Finnie

I had these bells on a toy in my flight cage for many months, now. They seemed safe enough. Until one particular hen took a liking to chewing the paint off of them, and this is what she uncovered! Most of us know that copper is toxic to birds, and when we buy toys with bells, we probably check them. But who would have thought that the manufacturer was covering the copper up with paint? Even looking inside the red one doesn't necessarily reveal the copper, but once I knew to look, I could easily see it on the green one. So if you have bells on any of your birds toys, and you thought they were safe because they were not "copper" colored, you might want to check again, in case you haven't looked at the insides of the bells. I re-checked the rest of my birds' toys, and these were the only ones with copper, thankfully. And to my knowledge, none of the birds that were in that cage look like they have been poisoned, so I think they are fine. Although I will be keeping a special eye on the hen who chewed all that paint off.

You guys don't think it look like goldenface, then?

She doesn't need a nest box. Those are only used for breeding.

Hi Henrietta Cake, welcome to the forum! I think she's a girl, too. And for her age, she has the beginnings of pin feathers on her head, so I would say she's about to go into her first moult, which puts her somewhere around 3 months or so. You said she takes millet from your hand? To get her to step onto your finger, try holding the millet farther away from the perch, so she has to stretch to get it. Then work up to even farther away, so she has to put a foot on you to reach it. Eventually you can get her to jump from the perch to your hand. If she wants the millet bad enough, she'll do it. It just might take a while for her to get up the nerve.

Hi Raven_bow, welcome to the forum! Were there supposed to be pictures of your birds there? We love pictures on here, so it would be great to see some. There is a link under my signature on how to post pictures.

Thank you. I got some new "butt" pictures today. I think chick number one is looking like regular black spangle markings. That would be SO awesome if the first two were males, because I have two female chicks from another clutch that I need two spangle males for their future partners! So to tell that the dad is not violet factored, he would have needed darker, more purple cheek patches than he does? Thanks. I'll check that on some of my other birds, too, that I have wondered about. Butt pictures: And here is the fourth chick, turning out to be another spangle! (The third chick is normal, and that just leaves the 5th chick to wait and see on. )

I got some newer photos of the chicks today. The oldest one doesn't seem so cinnamon anymore. Their down shades seem in between. Some lighter and some darker, but not really grey or white. And in real life, their ceres all look real pale to me, so maybe all girls, but in these photos there seems to be some hope for males.

I was able to scare up an old photo of Alaina, from when I first got her. As a baby, but at least she's not covered in charcoal!

Wow. Thank you Kaz and GB. I have already told the buyer that I can't sell this chick until it stabillizes. But being as it's my first problem chick, I had no idea that it could fluctuate up and down like this for so long. I figured it would either die, or get all better. And then after a week or so I would know if it was fine. But I can see by what you said, GB, about your two hanging on for so long, but never fully recovering, that a week or two would be overly optimistic. Rats. What a disappointment. Guess I need to go contact the buyer again. Although she's been following this thread, so she probably read your replies before I did. I know how disappointed she's going to be. She's like the best pet buyer you could hope for, and she's been patient for so long. The new chicks are from the same parents, so I hope none of them gets this problem too.

Maybe, but it wouldn't be nearly as nice as this one. This one is the friendliest chick I've ever been able to raise. I sure hope she pulls through and begins to thrive. Today's update is that she has a very full crop, and weighs 35grams! There's no pleasing me. I wanted her to eat and bring her weight up, but now I am worried that she is eating TOO much, and might impact her crop. After worrying all weekend that something may be about to infect my whole flock, I did a lot of reading up on Megabacteria, and other common diseases. She really doesn't appear (yet anyway) to match anything, except for the constant eating at the food dish but still losing weight. I weigh her every day at about 1pm, and on Sunday, she was down to 28g. That's only 1g above the weight she was at when she "collapsed", so I've been worrying that she was about to plummet at any time. Seeing her with her head in the food dishes 24/7 got me really worrying, cuz from what I could find out, Megabac is the only disease where they do that. So I was ecstatic to see that she is actually eating and swallowing, not just dropping the food back out. Now to watch and see if she can digest her crop full of food without any ill effects. If I do have to switch to a different chick, it would have to be one from the second round that are just feathering up now. In that case, there would be plenty of time to see if this girl fully regains her health enough to be sellable.

That is a good point, GB, and something the buyer and I have also thought of. I don't know if it's just because this bird can't handle the range of "normal" germs that probably already exist here, or if something new and bad has come in, and she is just the first to show any signs. I don't really want to jump into a panic about my whole flock, but I do figure I better keep a sharp eye on them just in case.

