chillybudgie

We have for sale one cobalt blue, male budgie. He hatched on 24th November 2014 - bred from an albino female and a sky blue spangle male (see photo below). He appears to be of normal colouration - no mutation. He has been hand tamed from 3 weeks old, and is already jumping on the finger to come outside of the cage. He is eating on his own, and has taken to eating millet, fresh grass seed on stalk, parsley, oregano and spinach. He is still mastering the art of flying, but is getting the hang of it quite quickly. Absolutely beautiful nature. Excellent pet, would be great for future breeding also. Keen to see him go to a good home - $30. We'll even throw in a flight cage. We are based in Orange NSW, but travel to the Southern Highlands and Sydney quite frequently. Please PM or reply below if interested.

We need to re-home our beautiful blue clearwing - Kylie. She would be suitable as a pet only - no breeding. She is 2.5 years old and lacks the 'nesting' instinct. In June 2014, she became egg-bound. With the help of our amazing avian vet, and about 2 months of TLC, she made a full recovery. She has gone on to lay 2 clutches of eggs, however she does so off the perch. We have given her a nesting box, however it doesn't seem she registers the fact that she's supposed to go in and lay in there. She kept laying as we believe she never "completed" the breeding cycle. A few weeks ago, we separated her from the male as it wasn't safe for her to keep laying eggs like that. Unfortunately, with all of our other birds, we have no more room for additional cages so she can be housed by herself long term. Kylie has a beautiful nature and actually does much better when living on her own. With a little perseverence she can be well trained. She is already trained to jump onto your finger and will sit on the shoulder and walk around like that. She has also been trained to return to a perch whilst outside of her cage (all you have to do is clap a couple of times and say "swing" - most times though, you don't even have to do that). We are based in Orange (central west) NSW, but can bring her to Sydney or the Southern Highlands, as we go there frequently. We are keen to see her go to a good home so please PM or reply below if you are interested.

Hey Budgie_Smuggler, you have some beautiful violets!! Marg is in fantastic condition!! Saw this thread reactivated, and since I'm new there, thought I'd post up a couple pictures of my greywing, Milton He's a good boy, posing for his photo What's that weird looking thing in your hand mummy??!

I see this post has had a few views, so I thought I'd post an update to provide an insight just in case anyone else sees something similar in the future. Daisy passed away last Thursday (her baby photo is my profile picture). I called my avian vet (who we were on the way to see when she had a heart attack) who suggested I still bring her for a post mortem. The results were that she had cirrhosis of the liver, and this had resulted in an accumulation of fluid in her abdomen. The amount of fluid had increased to such a level that it was putting pressure on her air sacs and heart. Eventually the pressure became too great and caused a massive heart attack. The vet believes that the cirrhosis was the results of a hormonal condition (Daisy did have an enlarged ovary ~12 months ago, and has been overweight ever since). This means there's really nothing that we could have done to save her. Unfortunately the little ones can't tell us when they feel uncomfortable, so by the time they're clearly not well, it's too late. For the last several months, Daisy was overweight and no matter what we did, she couldn't lose any of it. She was also disinterested in flying around when we let her out of her cage. We thought this was because she was overweight (turns out it was hormonal weight gain, rather than too much seed), but it's likely because she had a liver condition. I hope this information may be of use to others. I don't know, perhaps earlier detection of seemingly unrelated and innocuous symptoms may save someone else's budgie.

Thanks for your response Finnie. I can't for the life of me think of what might have gone wrong. Everyone was happy and healthy at the time the little ones hatched and they too seemed to be healthy and growing! We were keeping everything clean, fresh foods and water to the parents each day...so frustrating to think that something may have gotten in there and killed them all! There seems to be enough doubt cast in my mind as to the babies' deaths to make me think we should give Blondie another clutch to see what happens. We'll wait till Spring now though - winter is brutally cold here and not the time to be trying to keep babies warm! Thanks again

Hi all, More dramas... My Daisy is experiencing some unusual symptoms. 3 weeks ago she developed a strange gurgling noise with intermittent coughing. No discharge from her nose, and droppings were normal. Took her to the vet who prescribed antibiotics (first injection was Baytril, then onto Clavulox for 5 days). On the 5th day, the vet also recommended treating for air sac mite, just in case, so she had a dose of Ivomec. Whether it was the antibiotic, or the Ivomec we don't know, but she responded and seemed to make a full recovery for a 2 week period. The vet also had us treat (once she'd "recovered") for fungal infection, for 3 days. About a week ago, she started to relapse. Again, no discharge from anywhere, her vent and droppings are normal and no regurgitation. She's back on the Clavulox for the moment but it seems she's stabilised into this cycle of laboured breating with a distinct 'clicking' noise and tail bob. No significant improvement after 4 days. In keeping with Ivomec treatment regime, she also had a second dose on Monday (2 weeks after the first dose - seemed to have made no difference). She's clearly unwell (puffy and sleeping on 2 feet), but she's still eating and flapping around the cage a bit. She's not gone to the bottom of the cage and we've got the room well heated to support her. At this point we're a bit stumped. I hate medicating with antibiotics if I don't really need to. I've read about iodine deficiency being a possible cause of these sort of symptoms. Just wondering if anyone has had any similar experiences and if so, what did it turn out to be? Many thanks for your insights.

