, which are identical, face to face and held the doors open with springs. We had the new cage all set up with; food, water, toys, perches, swings, etc., and ready to go. Once the cages were together we removed all the food, water, toys and then every perch one by one in the old cage. I also took out all the extras like hooks, springs and clamps. By the time we had most of the perches down, 3/4 of the birds had already gone over to the new cage on their own. Then when all the perches were gone a few of the birds still hung back, in the now empty cage. So we reached in through the side doors and gently swung our hands around until all the birds were now their new, clean cage. I was so happy, and telling everyone about what we did, because it was quick and easy with very little stress put on the birds or us!

On to other bird news, in a very sad note we had a 9 day old baby die 3 days ago. He was Estra’s 2nd of two babies from her first clutch. We don't know why he died. His older sister, however, is a spit fire and is doing great, we fostered her to Avacado, who also had only two babies in her first clutch. Avacado adopted her right away and is more than thrilled to have more kids in her brood.

Jr. is on her 3rd egg, and Booberry has stopped with a full clutch of 5 eggs. Joy is a wonderful mother of 4 large babies. Pepsi and Sailor have recently been placed back in a breeder cage and are brooding again! Sunday just hatched her first baby within the past two hours.

Squiggle’s first baby also hatched today between 5:10 and 5:20 pm. How do I know the exact time? Well that is one part of the special baby day we had today. Let me explain. Around 2:30-3:00 pm I was getting ready to start pulling out dirty bird dishes and get starting with the daily food changes, when I came into the bird room and looked at Squiggle's breeder cage. There I saw on the floor about 5 inches from the nest box opening, an egg. I then grabbed a disposable examination glove and removed the egg.

So far every thrown out egg I have found was completely cracked, infertile, or both. But I always check the eggs for such things. I noticed that: yes, it was a fertile egg; and yes, it had a small puncture in it.

I then talked it over with my mother and we then decided to try and save the egg, knowing it was fertile and that the hole was very small. We then applied a thin amount of some very lightly colored nail polish to the hole in the egg. I had placed it in a napkin and blew on it to dry the nail polish. We were then discussing who to place the egg back in with. Back with Squiggles? Sunday? The others have larger babies . . . . Let’s use our incubator we set up when we first started breeding birds that we have never used!

I then left the egg on my desk in the napkin under the warm ray of sun light running through the window shade. I ran out, because I felt like running, and sifted through the storage shed and grabbed the incubator, brought it inside, set it up and then set the little doctored egg in the reverse side of a chicken egg carton. (Anyone find irony in that?)

I had two thermometers in sight, one was an area temperature gauge and the other was a direct touch reader, both were placed in the egg carton holes right next to the egg. I then ran around did some things and every five minutes I adjusted the temperature. After a bit I sat down to take a breather and read a book at my desk still checking the temperature every few minutes. Then 5:15 pm. approached and my mom asked how I could tell if the baby inside was alive or not. I got up and was saying "I don't know..." and then looking at the egg I saw something burst out from the egg!

Well it wasn't just something at all, is was the baby bird inside the egg’s protective shell! I then called out “Oh my God! It’s hatching!” My mother watched the baby hatch as I scrambled and got the camera recording, a few seconds later my brother came home and the three of us watched the little baby hatch out of his shell. A few pictures, a video tape, a wonderful memory, a big thanks to God and about 8 minutes later, we placed the freshly hatched baby in Blossom's nest, next to her one and only baby.

We had just candled Blossoms 3 over due eggs out of 4 and found them to be infertile and tossed them out. She has only 1 baby who is 5 days old. We then held our breath as we placed that less than a half hour old baby in the nest box.

We left the mother who is slightly skiddish alone and waited ten minutes and checked again. The baby had a full crop (it was fed) and was being kept warm with its new foster mom, dad, and big brother. We were so excited and floating around all evening. Squiggles has 5 other eggs to hatch and I am sure they will be fine. Just an hour ago I was doing my nightly rounds of the eggs and babies when I saw that Sunday’s first baby had just hatched and that we had some smart parents. Sharlet and her husband, P, had their five babies in a row in order of their birth, ending with the three eggs they have left and the mother and the father was at the entrance of the box staring at me with a 'go away you are messing with my family' face. I have some pictures of my smart birds with their babies arranged in order of oldest to youngest and I will post them when I have the pictures up and running.

PS. Tigger is restless and very pregnant, we are going to have some puppies tonight too!(maybe)

This concludes our special baby filled night. Enjoy the last few days of 2008!

Posted by Keely
Article Title: Bigest Full Moon
Just read online that today's full moon is the biggest full moon of this year, then I read that the moon is moving 1.6 cm away from earth every year, intresting.... Today Sunday laid her 2nd egg, Sharlet laid her 8th of her 2nd clutch, and that couple that was brooding in last post... is now incubating! Squiggles laid her first egg of her first clutch today!

Posted by Keely
Article Title: Babies Born
Yesterday was quite prolific in the Keely's Keets Aviary. Both Jr. and Sharlet had babies hatch. So that's TWO babies yesterday. We are extra excited because Jr. was the first bird we had born in-house.