melbournebudgies

Take the straight seed away and give them a mix of grated vegies and apple and seed. That way if they want the seed they wil have to contnd with the vegies.

Do they have favrite vegies? I get branches and break the twigs off them leaving about 1 1/2 cm of ength and then push treat foods onto them. Mine love celery, so their branches have chunks of celery stuck on them here and there. That certainly gets them there.

I agree with Norm Elly, at the moment you are being very restrained. I just convinced my other half to scrap our plan to buy a house in a country town at the end of the year in favour of buying a property with land outside of town so I can have my aviaries without bothering the neighbours

I just use stationary bulldog clips. I also have cups attached to the sides of my aviary 3/4 filled with sand, for dry things like millet sprays I have one without water, I also have a couple with water in them for fresh branches. The sand keeps them steady in the cups and also means that if a bird falls in they won't drown.

Looks fun, don't know about the 'health benefits' though. The claimed health benefits of wheat grass have been fairly widely disputed. If they enjoy it why not save yourself some money and reseed the soil in the container with grass seed or even just use some budgie seed.

We had never seen a rat or a mouse here, inside or outside. I accidentally left the laundry door ajar one warm night over summer. I was awaken at 3am by an almightly screeching acompanied by the cat growling at high speed through the house. Thinking there was another cat in the house or something I was out of bed in a flash and into the kitchen only to find a juvenile rat hanging from the top of my back wire door, looking very regretful for wandering in through that open door. Not knowing quite what to do I managed to get the wire door open and chase it down the door and back outside! If you think chasing a huntsman is bad try a brown rat!! Sorry felt maybe you all neded a funny story to take the edge off

I am also in Melbourne, and have a number of adult birds just finishing their quarantine at the moment. Once you have sorted out the potential health issues if you would like to borrow one to see if it helps before you commit to another bird long term I'd be happy to lend you one.

THere are anti-pick sprays that you can get from the pet shops to help with this sort of problem. But if you do go down that path don't spray it on th bird(they always come in a spray pack) put a little on your fingers and put it only on the feathers he is chewing. You don't want to muck with his usual preening. But keep in mind that there is a reason for the chewing so you nee to address that at the same time by adding toys, etc to keep him occupied.

On the up side, if you have rats you generally are less likely to have mice... But that doesn't help the birds

My birds are in an aviary. They are out there rain, hail and shine and we've never had any problems due to the weather. Some nights around here it gets below 5 degrees C. Maybe they are tougher than their cushy indoor cousins though

The second is a yellow face blue, not so good at my pieds. I would say opaline cobalt pied?Yellow faced blue, grey wing

I used to have my hair nearly to my waist and then I got it cut shoulder length, when I first tried to brush it it felt very strange to have to try and stop part way.

It is pretty obvious which feather it is, it's bright red at the base, I'll take it out I think

Well she isn't bleeding now so I'll do my feeds and get some cornflour out incase she bleeds again and I'll do it in a little while. She doesn't seem too concerned about it at the moment.

Well it's currently not bleeding (she must have done it overnight) so I will leave it for the moment. I used to work as a part time vet nurse so I should be right to deal with it if needs be now that I know the procedure

A few people have suggested they might be golden face Norm. I looked at a yellow face at a pet shop a few days ago and they were much brighter than him, he was more of a soft lemon yellow whereas they are the same yellow as my lutino.

My liitle lutino has blood on her wing and on closer inspection it's a blood feather bleeding. She's not bleeding now but how do I deal with it?

Missy these are my YF you can see they have varying levels of 'green' through their feathersTheoretically true Elly but out of three babies from a nest with one yellow face parent I got ony one yellow face...

Just checking, it could be my eyes bt does he have blue near his bum? If so I would say YF

Dad could be split for blue or he could be yellowface blue pretending to be green

Much like when we get our hair cut short and whack ourselves in the ankles with the brush the first time we go to brush it

They're just sulking, just like when I pick my happy little boy up from childcare and he cries when I arrive - to make me feel bad! Like Libby said just give them time to finish their moody moment and they'll be back to their old selves.

Yes it can be hard, and we have lots of galahs around here. Felix had a problem foot that makes him easy to identify if someone does find him but it's a long shot. Many years ago I had a metal leg ring engraved with my phone number for one of my birds. I had a few rings engraved last week and by coincidence they are too big for the birds I intended them for. Giffy will get one put on when he arrives tomorrow so that if ever he does go missing he will have my phone number on his ankle.

Libby I sense this little girl may be staying for a long time

Not really hard to come by. Giffy will be our 4th Galah (one died of old age, Felix and we currently have another one, Chucky, but he is an aviary bird), they are prone to tempers if you don't treat them right(and some are just prone to tempers anyway ), but if you care for them well they will reward you with so much love in return.