Spotlight on Mick Widdowson 2008

Mick is a champion breeder, exhibitor and judge and is currently (2008) president of the CBC. He has kept budgerigars for some 46 years (he surely must have been only four years of age when he started!). Unlike the two breeders previously featured on this website, he does not play the “numbers game” with crests. As one of the recognised top breeders and exhibitors of crests my vision of viewing a huge number of visual crests was shattered when I entered the aviary to be told that he only keeps a few visuals. However, just after I visited Mick, he exhibited at the Specialist & Rare Variety Show in Coventry and took best crest and best crest any age out of the 83 crests shown.

Mick lives just outside Skegness, overlooking fields, in a white painted bungalow with a large back garden (a somewhat idyllic setting some might say, but I think the road that runs past is busier than it looks!). This has allowed him to move from having an aviary in his garage, to a custom built aviary which forms an extension to the garage. His newly constructed aviary certainly made me envious. It is large, lofty, light and spacious, with a tiled floor, including the flight bottom; is well ventilated and fully alarmed.

His aviary measures 7 metres by 3 metres, contains one large inside flight and 28 breeding cages ( 70cm long X 50cm high X 50cm deep) and has an apex roof. His nest boxes are external and are of a box within a box design ( 225mm long X 130mm high X 165mm deep). Their positioning on the outside of the cage, reminds me of the “Mannes” set up. He has three sizeable nursery cages, one of which was stacked on top of the other.

He feeds Johnston & Jeff seed in a mix of 50% canary, 40% mixed millets and 10% Scottish tonic ( Johnston & Jeff are the main sponsors of the Scottish Budgerigar Society Open Show in August each year, but the "Scottish" connection comes from the inventor of the special seed mix, Jim Shepherd of Brechin in Scotland-Jim was a judge at the 2008 BS Show at Doncaster). Soft food is a mix of EMP, seaweed, carrots and a protein product. Mick comes from the “old school” and uses Cod Liver Oil in his seed all year, at the rate of 1 teaspoonful to every 14 pounds of seed.

His aviary houses on average 150 birds and he hopes to breed about 100 a year in order to give him a choice in breeding pairs for the following year. This year the number bred is down as he was breeding at the same time as he was trying to build his new aviary. He has just put up a few of the pairs that didn't like to breed during all the upheaval. The building works were almost complete when I was there.

The BS open show has now moved to dates at the end of September which has in effect shortened the show season. This makes it difficult for him, in his area, to judge and show at the required number of shows each year. This shortening of the show season may, he thinks, lead to the ring issue date being raised again and possibly brought forward. Like myself, he believes that if a bird shows a 2008 ring, then it is in that calendar year it should be born, but he recognises that this may change in the future if other breeders have their way, and is open minded about any change.

Mick started breeding crests by buying some from an old fancier for his wife. Mick is well known for his FC yellow face breeder crest which almost took Best Breeder in Show at the BS Show in Doncaster in 1995. Unfortunately this bird died before producing any young and while his half brother bred, that line has almost died out in his aviary. Over the years, he has obtained crested budgerigars from the Norwood stud and recently from Frank Silva. He keeps only half a dozen visuals in his aviary and pairs usually FC to normal to improve the quality, only sometimes using the pairing of FC to a crest bred, but only if the crest bred is of quality. He appreciates that the number of visuals is drastically reduced by using these pairings but as he says-“you only need the one”. His regular success on the crested show bench shows his methods to work for him. The birds he uses to pair to his crests usually come from his own stud of normals, pieds, yellow faces and some excellent quality spangles. Show preparation consists mainly of spraying the show team, starting six weeks before the first show. The first sprays being with a mix of hot water and baby shampoo, gradually reducing the temperature of the water over the weeks with no shampoo added. He only washes birds if there is, for example, a blood mark on the feathers.

Overall the quality of Mick's birds was very high-good sized birds, with big heads and spots, all bouncing healthily around in his spacious flight. Mick uses a wooden seed hopper in each cage, which he had made some years ago. They seem to last very well and the birds don't seem to chew them. Only slight head ticking could be found amongst his birds-no heavy flecking. I saw a couple of outcrosses he had just brought in, which were in isolation from the general flock, and was impressed, in particular, by the quality of one of the grey greens and the Australian golden face (which to me resembled a dark green greywing). If we could only breed crests to that size!

I thoroughly enjoyed my short visit to Mick and would recommend a visit to anyone in the area, they won't be disappointed with the quality on view. Couple it with a visit to the promenade and make a complete day or night of it.