Michelle

Thanks folks! I'm glad they improved too! In fact, they improved so much that ditz broke another blood feather today. ¬_¬ This time with the stem staying in. T'was quite a fight to get it out and now he's covered in blood AGAIN!! Oh well. He'll be fine. It was just a quest to get my sisters to hold him right.

Well, as you can see my camera didn't move much... I was sorta expecting the alarm to go off. It always does when she cooks something :X I checked his foot yesterday, and the last bit of bone is gone! He's totally healed up and now that Pat is playing with him he's obviously way happier and starts running around! Such an adventure. I'm glad it's over.

Lookie! Blue gets a real friend! His daddy warmed up to him. I'm so happy! Finally he'll be less lonely. And I got a video to prove it! Don't jump up though, at 30 seconds my sister's culinary skills scares up the smoke alarm. Sorry, the quality of that video stinks a bit.

I think they are just having lots of fun. My birds love taking things and dropping them in water too. When I come back home, Godzilla's bath is full of wood chips.

No, barely a year old. She was born June 20th 2007. My big Bud's 4th baby. I don't feel much grief per say, she was not my bird. But she was still special because she was one of my big girl's chicks and she had left an impression on me. So tame, so nice. I'm so terribly sorry to know a great cheery girl like her went away (especially when her other sister turned out to be so violent, if I want to avoid the use of another term for her.) And I know she'll be missed. And my co-worker is blaming himself for letting her die. But well, I know it wasn't his fault. Tricky little things...

Lemon just passed away. That's her if you guys remember the photo from last month. This morning, my workmate came over to ask me info. He said that she changed her behavior since a couple days. Very docile, always fluffy. I told him he should take her to the vet. And he just received a call from his girlfriend, she just passed away. Poor darling, she was so stunningly tame. I remember when I took her over to him, all the while she was singing me a song and asking for scratchies. She was the only one that was so tame right off the start.

;P It's all great ideas, but for lazy me I think that buying a new one is the simplest solution. AKA, one like Godzilla's cage! It's actually EXACTLY the same size as the parents's, but laid on the side! ...and the bottom adds up some height since it's so deep. These cages are really good... I like them. And because you have to snap them together yourself they are much much much cheap. EDIT: Anyway I can maybe sell the old one off to a friend of mine. She's the type that would fiddle around with it to make it horizontal... and she'd put rats in there. She raises rats so she needs a LOT of cages.

Click for picture! Not really... at least, not really unless I want to make a mess on my floor.

Well I'll see about it... All they are getting for seeds is some Hagens Gourmet mix. The thing that was really worrying the vet was that she was not getting proper vitamins, which is why they want me to switch to mostly pellets... Frankly, if she thinks Bud's problem could be organ troubles due to nutrition... I'll stuff her up with pellets until she explodes!!

Yea, Bud and Pat's cage isn't the best *at all.*. It's a high cage, it's long and slim. Not a lot of flying space in there... So there's a lot of perches, and the perches take a lot of width in there since the cage is narrow. I was told by an incompetent shop woman that this cage was greaaaaaaat for budgies. Pshaw. One day I'll invest in a new cage for these two. One like Godzilla's, which is long and spacious (But then again, he's big like his mom too...! I guess it runs in the family.) I understand you feel uneasy about pellets. They aren't quite natural of course. But frankly... I trust my vet on that one, and she did stress that I should not remove the seeds completely from their diet, but that pellets are probably a great idea for my big girl since she's more interested in destructing her veggies than eating them (But she did tell me to absolutely keep trying to feed her fruits and veggies forever and ever.) And since my birds are home pets and that the temperature in the house in pretty constant I don't think I need to vary their seeds according to the season... EDIT: Wait... I'm not sure they're pellets anymore. They're called "Granules" and from the ingredients... Man they don't sound too bad. Corn, soybean, wheat flour, oat groats, cane molasses, dried whole egg, canola oil.... and then the vitamin stuff. I never checked what pellets were really. Are these the same thing? I just wanna be on the same wavelength here.

