Introduction.
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My name is Jan Bouwmeester. I was born in 1945 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands (Europe). I live in Nieuwerkerk a/d IJssel, which is a small village about ten miles from Rotterdam. In 1970 I married my lovely wife Igna and we have two children. Our sons name is Raymond and his hobbies are playing soccer, fishing and watching wildlife. Our daughter Mirielle is interested in dancing, bungee jumping and watching wildlife. Keeping budgerigars. How it all started ! My interest in keeping budgerigars started when I was about 16 years old, when I kept carrier pigeons in partnership with my father. Around this time, a family friend had some beautiful budgerigars which bred her a lot of chicks. She offered me a pair and after some discussion with my father, he agreed that I could have some budgerigars of my own. A week later I owned my first pair. The following years proved that my decision to keep budgerigars was not a whim and had become a lifetime hobby. My fist pair consisted of two green birds. I can still remember my astonishment as I stood looking at their clutch of chicks! All four had a different colour of wingmarkings, ranging from black to grey of various depths. Even the body colours varied from dark blue through to light blue. I kept asking myself. How is it possible? How could this happen? I was truly amazed. The second round produced me three chicks. One normal green and two blue coloured birds. From that moment on I devoted myself to budgerigars for the rest of my life. However, up till that point, I had no knowledge of genetics. In 1967 I joined a local bird club which was affiliated to the N.B.V.V., a society which catered for all types of birds. I was given the opportunity to read and learn about genetics and this interested me even more. Later in 1976, I joined the budgerigar specialist club in the N.B.V.V. and decided that I would like to become a judge. After completing a two year course, I successfully passed the exam to be a budgerigar judge in 1978. I studied for a further year to become a judge of parrot-like birds. Since then I have had the experience of judging both budgerigars and parrots at 521 shows and I have 17 judging trips planned for 2009. This sounds a lot of shows and it certainly is, but there are differences when I compare judging in my country to the way birds are judged for example in Germany or Great Britain. In these countries a judge has to sort the birds out into the correct order, but in Holland a judge has to complete a written report on each individual bird, then allocate it points before putting them in the correct order. I sure that you can imagine that this procedure is very time consuming and in order that a judge can do this successfully, an individual judge is not allowed to judge more than 80 birds in one day. This also means that a lot judges are required at the larger shows. |
