Iva

Sailorwolf, thank you. That's one thing I definitely have to do, as I'm also questioning this woman's ethics and her actual interest in helping Gigi. Elly, thank you so much for such a long and obviously helpful response The avian vet locator has nothing for my country (which gives me an idea to help with that sometime, so other people wouldn't go through this with vets who basically care only about dogs and cats!), but I've found a list of vets in my city and, well, I do hope that among two million people there's at least one decent avian vet. And there's always the vet faculty and their ambulance. I meant to say cuttle when I said sepia, I apologise. At that moment I could not remember its exact name in English so err...I used the Latin name and even made a spelling mistake (it's sephila...). Yes, he has a cuttlebone and he's biting it more often than ever. I shall try to give him broccoli and carrot (which he usually ignores) and see if anything changes. My dad tried to hand-feed him with seed, which I did not know when I was updating the post as I was in the other room, and he ate everything in my dad's hands. I am guessing that's an improvement. Same goes for the fact that he's just bitten me really hard, which he wasn't doing this morning and yesterday, when he was behaving like a nice normal bird (which he is not, unless when it comes to my father). As for the sleeping pattern, yes it's happening during the day. He goes through a phase of being really furious, more and usual, he fights with stuff in his cage and lets sound that's more similar to the things some big carnivore birds "say" than his usual tweeting and then he spends the next hour with his head under the mirror and among his feathers, as if he was not an actual living creature. Of course he has moments when he sleeps during the day, but they usually don't switch with the hyperactive ones THIS OFTEN. O_O That's one of the things I noticed first when he started acting like this. We also have winter here, as we're in Europe, northern hemisphere. It actually started snowing the day he changed his behaviour, but I doubt it matters. He usually sleeps from ten in the evening to eight in the morning. At this moment it's 3:30 in the afternoon, the sun is setting and Gigi is singing pretty loudly and playing with his bell and mirror, as if nothing was wrong...but the food in the food bin is still untouched, as I don't see any peels. If there's any more information that would explain things, ask and I'll say it

Update. At this moment, he's not biting me as hard as he normally does (he's not really friendly and he can really hurt people), he's even letting me take him in his hand (though he protests and tweets pretty angrily) and I don't think his body temperature is lowered but still, I'm not an expert. My dad, on the other side, thinks his legs are a bit colder than what they normally are. The vet is acting as if she didn't know much about birds, I am asking her if I should bring Gigi so she could have a look at what he's doing, check his body temperature and so on, but she's pretty nonchalant and saying that I should only come myself and pick some vitamin B from her, as that's supposed to make Gigi's apetite stronger. Any advice? Please? I'm desperate and I don't want my bird to starve. Should I switch vets? Should I give him something else to eat?

Hello! I'm new and I had to ask for help, as I can barely sleep thinking something might happen to my Gigi. I got Gigi in 2003, he's a very unique-looking white budgie and has never been too close to anyone in the household apart from my father (there are three of us) with whom he plays. He was never eating too much, he's pretty careful when it comes to food and the only health problems he had were of mental nature, at least according to the doctor, he was self-harming and had to be put under blue lamp and have vitamin B given a couple of times in the last 2 years. For the past 2 days, Gigi has been acting weirdly. He's not eating his bird seed at all, he comes to it, takes a sniff and changes his mind. Yet, he's consuming more sepia (is that the right word?), minerals, lettuce and water than ever and he is playful and definitely not quiet, but even his schedule is weird: he sleeps for one hour, then goes mad for the next hour, then sleeps again. He's obviously moulting and his feathers look slightly weirder than usual, but he's not hiding on the bottom of the cage as a bird who's seriously ill or dieing. He's just...acting strangely. The vet told us to put the blue lamp above the cage again and not to worry, that he's probably "protesting against something". I don't want to believe that because it seriously sounds stupid, so I thought I'd ask here as well. Any help would be appreciated. picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/supersonic_squirrel/504454107/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/supersonic_squirrel/309879154/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/supersonic_squirrel/235285534/