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armchairangel

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Everything posted by armchairangel

  1. yeah, that's a good thing to remember too Terri! After talking more with my husband, he did agree that taking her to the vet would certainly do no harm. I reminded him that we can choose what treatments she'll get too. He told me that over the years there were two times where they thought she might die and they thought about bringing her in, but she pulled out of it on her own. She's a fighter, rather stubborn too, and we kind of sense that she's like those little old people who just refuse to die. If she does have some sort of bug, it wouldn't be fair to her NOT to treat it. So she has an appt at the vet tomorrow afternoon. I've heard nothing but good things about this place from friends at school who have brought their small animals and reptiles there and there seems to be a lot of good information about birds on their website too. They're part of the ***'n of Avian vets, so I think they'll be good. Luckily, they're just down the road from us, so it won't be a long trip - just 5 minutes or so. Baby's a pretty hardy bird, so we don't think the trip will be too stressful on her either. I got her to play with a carrot today. I'm not sure how much she actually ingested, but she did get a few good stabs at it. She seems to think its a fun thing to attack. *L* I'm sure its better than nothing. I'm gonna get some yogurt and other stuff to feed her tonight. She's been up and around a bunch today, even flew a little bit, so for a bird that's under the weather, I think she's doing pretty well. It will be interesting to find out what the vet thinks.
  2. Cupid and Psyche are loving their little food bombs! I stuck one in the bars of the cage and they fought over it! It was so fun to watch them both try to pick at it at the same time and see the gears in their heads turn to figure it out. They're having a lot of fun picking at the fallen seed in the bottom now too.
  3. Today Cupid kept putting his foot on Psyche's back while doing his courtship song and dance. Psyche kept hacking at him to get him to stop, so she's not terribly receptive and they didn't mate. Her cere is changing to the non-mating condition color. Is there anything else we should be doing besides covering their cage for 12 hours and changing their furniture around to prevent this, or is her lack of interest good enough?
  4. Thank you... I'll try the yogurt and veggies and fruits, though who knows if she'll eat them cuz she has only been offered fresh food since July and she's pretty picky about what she'll try. Her poops do look normal. Actually, she's been lifting her wings like she's warm fairly often. Our place is pretty warm cuz we have the reptile heaters and we're on the top floor of our building. It just occured to me that maybe she's running a temp...! I'll continue to give a vet trip some thought because you do bring up good points. I'm not all that familiar with bird health as I've only had them since July when Jared's parents moved to Florida and we got her. I grew up with dogs and cats. I'm an old pro at knowing when to let animals go, so i don't need much advice there. Baby still has some life in her yet, so I'm wanting to do what we can to keep her around as long as we can and she wants to. Here's a thought.... the new birds seem pretty healthy. Could they pass something on that isn't affecting them? Maybe its different for birds, but I would think that all the birds would be showing the same symptoms if it was something like that. Looking at the calendar, we actually have had the pair since the end of October if that helps.
  5. Last night was a rough night. In the middle of the night my husband told me he thinks that we might only have 2 birds in the morning. Baby's looking really rough. He wasn't very descriptive. I ran out to check on her and she hardly moved at all to greet me and sat very still on her perch. I told her how much we loved her and kissed at her before I went back to bed cuz I knew there really wasn't anything I could do for her. When I got back he asked me if she was still gasping for breath. She only yawned once, so it was an improvement. We talked more about her condition and he said she was all wobbly and gasping for breath and she was closing her eyes weird. He gave her a little bit of her favorite treat - fortune cookies, thinking that maybe the high sugar content would give her some energy to get better. We went out to visit her some more and she still was very inactive, though she had enough energy to bite my nose (and leave marks! *(Laughing out loud)*), get some water and bite her cuttlebone. This morning she peeped a couple of times, though not nearly as much as usual, and when I came home from class, she was up on her playground foraging, so she's okay. She just rang her bell too, so she's feeling a little better than she was last night. About a week or so ago, she lost ALLLL kinds of feathers, more than I've seen her molt before. I figured she was just molting, but usually we see pinfeathers right away. We didn't. It kind of was worrying me until they started showing up a day or two ago. She hasn't been getting around as well as she used to too. She's still rather active, but has a tough time flying up to the top of her cage from the floor now and she's not as efficient climbing around her cage and on the floor and stuff. She's still eating, but not as often as she used to. We don't think she's really sick, just starting to show her age. It's so sad to see her all ratty and crotchety looking. Jared really doesn't like the idea of bringing her to the vet, and I'm not sure they'd tell us anything more than she's just getting really old at this point. We've kind of agreed a while ago that we'd let her go when she's ready cuz she's so old and has had such a good, long life. We don't need to prolong any misery and create stress trying to treat something. Wait. That sounds *really* bad. Its more like euthanizing the old cat who has kidney and liver failure rather than trying to treat it. If she broke a bone, we'd most definitely get it fixed! Being a vet tech, I have a tough time just standing aside and letting her die though. I feel like if she's not actually sick, we should give her the best care we can (and the same even if she was sick). I'm guessing that this molt is going to be super hard on her and may even be the end for her. What sort of things can we do to optimize her poor little old body? Is there anything we should avoid?
