Hi, I'm new to the forum. I've just brought home two parakeets, a male and a female less than a year old, but definitely past their first molt.

 

They're both very friendly, obviously hand raised, and I love them, but today (two days after being home) he's started fluffing his features, and sleeping a lot. The first day I brought him home, the pet store folks clipped his wings (with no apparent problems) but the first time he fluttered around in his new cage, he started bleeding from one of his feathers. I'm not sure if the newly clipped feather split and started to bleed, or if he hurt himself on one of the natural perches exploring his cage. He probably lost two or three big fat drops of blood, but then seemed fine.

 

Today, ~48 hours after that incident, he is very sleepy and all fluffed out all the time. He's eaten some millet spray throughout the day, but he sure looks stressed.

 

Of course, this started showing up on Saturday night after all the vet clinics are closed. I called around to emergency clinics, but the closest one with an avian vet on duty is 40 miles away. They said it would probably be more stressful to him to bring him all that distance, and as long as he's eating I should just keep him warm and dry and take him to a local vet on Monday. If he stops eating/drinking I should bring him in.

 

Does anyone have any ideas what's going on? The new cagemate? (seems strange, since he came from a group cage at PetSmart) Is it the broken feather? Stress from moving and being handled? His poops are a little watery, but nothing I didn't expect from a change in food/environment, etc.

 

The only other thing I can think of is that we have been handling both of them quite a bit. It was so exciting to get birds that were so friendly that maybe we overdid it?

 

Here's some pics of him today:

 

http://www.wendamus.com/guppies/fish/100_3733.JPG

 

And some pics of him and the female yesterday for contrast.

 

http://www.wendamus.com/guppies/fish/New%2...es/100_3705.jpg

 

Any help would be appreciated. Should we keep his cage covered? Leave him in it, but uncover it? Any special treats we could offer him to encourage the eating? Any triggers to call the vet? Am I freaking out for nothing?

 

Thanks!

Welcome to the forum, I hope you enjoy it here :laughter: We are a very friendly bunch I hope you find lots of useful information here at the site, don't be a stranger :question:

 

since the 2 or 3 drops of blood has he bled anymore?

 

He could be a little stressed from the move, not used to the new environment.

 

They both look great. I'm no good with mutations but they are lovely looking skyblue's.

Hello and welcome

 

Your new budgies are very lovely.

 

Firstly, fluffed means they are struggling (often due to fever) and need a warm lamp (25 - 40 watts) shinning on him so he use less energy in keeping warm.

Second. The blood from the feather means he has broken a blood feather and needs to see an avian vet and have the shaft removed other wise the quil will continue to bleed every time it gets bumped. budgies are very good at regulating blood pressure after blood loss, but he needs to see a vet ASAP.

 

Thirdly, being so new, he will be stressed and possibly not eating properly yet, which can also cause the fluffy and sleepy look.

 

Personally i would give him some liquid calcium for birds ( don't know what they call it in the USA) - its Avical or Calcivet here in Aust. It will give him a boost of energy and make him feel a bit better. you could also give him some natural raspberry cordial in his water (10ml cordial to 250ml water)

 

Vet at this stage is vital to remove that blood feather - birds can bleed to death though a blood feather as while the feather is growing it forms an artery directly down the shaft of the feather quill. Once the feather has stopped growing, the artery closes over and the feather hardens up. Hence the importance of getting it removed because at the moment he has an exposed artery :laughter:

 

To stop bleeding fast, use white pepper on the wound and apply pressure for 5 minuites. Corn flour or regular flour also works, but the pepper is the best

 

Good luck with him and welcome again :question:

Edited January 4, 200916 yr by **Liv**

He does look a little ill doesn't he.

Is he bleeding from a blood feather? If you are feeling game and he is bleeding constantly from a blood feather, you could take a pair of tweezers and pull out the affected feather yourself (specially seeing as there are no vets available at the moment). Apply pressure to the area with your fingers and clot the plucked area with cornflour or white pepper.

 

If he has stopped bleeding or is okay in that aspect, do not worry about the blood feather (because that could just make him more stressed. Only pull a blood feather if it doesn't stop bleeding). Get a heat lamp or heater near him and put the temperature up to around 75F (24C) on one end of his cage. Put a blanket over the back and sides of his cage, so he feels a little safer (careful with the heater though).

Provide him with some millet and water and follow what the vets said until you are able to get him to one.

How is the other budgie is she okay?

Edited January 4, 200916 yr by Sailorwolf

You have received some good advice.

Re the bleeding feather......for the future if it ever happens again you need to remove the shaft of the affected feather as Sailorwolf has stated and here is how to do it taken from our FAQ section........

removing a broken blood feather

You need the warm lamp also as Liv suggested.

 

Another thing that hasnt been addressed is the issue of quarantine. Fair enough you bought the birds from the same place, same cage and at the same time, so seperate quarantine ordinarily would not be an issue.

