Sailorwolf

Who advised the antibiotic and what kind is it? Because with out a consult you don't know if the antibiotic you are giving the babies is effective against that type of bacteria. It may even select for resistance and cause super infections. Is it broad or narrow spectrum? You may not even have a bacterial infection which will create resistance even faster. If you are not giving the right dose at the right frequency you may (and most probably will) be selecting for resistance. At least if a vet can see them, they can give a fair judgement as to what bacteria it could be, give you the right antibiotics for it or broad spectrum ones while they wait for a culture to grow and then maybe perform an antibiotic sensitivity culture. Its epidemiology sounds like polyomavirus It is best to separate all your infected clutches from your other birds. It may even be something like SCIDs (I think that is it) like cot death in human babies. I forget how it works. The no vomiting thing. You can't always tell if an animal has vomited. Diseases don't read the text book remember, they don't always show all the signs. They do what they want.

None of those answers seem quite real. They sound as if any one could make them up. None of them are very personal, like they could apply to any animal.

Well to be honest I'm not sure. But it would be most very likely. Calcium build up can happen in animals, when this happens and it is chronic, they deposit calcium in all sorts of places, like inside the chest wall. You can see calcium lining the ribs. I think it also builds up in the kidneys and can make things worse. Some hormonal disease can cause it to build up in the lungs. This is for mammals, not so sure on birds, although I don't see why it wouldn't.

Is a little hard to tell from the picture, but i would go either way on the yellowfaceing. If you look hard at all baby budgies' irises they always look dark brown.

Yea, this is Izzy's first time that I can remember him going red.

Yes Neat that is true Lecturer/avian vet today said that gout is often caused by kidney problems in birds as it is a build up of uric acid, which a normal kidney is supposed to get rid of. A bunged up kidney is slower at getting rid of it and so it builds up in the body.

Well that's good I only write what I know, so hence I only learnt that today

He looks like a yellowface type 1 cobalt. Gorgeous He still has the black on his beak too. Not all baby budgies have the bars going all the way down to the cere. None of my babies did. I would say maybe 8-9weeks old

okay so. The whole calcium supplementing thing as with cows, totally different to birds. Here is the link where I explain it, Go past the first post, and go down to my post I made today: Budgies and Calcium Very interesting today, we talked about egg binding in chickens. Some of the procedures they do: Keep the hen warm, give lots of fluids (intravenous fluids, with calcium and other goodies) I would think giving them orally would be fine as well. Calcium gives them the strength to help push the egg out (it is required for muscle contraction). Give them oxytocin (a drug that contracts the muscles in the uterus). Do a hysterectomy Do a hysterotomy (like a caesarean section ) Do an ovocentesis - suck the yolk out of the egg with a needle and then it will collapse and she can pass it out. These last 4 options should only be done by a vet. Also another thing I learned in the last few days about chickens is when they lay their egg, their uterus prolapses out with it and then once the egg comes out, it goes back in. Don't know whether or not this happens in budgies. And gout is often the result of kidney problems.

That is an awesome story. AV. Doesn't that just warm your heart. They say if you love something let it go and if it comes back then it is true love. awww Ivermectin. Well the resistance thing is similar to resistance of bacteria to antibiotics. By using any drug that kills an organism, you still have the chance that one will survive and because he survived and none of the other bugs did, he has no competition, so what does he do? He breeds and breeds and breeds and passes all his resistance genes on to the next generation and the cycle continues. So continual low dosing is not a good thing to do. Treat them for parasites when they have them generally.

okay, so I talked to my lecturer/avian vet (he is both!) who is a very knowledgable man. He said that they aren't like cows at all. So scrap what I said/proposed above. okay this is what he said. He said that budgies should be given calcium supplements starting around about a month before you start to breed them. This is because they store their calcium in their bones. When they are not laying or breeding they should be given a rest. As in what I took from that was that they don't really need to be supplemented with calcium while they aren't breeding. He said birds are often given heaps of calcium, because some people like to churn out the baby budgies (which I am not saying ANY of you do (you are all very responsible ) ) and in this case they will need it all the time if they are being constantly bred. And also in situations where they have bad diets, which most budgies do have. So basically what I took away from that was to start supplementing calcium a month before you breed them and then when you aren't breeding them give them a rest from it. My thoughts are the same as Norm, leave it out of their drinking water, because at least then they have a choice. Breeding hens require a lot of water and if the only water they can get has calcium all through it, then they will drink it and may drink too much. Go for the cuttle fish bones and bells and pellets and egg mash things. Egg shell is a good calcium source.

