Finnie

From what I understand, for scaley face mites, you just treat the bird. For other mites, you treat the cage as well, and throw away any perches or stuff that can't be properly decontaminated. For birds that aren't showing any signs, you can still use ivermectin on them. It is what I prefer to use, and I don't fool around with any of the sprays. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to double up on them by using two types of insecticide. If I have birds in quarantine, and one of them looks suspicious, I put a drop of ivermectin on all of them. I've only ever once treated my whole flock with ivermectin, and that was because one bird was plucking, and I treated them all as a preventative, just in case the plucking was from a mite. But no one ever did develop a mite problem, so either the preventative worked, or else there were no mites to begin with.

Finnie, no As I said, her father is Albino and her mother is Lacewing. So, she can not be a Lacewing. She can be only Albino. But she has these faint cinnamon spots. I'd like to know, if that happens often enough for Albinos generally? She can be a lacewing if her father is split to cinnamon. (Being an albino, if he were split to cinnamon, that would mean the same as split to lacewing.) Based of this breeder's stock that you have mentioned, I wouldn't be surprised if the albino father was split to cinnamon. Maybe when some of the other more experienced people come on, they will know if it's possible for an albino to have brown spots, other than when it's a lacewing. He's not just a Cinnamon cock. He's a Cinnamon split to Ino. That's why he can have daughters - Lacewings, cannot he? His mate is an Albino, not a Lacewing. That's why he can not have with her sons-Lacewings. But he can have with her Inos - both sons and daugthers. If you are right about the mother being albino and not lacewing, then this is true. If this chick is a female, she can be Ino, but she can be a Lacewing too, depending which chromosome the father passed to her. The cinnamon father cannot pass to his daughter a non-cinnamon gene. So all his daughters are either cinnamon or lacewing, not regular albino. But if this is a son, he may be only an Albino. Right, an albino split to cinnamon. And I'm still very curious, if such cinnamon spots are often enough seen at Albinos? Not to my knowledge, but maybe Neville or someone with more ino experience than me will come along soon.

I think it sounds like female behavior, too. You mentioned that you think it may be triggered by what your bird thinks is mating season. Would it be feasable to confine him/her to the cage just for a brief time, until the phase passes, and then hope that the behavior is diminished afterwards?

Hi Broke90, welcome to the forum! If the shape of the beak doesn't affect his eating, then I would just keep an eye on it. LIke dillster said, it will keep growing. So you want to watch to see if it eventually does affect the eating. But I don't understand what the beak shape has to do with mirrors. (Which, by the way, are bad for a budgie's mental health. A mirror looks like another bird, but cannot possibly interact with your budgie like a real bird, which leads to frustration. It also can lead to unhealthy obsessions and jealousy, so your live pair is better off without a third wheel. ) If you're concerned about the shape of the beak, you could start a thread in the health section, with photos, so we can see what it looks like.

I can edit that in for you.

Excellent advice.

I'm sorry. That's the danger I run into when I try to give as much information as possible. Being long-winded tends to confuse things. Simple version: Budgies can have one or two dark factors. One dark factor is called Cobalt. Budgies can have one or two violet factors. A violet budgie has one dark factor and one or two violet factors. A violet budgie is the same as a cobalt violet budgie, the cobalt is implied, and doesn't need to be stated.

Thank you so much for writing this, BJ. I am going to link it to my website. It is one of the most common questions I am asked by customers, when they hit any trouble in taming their birds. One thing I would point out, though, is that birds are very smart, and they will learn quickly to avoid stepping up onto your hand if they know it always means "back in the cage". So it's a good idea to practice the "out of cage step-up" frequently during their play time, and not only at the end, when it's time to go back in the cage. I really appreciate the amount of time you spend typing up these articles for us.

I'm not going to contradict BJ's advice to take him to the vet. You will find just about everywhere that the standard answer is, if in doubt, see the vet. However, there is one thing you could consider first. Seeing as how you have checked him over thoroughly, and you had no other symptoms to report to us. Is he molting? I have found that often when pin feathers come in around the eye, it causes a kind of bare patch, that can look pink. The first time I saw it I was quite alarmed, but then the pin feathers came in further, and I could tell what they were, and all was Okay. So IF he's just molting, you might have nothing to worry about. By the way, what do you think of the feathers above his cere? They look a little ruffled in the photo. Are they stained? Does he have any nasal discharge?

Lol, and I also noticed spangle chicks in the other thread.