  6. oh cool! I didn't know that... heh obviously. That's good that she's not gonna be breeding anymore. Would her cere changing back be a sign that breeding behavior is going to start again and can you then take steps to interfere? Thanks!!
  7. Psyche's cere has been changing lately. It used to be a nice warm brown, but it has gotten lighter in color, and almost looks like it has a thin layer of powder over it. In the last few days it has started turning what seems to be blue near the corners. This afternoon, Cupid spent quite some time preening her cere and face. She ate it up and sat very still for him for longer than I've seen them sit still before. Could there be something wrong with her? I've looked at the pics of scaly face and I don't think that is what is going on. We're pretty sure she's actually a girl, since Cupid's cere is SOOO blue, they mated in the pet store and one of them laid an egg on the way home. Birds don't change sex, do they? She is just ending a molt. This wouldn't be from this, would it?
  8. Yay for researching BEFORE you get a pet! My husband and I are trying to change the bad habit of learning after you bring them home.... *(Laughing out loud)* How old are your cats?
  9. They have a lot of fun hopping back and forth from one end of their cage to the other from perch to perch. When I change their seed, I look at what's left and sometimes it seems like the fruit pieces are gone. Of course, they could have just pushed it out of the bowl or there weren't any in there in the first place... *L* Here's the ingredients of their food: millet, canary grass seed, oat groats, wheat niger seed, safflower, flax seed, hulled sesame seed, rape seed, calcium carbonate, peanut pieces, rice hulled sunflower, dehydrated carrots, caraway seed, ground corn, buckwheat, melon seed, dried papaya, fennel seed, anise seed, coconut lettuce seed, dehulled soybean meal, ground wheat, dehydrated spinach, wheat middlings, dehydrated apples, dicalcium phosphate, soy oil, salt, ddried whole egg, dried beet pulp, wheat germ meal, etc etc etc *L* THat's about half of it, but the rest is mostly vitamins and stuff like that. I suppose with such a huge variety, they're not getting some of everything every day in the two scoops I give them. Do they need both a mineral block and a cuttlebone? I remember reading about how the seeds you feed them should be sproutable if they're actually nutritious. My directions said to cover them in water for 24 hours in a covered container. I think i went for more like a day and a half before I remembered to go to the next step. I'm also not sure if they got enough sunlight afterwards, cuz my husband moved the dish next to their cage. He thought that the light from their light would be good enough cuz its full spectrum. Does the shape of the container you're growing them in also make a difference? I'd guess there's an optimum airflow or something.... I'm glad there's something more to do to prevent breeding. Moving toys and stuff around sounds like something simple easy and fun, and it will probably help with their shyness too. It won't stress them out too much, will it? I was rather concerned that its going to be tough to prevent them from breeding and that we'd have to separate them and find new friends for them, which yeah, I figured wouldn't be a simple thing and could end up with us having more birds than our capacity allows for. I won't worry about it for now though. I'm so glad that everyone is giving us so many good, easy ideas! Thank you!!
  10. This sounds really good! A really healthy treat or an easy way to get them to eat a well rounded diet. Do you think the little muffins could be frozen so they don't go bad before the little guys can eat them all? Of course they'd be thawed before feeding....
  11. This sounds awesome!! I don't know why I didn't think of it myself... Baby has always foraged, but we didn't do it for the new two. Baby would pull her food dish off the side of the cage onto the floor so she could forage and we put seed on the floor her playground to get her to use it and that's where she forages now. I have been giving Cupid and Psyche food in a low flat dish so it would facilitate pushing the food around and stuff, but creating new little containers and places for food sounds even more stimulating. Maybe this will help with Psyche's frustrating moments, exercise their bodies and their brains a little more than usual so they'll be more content. I'm only concerned that they might be a little shy for a lot of new things. However they did adjust well to me moving their cuttlebone and adding a new toy, so maybe they're braver than i think. *L* *edited to add* I had to start with this idea right away! I'm starting them slowly by simply moving their food dish to a new place and making a very small food packet. I was thinking that Baby wouldn't need this extra enrichment, but I made a little packet for her too, anyway. I brought hers right up to her and she started attacking it right off! *(Laughing out loud)* She didn't seem to interested in the food though, so I poked it through a hole in one of her toys for later. To make a small, easy packet, I just used a separated square of toilet paper - a small, non-threatening object that tears *really* easily so they can learn quickly. Cupid and Psyche just seem to be looking at it, from their highest perches. They were having a quiet moment right now anyway, so they're not being too investigative just yet. Although they're starting to look at things a little more animatedly...."oh look! Our food's over THERE now! How do I get down to it?"
