The Marquess of Tavistock—Breeding the Yellow-bellied Parrakeet 261


a road as the breeding of lutino Ring-necks, which took me twenty

years to accomplish ! One of my 1932 cocks, paired to a breeding hen

at Keston, proved a persistent egg eater, and as cock Roseates have to

sit, as well as their mates, an eg*g-eating cock is as hopeless as an

egg-eating hen for breeding.


My 1933 birds proved a pair. After wintering them indoors

I turned them into an aviary, but the prospect of white Roseates

being bred in 1935 so incensed “ X ” that he made a dead set at the

unfortunate young couple, sending illness after illness upon them until

I abandoned all hope of getting them to live out of doors this year.

Even so he was not satisfied, and finished off the cock in the bird-room

with a dose of bacillus coli, the hen being only saved after weeks of

illness and careful nursing.



THE BREEDING OF THE YELLOW-BELLIED

PARRAKEET (Platycercus flaviventris )


By The Marquess of Tavistock


This large Tasmanian Broadtail has been imported not infrequently

during the last twenty years, but with the exception of Mr. Whitley,

who has had two cocks for a considerable period and bred some hybrids,

few people in England, I fancy, have been very successful in preserving

it for any great length of time. The fact is that the Yellow-belly is not

as well suited to the type of aviary most commonly used. Rather

intolerant of heat and very intolerant of stale ground and subject to

septicaemia, small fixed aviaries do not agree with it at all and it

was only when I began using 24 X 8 X 8 ft. movable aviaries that

my birds began to live a respectable time. Another reason for making

use of movable aviaries is the Yellow-belly’s great fondness for green

food. No Broadtail needs or appreciates a larger amount or a greater

variety, and fresh branches should also be supplied regularly throughout

the year. Most individuals acquire a taste for meal-worms and the

staple diet should consist of canary, millet, oats, sunflower, and pea-nuts,

together with apple. Much hemp is liable to induce feather-plucking :

I once had a cock who was rendered so bad a feather-plucker by an



