CaspersRose

my casper had a fairly heave moult recently too, and it was a little bit lop-sided, so his balance was all over the place and he couldn't fly too well either, but his tail and wing feathers have all grown back evenly, and his spiky face is almost back to its normal handsome self!

Some of you may remember a few weeks ago i wrote a somewhat hyperactive post screaming that Casper had finally grown up and found his bravery? Well, i figured it was time to show the new Casper to teh world. Over that last few weeks he has gone from a very timid, jumpy little budgie who i couldn't let out to fly much because catching him to get him back into his cage was too traumatic, i couldn't put my hands near his cage, let alone inside it etc etc to become a very sociable, friendly little budgie who gets onto my finger willingly, lets me scrathch his tummy, will fly around the loungeroom and go back to his cage before climbing back in all by himself when he's ready, sits on my shoulder while im doing uni work and tidying up, AND, he has also learnt to wolf wistle and say hello! All in just a few weeks! my family love him now (before they wee impartial to him cos he wasn't very exciting... all goes to show, a bit of personality really does win friends!) and he is even starting to let my mum put her finger near him... he has only stepped on then straight off so far, but we're working on it. So here he is, Casper the brave (he's not very camera shy anymore either! check out how he strikes a pose!!!) "What you lookin' at?" - He's got attitude now... check out his 'outdoor entertainment area' on top of his cage... initially i thought i had constructed it in vain, but not anymore... he thinks he's king of the castle when he's up there. this is the 'strike a pose one'... and just one more for good measure! as you can see, I am rather proud of him.. but then again, we all have the cleverest, smartest, best-looking budgies, don't we!?

he's doing heaps better now... his featehrs are coming back, which is a relief, because his "flap, flap, splat" routine wasn't doing anyone any good! Hopefully it was just a one off lop-sided molt. He did get a fright a few weeks ago, just before i noticed his weird feather situation, when a neighbours cat jumped up on the outdoor table next to where his cage was sitting... could the fright have caused him to lose a few if he did a few frantic flaps? He did break a blood feather in the incident.

Casper tells me he is glad to have been of service... he is proud to stoically put his body on the line if it indeed helps other budgies and their parents manage! By the way, he is feeling heaps better now... still incredibly awkward due to his lop-sidedness after his last molt, but better nonetheless. Have to confine him in flight til his feathers grow back properly.

hmm...casper had another little tumble today. missed his footing when he went to land and did a bit of an unceremonious commando roll. not as dramatic as the last one, but just a bend and minute amount of blood from one of his new wing feathers He molted recently and dropped the flight feathers from only one wing and all the long ones from his tail which is making him really accident prone. Is it normal to lose feathers in such a lop-sided manner? :ausb:

isn't it exciting when that happens?! My Casper just did the same thing after about nine months... all this time of nothing at all, then BANG! all of a sudden he is finger tame and sitting on my shoulder while i do the housework! well done!

Yeah, he eats his sprouts, but isn't too enthused by his cuttle bone... i think he must have crash landed pretty hard when he fell the first time and damaged the other featehr then... wil keep an eye on him.

Hmmm... is it normal for a budgie to lose the flight feathers on only one wing during a molt? Casper lost his long tail feathers adn the long feathers off one wing but not the other, which is making him really accident prone! :hap:

well, it has now been about 24 hours since caspers little feather debarcle, and i thought an update would be in order... he seems to be fine, the bleeding stopped pretty much straight after i took the feather out. He seems quite happy, though does start breathing heavily when i put my hand in his cage... just brings back memories for him i suspect, cos his breathing is normal otherwise. He doesn't seem to have lost too much trust with me either, which is something i was really concerned about because i had worked so hard to get him trained. I have noticed though, that one of the other feathers on that wing is bit fragile. He had just molted so most of the flight feathers on that wing are still fairly thick with the shaft thing around them which seems to make them a bit more prone to bending. Apart from trying not to get him too excited is there anything else i could try to prevent him doing damage to his feathers? He really only lost the feathers on one wing this molt so he's lop-sided and can't fly too well. :hap:

hehe... yeah. I'm fine with all the blood and guts stuff... just terrible with the thought of one of my pets being upset! But i feel like my blood pressure has dropped back to normal now, and Casper seems a fair bit happier too (made suer he has nice fresh water and new sprouts for the patient!)