Hi Cloud's birds. Sorry you had to wait so long for anyone to come along with an answer. Now that the forum has changed, it has messed up my way of knowing when people in Australia wrote their posts, as opposed to just knowing what time it is there for all of you. (I used to have my forum location set to Perth time, so it was like I was on the same page as all of you, but now the whole time-thing seems messed up.) Anyway, so I really don't know how long your post has been up there, but it's telling me that for you now, it's 8:00 am. I assume that means Monday. Where I am, it's still Sunday. So let's see if I can help at all. Photos of violet budgies are notorious for not showing true color on the internet. So when I look at your photos, I see a cobalt bird. But you say that in the sun, he looks more purple. So I'd say, you are probably right, and he is probably a violet. You ask what exactly is a cobalt violet. Well, the violet factor does something to the feather structure, which changes how the blue light reflects to our eyes. On most budgies, it doesn't really change much, or it might make the shade of blue seem darker, but it won't look purple. But when the violet factor is combined with one dark factor (which we call a cobalt budgie), then it makes it look purple, so we call it a violet budgie. So a violet budgie is actually a cobalt budgie with a violet factor, which means a violet and a cobalt violet are one and the same thing. You can have violet factor on a sky blue budgie, as well as on mauve or any shade of green. But none of those will result in a purple bird. So true violet means the violet factor combined with one dark factor. To confuse matters further, when a sky blue budgie has a violet factor (called a sky violet), it can make it look like a cobalt budgie. And two violet factors will have more effect than one violet factor, so you see that there are many many possibilities of what a budgie can have, and there are slight variations between them, with some of them being impossible or very difficult to tell apart. Sorry, I think I have given you more of an answer than you intended! As for telling his age, all of the signs you mentioned begin to show up somewhere between 3-5 months of age. Losing the baby bars coincides with the first molt, because when the adult head feathers come in, they don't have the bars on them. The cere turning from baby color to adult color is pretty independant of the first molt, but happens at about the same age. I've had baby boys turn their cere blue early, like yours, and others who kept the baby pink past the first molt, and then it turned. Same with iris rings. They can lighten up a little early, or a little late, but it's generally in the 3-5 month range. I'd say yours looks just right for a three month old. (And I love his colors, too!) Keep in mind that quarantine should be at least 30 days. Then after that find out whether they like living together. I recently read a book that said quarantine only had to be 5-7 days, and I got so mad, I about threw the book away! You need the full month, and many recommend longer, to make sure there isn't a bout of some illness brewing and about to manifest itself.

He looks like a dark green normal male.

Your photos are gone now. Can you re-post them?

I found this quote from RIPbudgies that seems to answer your question:

Well, okay, upon checking these, it does look like everything that's not albino or cinnamon does seem to be male.

When I read this, I looked back up at his photo to see his dom pied, and do I also see that he is spangle? I just read your new chicks post, but had forgotten about this one, so I'll have to go back now and check out your baby pics again!

A teenage boy giving new mother advice? Really? Nerwen, I wouldn't put the birds down to breed before the baby is born, because you can't really guarantee the birds' timing. And you won't really know what you are capable of handling until the baby is a couple of weeks old. Babies go through a growth spurt at 2 weeks and 6 weeks, and at those times, even if you thought you had the swing of things, you will be swamped. Depending on how long your maternity leave is, you might find this is a good time for breeding, IF you find that your routine with the baby goes smoothly. After all, at this stage, the baby sleeps a LOT, and they don't crawl, so it is a lot easier to get anything done. But no matter what age your kids are, it's important to carve out at least a little time for yourself. I'd say pre-weaning, it is a lot simpler process to feed a baby than once you have to prepare their food and clean up the mess they make. (Unless you are bottle feeding, but even that is a little easier.) (By the way, I had 5.)

I agree with Dave. I just read recently that the Ivermectin treatment may need to be repeated after two weeks in severe cases, or ones that don't respond right away.

I have a professional pet sitter who comes twice a day. I do like Flip Trainer said, and leave her a sheet with a detailed list of what needs to be done. Since things change from one year to the next, she will come over a day ahead of time so I can show her where things are and what may be different this time. She also takes care of my cats and dogs and fish tanks. If the trip is short, say just a couple of days, I would leave them with a supply of food and water, and they will be okay on their own. (But not if there are any nesting at the time.) If I didn't have a noisy flock of birds, I would leave a radio on, so the quiet doesn't scare them.

I'm sorry for your loss. I think I remember when you were new here and had just found her. You did a great job rescuing her and giving her almost another year of happy life. Don't beat yourself up too much about the seed. Sometimes they become over weight for other reasons. By adding fresh food supplement to her diet, you were giving her a proper diet. They do require some seed after all. She may have lacked exercise, she may have had a genetic predisposition for fatty liver disease, or it could have been a result of her trauma from the wild bird attack. Anyway, since you are such a caring bird owner, have you considered filling the hole in your life with another bird that needs a good home?

Yes, the first ones are always special. Plus, they are the ones who start us on our way to this crazy addiction!

http://www.shrinkpictures.com/create-avatar/ Hi Budgie_Mad. I used to have trouble resizing my photos to fit the size requirements on here, and one of our members gave me this link, and now I don't have any more trouble!

Hi Mandy, Welcome to the forum!!

http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/index.php?showtopic=31996 We just recently had another discussion about rainbow budgies. Yours isn't one, but he's really beautiful. I've recently begun to love the look of the yellowface with the cobalt. Instead of turning sea foam color, like on a sky blue, it often turns to several shades of blue and green over different parts of their bodies. It can look really stunning, especially after a couple of molts.