That's just the silliest rule I have ever heard. Get more than one and just keep replacing as one dies. Because then it would be the lifespan of your current budgie and your current budgie keeps changing.

Red mites (Dermanysuss) are carried by wild birds too. So any tree has the potential to have red mites.

Well in a sense you could sort of sex a person by their t shirt size. Men tend to wear larger t shirts, like male budgies tend to have longer tails. It is such a small discrepancy though that you can't notice it very easily. All my males, especially the bigger, manlier males have fairly long tails and all my girls have short tails. Arkady had a really long tail. Yeah, just looked now. The tail feathers from my male birds tend to be longer, by maybe a centimetre.

Izzy has gone into a big moult this time round and his head is looking pretty bald/red at the moment and he looks like a moth ate him. Not quite as many pin feathers as that though.

Eh, I would not think broccoli is bad. Maybe just not all the time. Feed carrots, dandelion, peas, beans more often. Broccoli can be fed less. I would advise against feeding corn during this time.

Maybe you should take him out on the day that it is due, just to make sure he won't get at it. Then replace it with a fake egg, mark the real one, toss it under another hen, wait until it hatches then put it back in with original mum!

They usually grow their feathers back in symmetrically. Same one on each side. I just let them grow back untouched, they don't seem to have any problems.

Hello and welcome to the BBC

Hi and welcome to the forums. Where you get the budgie from pet shop or breeder will not influence the time it takes to tame the budgies. Many breeders like to handle their babies, so that they are tame, but many breeders do not. Baby budgies from petshops would have come from breeders in the first place, so again you have to rely on whether those breeders handled the babies or not. Breeders tend to know how old their babies are much better than petshop staff

I use stuff all the time, it's hard to know what is slang and what isn't Some Kiwi slang (don't know if you guys use it or not, but it was in a little bag of fridge magnets of kiwi slang words) He lives out in the Wops (also wops wops) = means he lives out somewhere far away, out bush, away from civilisation Bush = forest Hissy fit: having a tantrum Carked it: Died Tiki tour: Go on a little walk tour around the place, or a detour, or time wasting Hoon: Go really fast, or an idiot who drives really fast. ie He hoons all round the place. Piker : Some one who pulls out of something at the last minute Skiver: Someone who is lazy and dissappears from work to have a kip (sleep) Suss: as in "that looks a bit suss".= Suspicious "Naff off": This is my favourite. Telling some one to go away evilly as in p*ss off. Then of cause we have all the maori words like "kai" = food etc etc "Sweet as" (I think all of the southern hemisphere uses this one): That's cool or I like that. Bum= bottom/ buttocks (again another thing all of Australasia and England uses) A dag is what hangs off of a sheep's backside. It's wool with poo all through it. Big clumps of poo that hang off their backside. So I laughed when you guys called yourselves dags.

The best way to sex budgies is by the cere. Although I have noticed males tend to have a slightly longer tail, but this is not a reliable method to sex budgies.

In that case she sounds like she is around the right age.

An over abundance of phosphorous will produce a deficiency in calcium in the body as they work in ratios. Thus a diet with high phosphorus levels will cause hypocalcaemia. Birds fed with high phosphorus diets while breeding, will tend to have chicks with fibrous osteodystrophy, thin eggshells etc etc, all the things that are associated with hypocalcaemia. Corn has a very high ratio of phosphorus to calcium and should not be fed in huge quantities. It is somewhere in the region of 72:1 phosphorus to calcium. We had a case at one of our native reserves where the Kaka parrots only ate the corn in the feed provided for them and all their chicks had fibrous osteodystrophy. They were wild birds, but the corn was in supplemental food at feed stations.

When they are young the cere shape is no different between sexes (well not that I've noticed). But when they are older, females tend to have a crustier cere that sticks out more. males always have a smooth cere.