 

BUT places like petshops have communal cages where every new influx of birds gets put. They dont quarantine...every bird just gets put into the mix. So apart from the stress of being caught and transported to the petshop, new food, new "friends", and then being caught again and transported to a new home where it has again, new food and new "friends".............

all these things are stress conditions.

Stress equals illness.

Birds at Petsmart or any other similar place having been blended with others they havent grown up with, have had time from the moment they were put in the communal cage till the time you bought them, to incubate a disease caught from another bird in the communal cage.

Birds can live with illnesses that they may have built up some kind of temporary immunity to whatever they are carrying. BUT you add that mix of stress conditions and the birds whop also are carrying "something"and you get a situation wherre diseases manifest themselves....usually in the time it takes to incubate a disease and show symptoms...by that time the bird is home with you and looking sick.

 

My suggestion now is to take them both for a checkup, and if anything surfaces from the vet visit then you have something you can present to the petshop with regard to reimbursement.

 

 

And apart from all the advice.....

 

WELCOME

Edited January 4, 200916 yr by KAZ

Thanks everyone! The bleeding feather has only bled the one time. I had styptic powder, which I tried to put on. The bleeding stopped and he hasn't bled since that time, about 48 hours ago. I actually thought we'd lucked out and everything was fine until he got all fluffy and sleepy.

 

The female seems fine. I don't have any other cage to put her in. Is it worth rigging something together to keep the two of them separate, in case he's contagious? If so, any suggestions? I think in a pinch I could just shut her, loose, in the laundry room, she's very calm.

 

I don't have an official heat lamp, but I have shop lamps with big incandescent bulbs which put off a fair amount of heat. We keep our house pretty warm, and I'll move him to my bedroom for a few days so I'll be the first to notice if the heat drops.

 

Once we noticed he was stressed, we left him in the cage with it 3/4 wrapped in a big towel, except to examine him to make sure the feather has definitely stopped bleeding.

 

I don't have any bird specific calcium supplements, but I have Repti-cal with D3 for my fish, it's in a powder form. They seem interested in apples, so I'll try applesauce with some calcium in it to see if that helps. Any other liquidy/gel-like treats I could slip it into, or maybe just their water? I have a cuttlebone, but they seem completely uninterested.

 

The only other thing I could think of to do was to give him privacy, so I took the female out as much as possible. They seem to really like each other, but I thought he probably didn't need to waste any energy establishing who gets the good perches, or who's got the prettier tail feathers. They're both in the covered cage for the night now, and I think he's eaten some more millet tonight.

 

If that feather starts bleeding again I'll pull it, thanks for the article. I'm feeling silly about how emotionally attached I've gotten to these birds in a couple of days, but they're such sweethearts! They let my toddler hold them, how awesome is that? (She's always closely supervised, and has a pretty good head on her shoulders for a 3 year old.) I have high hopes for a long happy relationship, I'm really hoping he makes it through this.

 

The silliest thing is, I didn't even go to the store for birds. We'd sworn, after several bad experiences with wild, unapproachable, untameable birds, that we weren't going to get a store-bought bird; we were going to a breeder and getting hand-raised, young birds. I went to PetSmart to get some equipment for my fishtanks, and we were just looking at the hamsters and birds to entertain my daughter. But the associate brought out this sweet little female and let her sit on my daughter's hand, and I was in love. It would be bitter irony if we finally found perfect birds through chance, and lost one before we had a chance to get to know them.

You have been given great advice, I just want to say that it is really nice to see new members so eager to learn and help out their little feathered friends.

We all get emotionally attached to some of our birds :laughter:

You sound to me like you have the makings of a brilliant bird owner :hap:

 

One thing I must mention. I would hazard an educated guess that these two are related....i.e. brother and sister. So if you had plans to breed them in the future, I wouldn't. I would swear they are related.

Yes...to the calcium issue....I would say you could use the one you have.

Re seperating them now...no point. If he has caught something she most likely will have too, unless she has an immunity.

Re lamp....yes you can use a normal lamp. Use a 25 TO 40 Watt globe.

 

Cheers kaz

 

PS good to have you here.

You have received excellent advice to follow. I wanted to pop in and say welcome to the forum.

Any update on how your budgie is going?

Thanks again everyone, for the help as well as the welcome. This is a really friendly place!!

 

Today's report. He's still puffed up most of the time, but he's cleaned out half the food bowl in front of me, and is drinking as well. Plus, his millet spray looks like 20 birds got to it. So I feel a little better, like he'll be okay. I'm calling first thing in the morning to take him to the local avian vet, hopefully it'll all be nothing.

 

As for breeding, we're also convinced they're brother and sister, probably from the same clutch. Their head stripes are exactly the same distance back, which I think means they're the same age, and even though their color is slightly different, their pattern, etc is almost exactly the same. Finally, two same-aged birds who both willingly hop on my finger from the same store? I'm guessing they were hand raised together.