It certainly sounds like she's getting enough calcium if she's smashing the cuttlebone that much! Doesn't sound like she's egg bound at the moment from what you mentioned. In order to check her out properly, you may just need to catch her and give her chest and rump area a good inspection to see what's going on. Budgies usually only puff up (when healthy) when they're tired and are going to sleep. Being consistently puffed up though is generally not a good sign. If they're content, they'll likely sit there and chirp their little beaks off! So far as I understand it, tumours are just one of those things that budgies are very susceptible to. As in humans, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for it Soluvite D is a good all round vitamin supplement for their water. You should be able to get it at your local pet store, if not it's readily available online. How's your female doing today anyway? Any better?

Hi Aquafroste, I guess the first question is aside from the lump, is her vent normal? If she's egg bound, the vent is usually distended and you may even be able to see the egg. If all looks normal around there, it's likely she's not egg bound. I must say if she's eating the cuttlebone, it's likely she doesn't have an egg binding problem. If she is, make the room nice and warm and then rub a bit of olive oil on her vent to help her pass the egg. From your description, it may be possible she's producing eggs, but you also need to consider that the lump may also be a tumour of some sort. The only reason I say this is because she's also puffed up - clearly she's not right. I've had experience with a female who laid two successful clutches in a row, and we thought she was going for a third (her rump was quite swollen - so it looked like she was going to lay again). She was like that for a few weeks, then her tail feathers fell out and she started bleeding. It was a cancerous tumour and we had to put her down There was just no way to know - and this was before we had an avian vet. If you want to stave off breeding again, don't give her the box and try to reduce daylight hours for them. If she does lay an egg, she'll do it on the bottom of the cage which won't do any harm (you should then give her the box if she's laying another clutch though). Do you have any vitamin supplements (that include vitamin D) that you can put in their drinking water to support her system in this time of questionable health? If she's not egg bound, and she's still not looking 100%, it may be best to get her checked by your avian vet. Good luck and hope she'll be okay

Hmmm, you make a very interesting point Kaj. Implementing the measures to keep her up off the chicks, therefore attempting to rule out a genetic condition or illness, would be a valid reason to give her another go. We have a good avian vet, so that's a great idea, if we do have more deaths next time. I think I need not to get so excited next time at any rate. This was the first time we bred the male, who we had bred from our original pair (both have now passed) - so it was a 'sentimental' clutch of sorts. Cheers

Thanks Katie! Been on here reading as much as I can already and getting a few tips

Thanks Phill. If we give her another go, that's a good idea to implement from straight away. Cheers, Kristy

I headed over to the "Budgie Breeding" > Discussion section to post about the issue I'm having (entitled "Female budgie suffocating chicks").

Hello all - I would very much appreciate your opinions on a problem I'm having with one of my females. Earlier this year, she laid her first clutch of 5 eggs. She did not sit on them and after the alloted 21 days, we had to get rid of them. In early April, she laid another clutch of 5. She started sitting after 2 days and did a wonderful job. We thought she was a bit slow on the uptake about what to do with the eggs with the first clutch, so were happy when she started sitting. She successfully hatched all 5 eggs in early May (so we're talking less than 2 weeks ago). On the day the last egg hatched, we found a chick (probably about 3-4 days old) dead. It was being fed and had grown considerably, so we assumed the poor thing got out competed by the older sibilings. Every 2-3 days following that, we'd lose another one. Always, they were well looked after (full crops) and several days old. The legs and arms were splayed out to the side, and the neck was oddly extended. We suspected that perhaps they were getting a blocked gizzard or something of that nature. 4 days ago, we had 2 chicks remaining (they appeared to be the oldest ones). We found one dead on Monday morning. This one was getting very big, full crop - appeared healthy. But it was blatantly obvious he'd been sat on and suffocated. We realised that this was the likely cause of death of the other 3 as well. We did some research and found that putting dummy eggs under the female can stop this problem. We implemented on the same day in an effort to save the oldest chick. For the last two days, the female sat on the eggs and tucked the chick (now almost 2 weeks old, down growing in and a few inches long, eyes just starting to open) under her wing. We were constantly montioring and thought we'd been successful in solving the problem. This morning, to our devastation, we discovered she found out how to sit on the eggs and the chick at the same time! She'd put the chick in the hollow of the nest box floor along with the 2 eggs and sat on the lot. The poor little guy got flattened and didn't stand a chance. Now we've never had this issue before. I'm wondering if there's something else you can do to prevent this happening again? Or would you even bother to breed that female again? Give her another chance to see if she works it out like she did about sitting on the eggs? Or, since she's a good egg layer, would you let her lay, then let another female hatch them? I must say, the female is an albino with a very nervous temperament. We think perhaps this had something to do with her difficulties. Thanks for taking the time and I look forward to your opinions.

Hello everyone, My name is Kristy. My husband and I have a flock of 5 budgies, who are like part of the family. We have them paired off in separate cages (the 5th, a cobalt clearwing female - Kylie - is on her own due to the unexpected passing of her mate late last year). We also have Daisy (a cobalt greywing) and Charlie (a sky blue spangle), who were paired late last year and we intend to breed them come spring, as well as Milton (a violet greywing) and Blondie (an albino), who have been paired for well over a year now and have just bred. Blondie experienced epic fail with her most recent clutch - hence why I've converted from long time reader of this forum, to active member! I'd love to discuss and hear anyone else's opinion on our troublesome hen, so will find the appropriate place on this forum to start a topic (suggestions appreciated!). Looking forward to getting more involved in this forum over the coming weeks