wow... thank you eveyone! I just managed to remove the broken feather. I haven't done much to his wings before, so i felt a bit unsure of how far i could stretch his little wing out,but he seemed to realise i was trying to help him so despite the ear-piercing squawking, he seemed to relax his wing a bit which meant i was able to have a good look. Because he has quite a few new ones coming through it was a bit hard to find the broken end so i just ran his wing under some water to clean it up a bit and i found it okay... and the bleeding seems to have stopped. I put a bit of cornflour around the area just in case. Poor little thing is in his cage now, his face all puffed up, looking at me the way a little kid looks at the doctor after an injection. I couldn't get over how much blood there was... i guess it's like us losing a finger isn't it? Will keep an eye on him, and give him a better bath tomorrow to get rid of the blood stains so he looks handsome again. But thank-you so much! I know it's probably a reasonably common birdy ailment, but to a first timer its really distressing!

hmmm... its been about fifteen minutes. Just checked on him, and he looks so sad! (it was a big psychological move to let me get hold of him... he's usually only content with fingers) It is a fairly thick feather, but where i put the cornflour seems to have kind of set, and it still lookslike its oozing a little bit, but not nearly as much. The feather seems to be bothering him the way it's sticking out... he keeps fluffing up his feathers and doing the budgie shake as though he's trying to get it to sit right... will keep an eye on him. But please let me know if there is anything else i can do! It is horrible looking at him and wondering! Blood is freaky stuff!

Hi My little budgie, in his new found bravery, was flapping excitedly around his cage this morning before i let him out adn crash landed when he missed his swing. In the process he landed up against the bars of his cage and broke one of his flight feathers. He is bleeding now. I mixed up some corn flour and water and dabbed in on the area where he is bleeding, but it hasn't really stopped. I've put him back in his cage so he cant fly too much and aggravate it. Should i be worried, or do i need to give it a bit of time. Also, will the feather just drop out now, or will i need to remove it, or is it best left in? It tends to stick out at an angle when he flaps, but sits in place okay when he's still. He has just motled and lost a lot of his flight feathers on this wing, so it is a fairly new feather.

After months of fretting over my poor, timid, shy, jumpy budgie, Casper has finally showed me he does have a bold and brave side. Until last week, he would freak out any time i put my hand even near his cage, when i did have to get hold of him to put stuff on his beak he would squawk to the point i thought my ear dums were going to burst and when i tried to encourage him to be a bit more active by opening the door to his cage in the hope that he might venture out for a bit of a flap, he jsut sat there as though leaving his cage would mean being sucked into a void of unknown peril. Well, since i discovered snow pea sprouts, he's a different budgie. I don't reserve them for training, but put new ones in his cage every day (he wouldn't eat any of the veggies i had given him previously, so i had to run with it!). Now, of course, he has begun to associate my hand with wonderful things! He jumps onto my finger when i say "up", he will step from one hand to the other, he even lets me rub his tummy now... all out of his cage,and on my hand! I am amazed that it has happened so quickly... literally only over a couple of days! will definitely continue playing with him like this o he doesn't lose his new found confidence! So bring it on Casper! My next mission is to see if he will learn a word or two... he's a very quiet budgie, so this could prove to be an even greater challenge! :dbb1:

hehe! Everyone has such cute budgies! Casper put on a puffy show for me this afternoon,so i thought I'd better add him in... don't want his talents to go to waste! First the head... Then the body... then the ...PUFF!!!! Haha... he made me laugh.. then he gave me a "what are you laughing at?" look... that of course made me laugh more!

I've made a few of my toys: for the rope and rings ( the picture was a bit big, so it has a link instead), i just went to the hardware shop and bought some cotton fibre nautical rope and some untreated wooden curtain rings. For one i just tied a couple of the rings together, and Casper got a great deal of entertainment weaving himslef through them in his formative days, with the other, i just tied a couple together then braided some cotton string with little colourful metalic bells and attached that and another knotted bit of the rope to the bottom ring. He goes through phases of either climbing, chewing, tugging, screeching at and even tarzan swinging on thins one. For his swing, i just got a couple of fairly straight bits of stick, drilled fine holes in the ends and inserted some fairly stiff wire (i did this to make sure there were no pointy ends sticking out anywhere) to form the frame. Casper loves the top bit of stick and will swing his heart out before gabbing the top bit with his beak and swinging up-side down from it. As you can see it is also a popular chewing toy!photobucket

yeah... poor old casper also shed his tail feathers at the same time, so he was a bald-faced, short-arsed little guy... i can just see his new tail feathers starting to get a bit longer now... don't budgies look peculair when they're molting... almost like they've forgotten to finish getting dressed in the morning!