Yea... I'm careful of that pellets thingie too, but the vet gave me a strategy that, from she said, is nearly foolproof. For a week I give seeds and pellets. Normal quantity of seeds. Their feeding bowls are split in two parts already so in one part of the bowl I put pellets and in the other I put seeds. That is to show them there's an alternative. After that week, I give them seeds and pellets in the morning for 30 minutes. Then I remove the seeds for the day, and just leave the pellets. I give the seeds back later in the day for another half hour or so. That's to make sure they don't starve and to sorta try to force them to show more interest in the pellets. I'm gonna monitor the pellets level closely to make sure they eat them. But more importantly... I'll monitor Bud and give her some pellets myself to make sure she eats the stuff for real and I'll check her closely when she goes down to eat. That's because I already checked - Pat loves these pellets! I had some in my hand and he rampaged through it. So I'm certain that he'll gobble on the stuff gladly, and the levels WILL go down. But it doesn't mean it was BOTH of them that ate it. When I'm sure they like the new food, she told me to still keep a 3/4 pellets 1/4 seeds feeding in different pots. She wants them to keep eating seeds anyway, but eat way more pellets than seeds. I hope it'll work! EDIT: mind you, if her problem clears up... one thing that bugs me is that I'll never know which was the problem if I change her diet AND Give her antibiotics at the same time.

I just came back from the vet with Bud! She was such a good girl, it's incredible. Even the vet was amazed how much she could easily handle her. Bud chewed on her fingers, but there was no biting, no fusses, she would climb on fingers and even sung a couple songs. She was still nervous though! So the vet said her poo is really irregular. She checked them on the microscope and she said she found some bacteria that didn't belong there but no fungus or such. The bacterias were weird, she wasn't sure that they were the cause of the problem because per-say they were not an outbreak. Still, they should not be there so she'll be on antibiotics for 10 days. Same type I was giving to Blue. But she looks more cooperative, though she seemed pissed off after the first dose. I don't think she liked the taste, she puked around a bit. I bet the nerves didn't help. But now she's okay. She also told me to try to change her diet (gradually of course!) to some sort of tiny crushed pellets. On the pot they say "for finches"... But it's written on a paper inside the quantities for all types of birds, budgies included. Because if it's not the weird bacteries's fault, it must be her organs and the vet said that a new healthier diet should help her out on that. And... well... She's fat. So I'll try to feed these to all the birds. So in a month I have to give her news if the poop is back to normal. If the feces are still abnormal, she gave me plates so I can put a sample there and have them checked back by her... Simpler than having to bug Bud and bring her back there. Let's hope it works!

... WHAT? o_O Are you kidding me?!

Wow, that's scares like that that makes me happy I live somewhere where there isn't bad spiders. I mean, spiders are terrible and I hate them and I want them all dead but at least they don't bite you around here! They just make me screech.

Yea? How much is a small amount exactly? A teaspoon? That sounds like a start and something I can do.... if she cooperates. It's Bud, I doubt she will without putting a mess in my living room but it's worth a try. EDIT: Got her a visit to the vet tomorrow night. It won't be with the vet I saw with Blue though, she's completely booked for a while, but it's another of their avian vets.

I have two birds that weight 42g... but I still feel their breastbones... ...I think!

wow... you're on a roll!

If it was a bacterial infection wouldn't Pat and Godzilla be sick too by now? I'll call the vet today... In the meantime I'll dream of fresh water (I'm having an echography today, and I don't have the right to have a sip of water for 4 more hours still!!!)

I figured as much... The other guy was truly a doofus. I guess I'll give my vet a call again tomorrow!

When she does what the most? The pooping or the tail bobbing? The pooping is all the time, since pretty much forever. The tail bobbing seems to be all the time too, maybe. I noticed it yesterday, and I wonder if she's not going to drop an egg on me since she had also dropped a massive wet poop on me that day. But somehow I doubt that.

I always been wondering... Bud always had the runs. Always. I've had her for 2 years now (september 2006 in fact) and I can't remember when she would not leave a wet mess on me. I saw that she has tail bobbing too... But I mostly noticed that yesterday. One time I decided to take her to the vet. Not my current avian vet, I mean my dog's vet. He just told me that it was because she was reaching puberty (?!?!?!) and shrugged it off (Then told us to pay him 60 bucks). I was not the one that took her to the vet in fact, it was my mom. I was at work. I wonder... should I take her back to the vet? Like I said she's been like this for a looong time... Can it be "normal"?

awwwrr cute! congrats!

They LOVE ripping EVERYTHING to shreds here too. I have to be careful to not leave the tissue box around their playgym, or I might turn around and find ripped tissue all over the place!!! That's the reason why I also stopped using newspaper at the bottom of the cages... My birds are biiiiig shredders. I use wood pellets now.

YAY! I try to make my bunch eat different stuff, but they're more interested in throwing it around the room than eating it!

Hi Michelle you havent handled a mad hen then if you have not had blood drawn talk about hurt lol Hehe... And you've never had to deal with my cocks when they are pissed. Their beaks are beyond sharp, but they never seem to be able to break my skin. Somehow my hen never bites me. She bites others though. I had to deal with a mad cockatiel hen before though... Oh hum. My finger was bleeding but I didn't budge.