The Moonraker Stud

Steve remembers playing in the dirt of his father’s aviary as a young boy.  Today he is in a partnership with his father and brother called "The Holland Stud".  They are all judges and Champion exhibitors.  The MBS is grateful for Steve's contribution to our Articles list.

First I guess I should tell the reader of this Article what and who the Moonraker stud is! In the UK it’s a well-known stud of birds from the Swindon (South west region of UK), owned and managed by a good friend of myself Mr Ron Payne. The stud has over the years had a good number of success and Ron and I have been friends for a good number of years. Recently I was asked if I could fill in at the Swindon club’s monthly meeting as one of their speakers had to drop out at the last minute. Ron knew that I had recently taken early (very early) retirement and that unlike in years gone by I would be free. So I accepted the invitation and delivered a talk. Soon after that Ron contacted me and asked if I could spare another afternoon to spend with him. He said something I had said during my talk had started him thinking! It may sound strange but in all the years I have known Ron I have never been in his bird room, although he had been to our stud. The reason was simple, work, judging and showing never seemed to give me the time to travel the hour or so down to Swindon. So with all the free time I now have Ron knew the answer he would get and one Sunday I travelled down to Swindon still unaware of what had sparked Ron’s thinking. On arrival I was presented with the customary drink (not tea for me but black coffee) and then we had a walk down his garden passing his wife’s large carp pool. I was aware that Ron had plans to re-build his aviary and he took me to the rear of his currant aviary, where I could see the concrete floor pad and low-level brickwork to his new brick build aviary. Unfortunately construction work had been put on hold as Ron has recently undergone two hip replacement operations. Ron plans to have double glazed UPVc windows. This is a similar type of set up to that at my own aviary and I asked what type of roofing he intended to install, and if he had put any insulation in the floor pad. Ron had not given that much thought to the roof and told me he had only installed a damp proof membrane in the floor. I told him my floor was the same and that I had experienced condensation on the floor pad during the winter months when we have heating on during our breeding season. My solution had been to install a layer of insulation on top of the floor then install wood laminate flooring. I also advised him to go for a tiled roof, yes a little more expensive but with a much longer life. Then into the bird room, which was typical of the style you will find in the UK. A couple of banks of breeding cages and two large flights, one leading to an outside flight which is currently not in use as it is being used to store building materials. The cages are of wooden construction, which can be opened up to give varying sizes of flight cages. I did notice a block if three wire cages and asked if Ron intended to use these in the new bird room. His answer was negative saying it had been an experiment, and that he had not “ Got on” with the wire cages. The first bird Ron put in a show cage was a beautiful, one year old, grey cock. It had all the head attributes of a modern exhibition budgerigar. I was informed that it had won best young bird in show a couple of time the previous year but as it had dropped it tails and not re-grown them this year, so it had not been shown since. So my first question to Ron had to be. “Given that bird and that I don’t know how to make it re-grow its tails, what on earth did I say during my talk that has got you thinking”. His answer was feather types. “You seem to spend much more time and detailed thinking about the feather type of a bird than I have ever done and I think I need to spend more time on that to move forward” The next bird I noticed was still in the breeding cage, a cinnamon light green cock. This bird had a lovely long face with plenty of frontal rise, but on very close examination his spot was well down in size to make him a super bird. My comment to Ron was simple, “the birds structure is as good as any cinnamon you will see at the BS world club show in a few weeks but its feather is letting it down” Ron wanted to know how I knew it was feather, Just look at the spot was my reply. You can’t put a big spot onto a long thin feather, there is no where for the spot to land on!