Hi there! this is a picture of my Casper at the moment... as you can see he is currently re-growing his face feathers (you should have seen him a few days ago... bald at the front and not pretty!). He recently had a bout of scaly face and the vet gave him a dose of medicine on his back between his wing (shoulders?), and i've been treating his face with a topical thing i got from the pet shop in the hope that it will keep it at bay. I m concerned though, cos his beak still looks as though it is kind of drying out, or flaky. Also, where he's getting his new feathers above his cere seems to be quite red. First of all, is it normal for those little delicate feathers at the front to look so pink and spiky when they're growing, and secondly, do you have any tips for getting his beak back into tip top shape? http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e117/rbro3963/IMG_3058.jpg

Thanks guys. I do mak sure he gets his exercise, though he's not particularly tame yet,so i am a bit wary of letting him out around the house. I usually just shut the door to the study and let him fly around in there for a while. His cage is pretty big too, and i make sure the branches are far enough apart that he has to flap a bit to get from one to the next rather than just hopping. So hopefully, he's getting enough exercise. I will get him checked out at the vet to make sure his feet are okay. will check his feet. He doesn't seem to do anything else at the same time. He has a mirror in his cage, but doesn't spend huge amounts of time with it and never while he's doing his foot thing, and he's not much of a singer at teh best of times! The only other thing i've noticed him do while he's hopping is the occasional stretch of his legs... he will often go for a few hours without doing it, but then wil do it on and off for an hour or so, then stop for a few more hours...

Hi! Over the last couple of weeks, I've noticed my budgie does this weird little shuffle thing on his perch. He sits there, and every now and then, just sort of runs on the spot for a few seconds. Sort of very quickly picks up one foot, puts it down, then the other and so on. i see him stretching his legs fairly oftn and occasionally nibbling at the back of his leg, as though he has an itch, but i don't really think its often enough for it to be something nasty worng with him. I'm just wondering if you guys have any ideas as to what makes him do it? I have been gradually trying to tame him (he's a shy little bugger), just by holding a millet spray in my aind in his cage and letting him nbble on it at htis stage, so we haven't really advanced to anything too scary. generally he's happy to come to the edge of his cage and give me a kiss on the nose, we just need to work on finger-taming. I'm worried that maybe he's developed a strange nervous habit, or that he's feeling stressed out or something... i don't want to create a neurotic budgie!

yeah, he loves the branches! Where i live backs right on to the bush, so every week or two i head down, cut him a nice new bit off one of the native shrubs and he goes berserk climbing between the leaves and twigs, and also shredding the leaves! I suppose it is alright for him to be doing that, nibbling the leaves i mean... afterall they're native birds, so native trees should be okay, yeah?

ah... lets see if this works... ooo...bit big...that's better[/img]

Hmm... can't work out this url thing for my photo, but i added him to my profile box to the left... bit small but better than nothing... I recon he's the handsomest budgie around... but we ar all a little biased aren't we?!!! :bluebudgie: :ausb:

Thanks for you advice guys! Casper does indeed love millet, and also wild grass seeds from the garden... so will try tempting him with his favourites... hope he doesn't get fat from it, cos he'll be getting a fair bit of it!!!!! Another question... mainly because i have heard so many different opinions etc. What is the go with clipping wings. Cos Casper doesn't really like being out that much anyway, i had never really entertained the thought, but i did read somewhere that a budgie like Casper who is not particularly tame should have his clipped so he is easier to get hold of when he is out, the theory i guess is that it saves the stress of a high speed chase (which i would never do to him anyway)!? What do you think about wing clipping (perhaps it is a topic of controvery and heated arguments... I don't know?)

Hi... i am hoping you can offer me some help here. My budgie, Casper, gets really agitated whenever he sees hands. I've had him about six months and was only a baby when i got him, but right from day one, has been really timid. He's not particularly tame because of his little phobia, and he hasn't larnt to talk or anythingn(possibly because i like to let him sit outside in his cage where the other parrots etc are aound), but when i do let him out to fly, i generally have to just gently cover him with a light cloth to pick him up and get him back into his cage. If i put my face really close to the bars of his cage he rushes over adn kisses my nose through the bars, and is never afraid of loud noises, or even of the cats checking him out when he's sitting outside in his cage. He's generally very happy and chirps to us while we're watching tv etc... its just hands and fingers that bother him. Please help, because it really upsets me stressing him out when i need to catch him to trim his toenails etc!