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Sailorwolf

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Everything posted by Sailorwolf

  1. How overdue are they? The first few that she laid may be the infertile ones and the ones that are due later are fertile. generally wait until the last egg has reached about 27 days of age before considering removing them.
  2. It takes about 10 days from mating to laying of the egg. for budgies. Then every second day after that the hen will lay another egg until she has reached her limit. An egg will take 18 to 25 days to hatch, depending on how tightly the hen sits and the climate during this time.
  3. I hope so too. Don't want him to get sick or anything
  4. That's good then, he's just being a little brat hehehe.
  5. I want a weeble budgie now!
  6. Hehe, he looks so different. Cute
  7. Awwww he sounds like such a sweetie .
  8. She may have sprained it, or damaged a nerve to it. Because it has been so long since it started it may be nerve damage. This may have been caused by trauma or something else. With birds, because of the positioning of their kidneys relative to their sciatic nerve (the main flexor nerve of the leg), any tumours or enlarging of the kidneys due to disease will cause them to press on the nerve causing the leg to not work as well. The bird will tend to shake the leg as it feels weird to them. This is what my Saffy did with her foot that doesn't work properly due to nerve damage, she occasionally shakes it as she walks, because "it's not working/feeling right!" To see if this is the case, see if she can properly bend her leg easily, see if she moves it properly. If she can't bend it and her toes properly it is probably a neural problem, same thing goes for if she cannot straighten her leg properly, she would then have a problem with her femoral nerve which is the nerve that causes the extensor muscles to contract. The femoral nerve is not to my knowledge affected by the kidneys. The vet can do two things for you, they can take xrays to see if there is anything visibly wrong with the kidneys, and they can take a blood sample to see if the kidneys are properly filtering the blood. If this is not the case, she may have just sprained it and could keep re-aggravating the injury. However it is best to get her checked out. Regarding your last budgie that died 10 minutes after visiting the vet. Birds are very fragile things and die very easily if they are already sick, this is because budgies are prey animals and inorder to prevent predators from detecting their sickness, they try as hard as possible to hide their sickness and appear as "healthy" as possible so that a predator won't think that they are easy pickings. This makes it hard for us pet owners, who don't tend to notice things until the bird is so sick that it just cannot waste any more energy putting up a pretence. Thus many vets are scared of treating birds, because often a sick bird is a bird that will die very soon. When I told my vet that I was going to take Arkady in to see him he asked what's wrong with him and I said "He's not going to die" (he had a sore wing) and my vet said "oh that's good, phew", because that is quite common. So perhaps because you said that the vet that treated your last bird was not an avian vet, they may not have picked up what was wrong with it, or may not have been able to do anything and your poor little birdy unfortunately died. What I am trying to say is don't let that deter you from taking your little girl to the vet. My budgies have gone through multiple ordeals and have come out of them singing. When I had to take Arks to the vet, I had to take him on the bus just to get there and then after the appointment I had to wait for half an hour until the next bus came, so during that time I went and sat down next to a pond and watching the waterfowl and ducklings and let Arkady enjoy the view, then a big giant black swan came up out of the water and started to waddle towards me . Scary for Arkady (not so much for me they are pretty friendly little swans these dudes and I knew this one was an older chick) It preceded to waddle over to us and then spread its wings and flapped them. Poor Arkady this gave him huge fright, needless to say, he does not like swans!! But he survived this ordeal well and with in half an hour back home he was singing away. I hope this helps Just have a good look at her foot and don't be afraid to feel her leg. Make sure you feel every joint. Don't forget the stifle/knee the joint that is equivalent to our knee, it is located quite high up and hidden in the feathers. The hock/ankle is the part that many people mistakenly call the knee or elbow of the bird, and is the main joint not covered in feathers, it is the equivalent of our ankle. Birds walk on the "balls" or "tippy toes" of their feet. She may have a partial dislocation in one of her joints, which will not heal by itself and may be another reason for her sore foot. This will need to be popped back into place by a vet. So all and all a visit to the vet is in order. Unfortunately though the answer may not be found as in the case of my Arkady, we still don't know why his wing is sore. Good luck with your girly, sorry I blabbered on a bit
  9. Maybe you should check him out a bit more. He may have something going on with his larynx and pharynx, causing either the esophagus or the trachea not to close properly after or during feeding or there could be a hole between the two allowing air to get into the crop. This can be dangerous as food can get into the lungs and cause the baby to catch pneumonia. Either that or he is a very gassy baby and doesn't know how to swallow food properly. Perhaps just check him over properly and assess his general demeanor.
  10. Sailorwolf replied to tolula's topic in Aviaries
    I so can't wait until I can have an aviary. 25 to 30 budgies, what a dream
  11. In regards to preventing her from going on to a third clutch. I would remove the mother when the babies are just getting their body feathers in. Let her have a rest and hopefully the father should kick in and realise he has a bigger job to do . You could also remove the cock at this time instead, but because the hen sounds like she is a little tired, I would remove her instead and give her a much needed vacation. Just check on the babies to make sure that dad has realised that he is the sole provider. With enteritis, make sure the mother is getting lots of fluids as the babies will lose more fluid through their wetter droppings. perhaps some more wet foods like carrot and dark leafy greens (not spinach or anything from brassicae family as these have oxalates in them which bind to calcium and prevent it from being absorbed. Hypocalcaemia is not something that you really want to be dealing with right now as well as enteritis (in adult birds spinach every now and then is fine, just large quantities constantly, is not))
  12. Oh no that is sad to hear I'm thinking that he may have flown into something such as wire netting of your neihbour's aviary, a window, trees, anything due to the storm which would have scared him into a panic. He may have suffered a head or neck injury that could possibly explain the strange looking eye and the lack of use of his left leg which are both neural problems ( a stroke would also cause the same symptoms due to it being present in the central nervous system). Internal bleeding and consequential shock may have caused his death. Because these symptoms sound like they are peracute (vetty term for immediate ) and there was a storm where he escaped, they were most likely caused by trauma. Poor little dude at least he isn't in pain now.
