Meet Dewy, Jazzy, DJ and Bubbles

Well as we all know, a story starts before we hatch, well... for birds anyway. These guys started in a bunch of five eggs laid, about the size of your thumbnail.

Though I did not catch it on camera, I was lucky enough to witness the first egg hatching, and getting it's first ever look of the world, this is an extra special moment because since I am an outdoor breeder, it is rare to see a bird hatching, in fact this was the first ever time in five years of breeding.

Over the course of the next few days the rest of the eggs began hatching too. Soon we had four baby chicks in the nest. The fifth egg was not fertile and did not hatch, it is perfectly normal for a female to have one or two eggs that don't hatch with the rest of the clutch. After a while I took the old egg out of the nest to spare any smell coming from the old egg.

In these two photos you can see the growth in just a few weeks difference from being tiny bare pink baby's, they are already gaining their colors and feathers. At the first point in their life, they are completely defenseless and blind, completely riling on their parents to look after them. lucky for this bunch this wasn't the first time for their parents.

As these birds grow they, one by one begin to leave the nest, bubbles then Jazzy, then DJ and lastly Dewy. A whole clutch of males, After they fledged I let them stay in the breeding cage for a week with their parents to get used to flying and eating their own food, then I moved the whole family into the main aviary with our other birds. The mum won't be super tentative after this, she plays bad cop and tries to get them to fend for themselves, she wants them to be pros. The dad on the other hand will continue to spoil them until they don't want it any more, and they knew he would. It has been magical to see these birds blossom over the time they have been with us, now they are for sale on our Gumtree. I have spent hours in there training them and now they are happy, healthy and enjoyable birds to be around, they put s smile on my face every time.