All About Budgerigars: A Concise but Comprehensive Treatise on Housing, Management, Breeding and Exhibiting, with Notes on Colour Varieties and their Reproduction

Cage Birds, Published [No date: circa 1953]. Hardcover, 110 pp.; 22 cm; First Edition; illustrated with black-and-white photographic plates, with 8 pp of trade advertisements at the rear. In Good condition with an Acceptable dust jacket. Red cloth boards, black lettering on spine. Mild to moderate shelf and edge wear, some color loss at corner tips and at head and foot of spine. Crack to the binding between half-title and frontispiece, frontispiece beginning to separate; text block otherwise intact. Gift inscription in ink to the front pastedown, dated 1954. Mild to moderate toning throughout, foxing to endpapers. Otherwise unmarked. Illustrated dust jacket, an all-over pattern of cream budgerigars on a bright red ground. A 3 inch diagonal tear across the top edge of the rear panel, the torn section still present, with paper loss at the upper rear corner, several other large tears and chipping along edges, and rubbing to the spine. Moderate toning overall, fading and color loss along edges and spine. Price of 7/6 present, not clipped. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. Budgerigars were in roughly every fifth British household by the 1950s. Pratley was Cage Birds' Budgerigar Expert from 1941, a founder member of the London and Southern Counties B.S. and its chairman from 1945 to 1952 and later its president, and twice a judge at the National Exhibition of Cage Birds at Olympia. Fourteen chapters cover housing, appliances, feeding, purchase of stock, breeding systems, preparation for showing, sex-linkage and colour inheritance, common ailments, and constructing a hospital cage. Two Budgerigar Society plates give the breed standard, the Ideal Exhibition Cock and Hen. Eight pages of advertisements at the rear list the 1953 trade: A.C. Hughes leg rings, John E. Haith of Cleethorpes, Spratt's of Bow Road, Cowdrill's aviary timber, and half a dozen champion breeders. Contents: Housing the Budgerigar; Appliances; Feeding; Purchase of Stock; General Management; Breeding Systems; Breeding; Breeding Setbacks; Preparation for Showing; The Elements of Colour Production; The Colour Varieties and Recommended Pairings; Common Ailments; Constructing a Hospital Cage; The Budgerigar as a Pet; Index.…