Thank you for your comments, RIP. Originally, this thread was going to just be about plum eyes in general, because not only did I wonder about this clutch, but I had a similar situation back with my Mystery clutch. So that's why I hadn't put on yet what the parents were. But, yeah, I guess it would be a good idea to have that info! The father: Sky blue (I strongly suspect violet factored) spangle, split to cinnamon, opaline, and greywing, all of which showed up in his three chicks from a previous pairing, last fall. If he's split to anything else, it hasn't come out yet. The mother: Violet cinnamon wing recessive pied. This is their second round. The first round produced the following: Sky blue spangle female (This is the one from my "fluffed up chick" thread.) Sky blue normal male Sky blue cinnamon male Violet cinnamon spangle female Another sky blue cinnamon male GB, what part are you looking at to see the sky blue on the chick above? I'm still too new at this to be able to tell so early. Here's a not great photo of the parents: (You'll have to excuse the black all over Alaina's face, this was taken at a time when she was digging into her charcoal a lot.)

A cobalt opaline spangle male?

Hi Scittyscatty. I'd say he looks like a boy. And he's some kind of pied. Based on how clear the front of his body is, I would almost say either a double factor dominant pied, or some combination of more than one pied. Do you have any pictures of his back, so we can see what his wing markings look like? He's a cutie!

Well, I know there can be variation between cinnamons, with some being easy to see that it's brown, and others less easy. Today's pics of the oldest chick make it look way less brown, especially in comparison to the second chick, which did have plum eyes, and is feathering up a much lighter brown. All 5 from this clutch: Oldest chick: Second chick: If the oldest chick really turns out to be cinnamon, it might make an interesting observation to note whether having "hard to differentiate plum eyes on hatching" coincides with "hard to differentiate cinnamon wing color". A friend of my daughter's said it was really cool that I was kind of doing genetic experiments. I really do find this kind of thing fascinating. I just wish I had the capability of doing it on a much grander scale, so that my numbers and percentages could be more scientifically meaningful. When all I can do is observe one specimen here, and another there, it's really only just anecdotal. But that's where a forum comes in handy, because I can ask all of you guys if you ever run across similar incidences. Oh, and out of 5 chicks, there were only two with black eyes, so if this one turns out to be cinnamon, that leaves me with only one normal, which I would have liked to have some variation.

Yeah, that's what I told the buyer. She understands, she wants what's best for her too. I gave the buyer a bit of a warning that there could be more of a problem going on with this chick than we think. That's one of the reasons I started this thread, to see if other people had chicks that got better, but stayed fluffed up. And to see if those chicks got better, or went back downhill.

Well I would say that's the key to it right there. The obvious plum eyes are easy to spot. If it's less obvious, then maybe that's why I put down "black?" for the eye color. And then I had the same problem in Mystery's nest, where I didn't think any of the eyes were plum, but put question marks by a couple. And then GB said she thought one of them was a hen, and cinnamon at that. (I'll update those later, I kept two and they are moulting already, so their feather colors should look better afterwards.) Hee, hee, I'll tell you why, cuz I'm jumping the gun on it a little, and it's still a little early to be guessing, but it just started to look brownish to me. I have a couple photos. I can go upload them to photobucket, and then maybe tomorrow I can get more, seeing as their feathers grow so much each day. Yesterday: And Today: (Took the tail shot hoping to tell if it was spangle, and it is, yay!)

That sound like a good plan. And it looks like there is some hope for the chick with the bad leg!

She's doing okay. Since I dropped her down to one hand feeding per day, she has lost a couple of grams, down to 29. So I'm stil keeping an eye on her. She is promised to an owner who has been waiting for a hand tamed spangle chick since February, and we thought this chick was going to be ready to go home about 3 weeks ago, until she took that sudden nose-dive. I (we) sure would hate to lose her now! I was planning to get some photos of her today, but I forgot about it until towards evening, so the low light made for poor quality photos, but here they are anyway:

Thank you RIP, for that explanation. I have copied and pasted it to a Word document, so I can print it out for my folder, for future reference. Thanks, Kaz. You had one in one of your greywing nests a while back, and I remember trying to follow it as it grew up. And I got one in a clutch last fall, and if I hadn't seen the plum eyes for myself when it was born, I would have just thought it was a regular greywing. Now I will take RIP's information and use it to evaluate her, and also my Mystery chicks. So RIP, how many leg rings are you up to now?

Sounds EXACTLY like the breeding season I am having Splat. Its terrible Aww, I'm sorry for both of you. It's hard with all the extra added dramas.

Thanks, RIP, that does answer my question, and also confirms what I have been figuring out, that cinnamon doesn't show up visually when it's combined with the dilution genes. (I'm assuming that goes for the greywing and clearwing, as well, or do those have differing degrees of the cinnamon not showing up?)

okay, so I have a question, if both parents are cinnamon, shouldn't the whole nest be born with PLUM eyes? I'm guessing that by "Black Eyes" you mean Black Eyed Self, but what color eyes are they born with? (I should probably move this over to my plum eye topic, to keep from going off track in your thread, RIP.)

He is very nice!

Thank you for that, Kaz. It helps me put it in perspective. On the one hand, she didn't die when she had the chance, so maybe she is one of the "survivors". On the other hand, due to my intervention and constant pumping of food into her, maybe I have supported the survival of one of the "less fit". I guess her true nature will come out when I quit that last feeding, and she's completley on her own.