  13. Hey, I think that that little girl is worth a million dollars and $75 is a small price to pay to brighting up a little girl's life. Kudos to you. With the biting girl, try pushing back at her when she bites, this works as it unbalances them and they don't like it. To them bite finger= being pushed. This worked on my naughty girl, who rarely bites these days and will only bite if I am doing mean things to her, like examining her wings and legs. This method works well for a chronic biter with whom ignoring the biting does not work. Ignoring her when she bites might be good to try first as being with kids, they most likely reacted loudly and very entertainingly when they got bitten and their hand would probably shoot right out of the cage and away from Miss Mozzie, which is probably what she wants. But if your hand does nothing then she will wonder why biting doesn't work any more and may get bored. So try that before the pushing method
  14. Perhaps we should seperate the clearflight pieds from the dominant pieds in a "members' budgies" topic as I have noticed a lot of people confuse the two and they are both very different from each other.
  15. If you only got her from the petshop a year ago then she shouldn't be that old and that would not be your fault if she is old, it would be the petshops fault for selling you an old budgie and not telling you. All petshops should know how old their budgies and animals are when selling them. I would think that she wouldn't be that old anyway as some petshops have a habit of renewing their stock if it doesn't get sold. You are doing a good job right now, taking care of the baby, it is hard work, I know, and you are doing well to look after it. Perhaps you could invest in a heat pad, which you can buy at pet shops. They are very good, just like a hot water bottle, only you don't have to change the water every few hours as it is plugged into the wall.
  16. I love it when yo can hear the little eggs peeping before they hatch
  17. Haha, awesome, nice to meet you. You look like you're having fun. (Laughing out loud)
  18. I haven't been around for a while. I've moved my budgies home for the summer, so they are all in smaller cages now, much to the disgust of all the occupants. I have had to split them up into 3 cages. Before moving for the summer I took Arkady to the vet as he had been gaining weight lately and refusing to fly and he was generally less active. I caught him and palpated his wing, immediate squawking and attempted destruction of my finger. So off to the vet he went. The vet palpated him and weighed him and everything. He is unsure as to why Arkady has a sore wing, so he prescribed some anti-inflammatories, which started to work as within 2 days Arks began singing an flirting with toys . The result of his weighing was not so good though, prepare for it.... 70g!!!!!! The Fatty!!! He'd been getting fat because he didn't want to fly because his wing hurt. The vets main prescription was healthy food and plenty of exercise!!!! with that many exclamation marks after it too. Unfortunately this all comes at a time that I had to move them into smaller cages, so the little fat will not get as much exercise. When I said that whenever I take them out of the cage all they do is sit on top and blob, he said thati should chase them around a bit, but of cause to stop if they get too stressed. Anyway. I was standing there watching them snooze and I couldn't help but take a picture of the fatty, who because of his bulk was almost drooping over the perch. My favourite: he looks like a tennisball While I was at it I also took some pictures of some of the others: This is the little baby from Saffy and Emmett. He's gone all bratty in the past few weeks so he has his wings clipped to tame him up a bit before he goes This is one of our little canaries; Edmund, she was named mistakenly as a male, to go with Baldric, which has now been corrected after she started to make a nest out of her food bowl. Nikio: I had a little play with the colours here to see, whether I could get her violet to stand out Here the flash went silly, so I just played around a bit for fun
  19. Yes I think you should go see an avian vet. Any significant change in behaviour is a sign that you need to see a vet.
  20. You can use talcum powder on the ground, that stops them and I don't think it would hurt the budgies
  21. Yes all boys do it when they flirt with things. It's very cute. My Robbie likes to do it to my finger. It's actually my favourite thing about budgies.
  22. Probably, it would most likely be an opaline clearwing blue
  23. Haha, yeah my girls love to nibble on me. We play hand wrestling and they love it. Hang on for dear life and then come back for more. They bite me, but not to hard, just nibbles, because it is all part of the fun and when they bite too hard I let them know and they soften it up. My boys like to flirt with my hand and do happy dances, sometimes they feed my hand. Some of the boys will wrestle my hands. The boys are more likely to entertain themselves than the girls, as in, boys are a bit more airheaded hehehe. I have a little gang of boys that like to all hang out together, explore the room, land on me and nibble my clothes then go off and flirt with the girlies.
  24. I think that your budgie is a girl. Her cere is too light to be a male This is a picture of an adult female and male together: Female on left, Male on right Here is a picture of a female adult who has a cere very similar to your budgie's cere (most female babies have ceres like this) Baby female: Baby male:
  25. No it is definately a yellowface rather than a yellow series bird. What I meant is that my Arkady is a brighter yellow than that.