  12. yeah, I'm responding to this pretty late in the game, and ringworm didn't end up being the culprit, but I thought people might want to know that ringworm IS contagious from animal to animal and from animal to human by contact. Don't touch suspected lesions (except when applying meds) and wash your hands after handling the animal. And if the animals are allowed contact with each other, it is very possible that it can be passed along.
  13. Sorry its taken so long to get reply to everything. Its been a busy weekend. For starters, they have a cuttle bone and there is dried fruit in their seed mix as well as different herbs. I know fresh is better, but I would guess dried is better than nothing. For a while when I brought them home I would give them a little bit of scrambled eggs with the eggshells every day, but I haven't been doing that lately. Their food also has pellets mixed in it. I supplement this with a stress formula food as well. What is an iodine bell? Once I tried making sprouts from some of their seed, but I messed it up cuz the seeds got rather slimy and only a few sprouted. I'll have to check out the food section for more info on it (one of our books has directions for making sprouts). After talking about it, we have decided not to breed these guys. Yeah, they'd be old enough in a year, but if Psyche (I keep typing Psycho! *L*) doesn't have quite the most desirable temperment, it wouldn't be good to pass her genes on. And we totally didn't consider they're most likely related! So we're just going to focus on making them nice birdies and try not to let them breed. Do we need to do more than covering their cage for 12 hours a day to prevent them from being too amorous? How will we be able to tell if they're getting in the mood? Will we need to separate them? And if we do, would it be best to get them more friends? Their cage is 12.5" deep, 16" high and 25" long.
  14. Baby doesn't seem to mind the new birds. I kind of would think that after living alone with just a few humans for a flock for so long that having some budgies around would make her happy. They're on opposite sides of the room (rather large) and aren't out together. We've brought her over to them a few times on our hand and they chirp happily at each other. The snakes and the birds don't really mix. I mean we don't mix them. We do our best to keep Baby away from the snakes when we have them out. I don't think they're even aware each other exist, which is fine with me cuz I don't want the big snake thinking we have treats for her hanging around. *(Laughing out loud)*
  15. I didn't know there was a food section here! I'll have to check it out... We don't have a nesting box in with them yet. I bought one thinking it might help some of Psyche's issues, but its sitting next to the cage, not available to her yet. I'll keep it that way for now, perhaps even not let it be in her sight anymore. I was thinking that clipping them might help tame them and then allow the feathers to grow in full so that they can be full flighted like Baby. Of course, we didn't think of that till AFTER we got them home, after we declined the offer at the store to clip them. *L* Maybe I'll get it done at the vet. I know that these guys aren't going to be as tame as Baby. They have already bonded to each other and they haven't grown up with constant people interaction. I'd like them to be tame enough to take out of their cage without freaking out. Basically finger trained I guess. Or I suppose dowel trained if nothing else. Tame enough for them to be happy and safe. I should get a dowel to work on training with them so that they can leave their cage safely. It might even help transferring them to a smaller cage for a trip to the vet. My husband rigged a door holder for Baby's cage so that it can be held open. I'll have to have him do it for these guys too so the door is only noisy once when I go to work with them. Would it also work to try to desensitize them to the noise? Rattle it around a little and not do anything with them? Wow... as far as not breeding them, that opens a whole new batch of questions I have. Since they've already had sex at least once, how do you get them to stop? Oh poo... what a mess we've gotten ourselves into! Which brings up another thing I like about this forum. From what I've read, people don't seem to be too judgemental or condescending when mistakes are made. Its great! oh gee.. and now I see there are two more posts... I was just responding to lovey at this point and I've got to go!
  16. Well, not a nightmare yet, but sometimes they're definitely a bad dream. We want to figure out the best way of handling their obnoxious behavior. We got Cupid and Psyche a few weeks ago. We caught them mating at the pet store! We were entranced by their courting. They were SOOO cute together and it was obvious they loved each other. We didn't want them to be split up and thought that their mating could be a fun hobby. I have to admit it was a bit of an impulse buy. We kind of regret it now, but I'm determined to take care of them anyway, and try to do what's best for them because we took on the responsibility of caring for them and I'm going to do it to the best of my ability. While talking to the pet store people (one of which breeded finches for a while) when trying to decide if we were gonna take these guys home, we decided a nest box wasn't necessary cuz we were told they'd nest right in the bedding of the cage. On the way home, Psyche laid an egg! It was very soft and broken. A bunch of reading I did told me about their laying habits and we expected another egg, but there haven't been any. All of the reading suggested a nest box. We decided to wait with it, in part because we're kind of hesitant after reading about how hard breeding is on the female and I want to be sure their healthy and all that good stuff first. They are at least 6 months old, and they came from a bin-o-budgies, so they're not very tame at all. I've been wanting to take them to the vet to get a clean bill of health and talk to them about breeding and stuff, but they're so wild I'm worried that the trip might stress them out too much. Their cage is rather large for transporting them, and now that the weather is below freezing, I'm also concerned about the cold. I have no clue how we'd get them into a smaller transport cage without freaking them out too much. I've read a bunch of different taming suggestions, including the ones on budgietalk.com (I tried to do my homework before posting here) and I've had an animal behavior class and have done a bunch of dog training stuff. I also was able to handtrain my brother's parakeet in a weekend. I've come to the conclusion that I should focus on working with Cupid, the tamer one and Psyche should eventually follow. I've been putting my hand in the cage and just leaving it there, getting them used to a hand not being a scary thing. I've held up millet for them and they've both eaten from it and Cupid has even once put a foot on my thumb in the process. Its been slow going but they no longer completely freak when I put my hand in the cage or even bring it towards them. They mostly just move away calmly now. Psyche has started moving up into her favorite corner when I come towards the cage though. I guess at least she's not throwing herself against the walls anymore. A few questions I have regarding taming: Should they be separated while I work on taming Cupid, or can they remain in the same cage and i just work with him while she's around? The cage door squeaks and rattles when I move it and this seems to make them more nervous than my hand. Any suggestions? I've been concerned that they're not getting enough exercise and think they might be happier if they're allowed out of their cage now and then. Should I wait until they're hand tame? I've read that they'll fly around and eventually find their way back to their cage and they shouldn't be chased home. This makes me think it might be okay to let them out now, but I'm not quite sure this would be the best thing to do. I have many more questions as Psyche's behavior has changed since she's been home for a while now. However, I'll leave it at this for a start and continue later. I feel bad for the length of this post, however i know that the more info I can give, the better help I can get. Thanks!!
  17. Our 15 year old Baby took her first bath a few weeks ago. She LOVED it! I was a little concerned that she might get chilled from it, but I watched her carefully till she dried and everything seemed okay. Later I went over to look at her and she was in her cage, hanging onto the bars with her feet and the undersides of them were BRIGHT red!! I was really worried that somehow having her feet wet caused it. They didn't look like they were bleeding, but they sure looked sore and almost raw. Poor girl! But they didn't seem to be bothering her, so I decided to watch her carefully and see if they looked better or worse in the morning (it was nighttime). I went to bed and as my mind was going over the stuff of the day, somehow I figured out what caused Baby's feet to become so red. Immediately after the bath, she perched on her playground, which has bright pink/red strawberry dyed wood! I ran out to the living room to share my idea with my husband and we looked at her feet, the color of which really DID seem to match her playground. We looked at her favorite sitting place and sure enough, there were little feet marks that were lighter than the rest! It sure was a scare for nothing! However I do wonder if the dyes used are safe.... The next time we're at the pet store, I'll have to look at the box of her thing to see if it says anything about non-toxic stuff. I thought I'd share this in case it happens to anyone else. *L*
  18. Thank you everyone! Learning about our little guys is why I'm here, so there is never too much information! Its good to know the names of the colorings of our birds so we can sound like we know what we're doing. *L*
  19. Hello... My husband and I own 3 budgies. Baby is 15 years old and was hand fed and is the sweetest little girl. We're not sure what the name of her coloring is. She basically looks like a pale green keet, all of her colors a lighter version of the traditional green ones - her barring is even gray. My husband gave her to his mom as a Mother's Day gift in 1991 and his parents moved to Florida in July and gave her to us so she wouldn't have to make the move since she's so old. She's flourished with us. We have a playground for her on top of her cage and when we're home and awake she has an open door policy so she can go up there and forage when she wants. She occasionally flies around, but she's really good and doesn't go far since she hasn't had much flying time in her life previously. A few weeks ago she had her first bath and she loved it! I could babble on and on about her! A few weeks ago, we bought Cupid and Psyche, a green pair we saw mating at the pet store. We're not entirely sure how old they are. They do have their adult feathering though. They looked absolutely adorable at the store doing their mating rituals and before we knew it, he mounted her! We were entranced and didn't want them to be separated; they seemed SOOO in love with each other. Psyche laid an egg on the way home, but it was very soft shelled and was broken. She hasn't laid any more and has continued to be pretty skittish and freaky. Cupid is a bit more relaxed. We're working on getting them more comfortable with us, but its slow going. Since this is just an intro post, I'll skip the things that have come up and the questions we have right here. We live in the Twin Cities area in Minnesota in the US. I have 1 semester left in a vet tech program. We also have 2 baby snakes - a garter and a ball python. Cupid and Psyche http://www.flickr.com/photos/armchairdeity...57594379537260/ Baby http://www.flickr.com/photos/armchairdeity...57594333776911/ Jenna
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