 

From what I've read on here, they're too young to breed anyway. One thing I haven't figured out from reading back messages ... If I keep them together in the same cage, and just never provide them a nesting box, is that sufficient to keep them from breeding, or do I have to separate them?

 

We don't really plan on breeding at all, but I won't rule anything out. I got a few guppies last year, and that's grown into an 11 tank addiction, so I better read up on everything I need to do just in case! :-)

They will not recognise their relationship to each other when the urge to mate happens...but should not produce eggs unless they think they have a good place to lay them and raise babies

Edited January 5, 200916 yr by KAZ

They will not recognise their relationship to each other when the urge to mate happens...but should not produce eggs unless they think they have a good place to lay them and raise babies

 

Oh, this is great, thanks! I just spent the last hour reading through one breeding article after another and never did find a conclusive answer there! Thanks again! Of course, reading through all those posts with all the wonderful pictures has me absolutely convinced that someday I'd love to breed, but luckily I have close to a year before my female is ready, plus I'd have to get a new male. In the meantime, I'm going to focus on learning more about keeping, raising, training and enjoying these birds, they're plenty for now!

 

I'll let you all know what the vet says tomorrow.

They will not recognise their relationship to each other when the urge to mate happens...but should not produce eggs unless they think they have a good place to lay them and raise babies

 

Oh, this is great, thanks! I just spent the last hour reading through one breeding article after another and never did find a conclusive answer there! Thanks again! Of course, reading through all those posts with all the wonderful pictures has me absolutely convinced that someday I'd love to breed, but luckily I have close to a year before my female is ready, plus I'd have to get a new male. In the meantime, I'm going to focus on learning more about keeping, raising, training and enjoying these birds, they're plenty for now!

 

I'll let you all know what the vet says tomorrow.

 

By the way....if by any chance in a few months you see them mating....try and turn a blind eye to it. BUT at the same time, make sure you have no large food dishes in there, no newspaper they can nest in and no snuggle huts

Hey, if their morals are different than the ones my momma taught me, I will give them their privacy, but I'll try to make sure they're just practicing, and not succeeding.

 

Of course, as soon as I told my housemate that we couldn't breed them together, she said, "You know what that means, right?!" We're now talking about whether we should get another bird now in a couple of months (after all health issues are resolved) or if we should wait 'til next year and look for a fully adult bird. We're probably going to seek out local breeders, and maybe even try to track down the breeder for these birds if PetSmart keeps records.

 

As a side note, the reason we were a little surprised that you couldn't breed them was that, with guppies it's okay, even common, to breed brother to sister. Inbreeding is used as a common way to 'fix' a desired characteristic. However if you get a deformed guppy it's not as emotionally heartwrenching as a deformed baby bird, so I'm guessing that's why it's not so cool in this situation.

Guppies are different then birds just like humans are different then guppies

There are some articles on this site about line breeding to read through to gain more knowledge.

 

Kaz is right "most" of the time they won't breed to lay eggs if they don't have the right circumstances, but they may. I have a friend that has females that lay without males so you don't need a male to have females that lay. This is the reason I got 2 boys to ensure no eggs and no health issues with having eggs. If I ever wanted to breed I could get females later down the road.

Edited January 5, 200916 yr by Elly

Just a quick update. We took both birds to the vet. They're doing a fecal analysis, which will be back tomorrow, and he says their (something in their throat) looks a little red, which indicates an upper respiratory infection. There's been no sneezing, but we're treating both of them with some antibiotics he gave us. If the fecal comes back with parasites we'll go back for worm medication tomorrow. He also said that Jasper may be a little underweight.

 

He also suggested that stress could be adding to this, so we're only getting them out twice a day to give them medication for the next ten days, then we'll restart training them. They're already comfortable on our finger and our shoulder, so I'm guessing we won't lose too much ground while they settle in.

 

Basically, I got the impression that although he advertises as an avian vet, he doesn't see a lot of birds. He knew more than me, which was good, but I wasn't convinced he was super sure of himself. He did offer to do a throat culture in case we were dealing with an antibiotic resistant strain, but that's more than I'd do for my own sore throat, so I said we'd wait to see if they responded to the antibiotics.

 

Overall, he didn't seem too concerned, so I'm hoping I don't need to be either, and that everything is going to be okay.

 

I'll let you all know if there is any news in the labwork tomorrow, or any response to the medication.

 

By the way, the medication is a ground up antibiotic in suspension in something kinda sticky sweet. (I'm guessing corn syrup water or molasses) I've got a little syringe to give 1.5 ml twice a day. We've tried -- the birds don't bite, which is another tribute to their great personalities, but they don't cooperate, either. I'm not convinced we actually got anything into their mouths at all. Since the suspension has to be mixed vigorously right before giving it to them, I don't think I can just put it in their water. Any other suggestions on getting them to take their meds? Also, suggestions to fatten them up would be appreciated. We're already doing fresh budgie seed mix every day, fresh carrots, peas, apples and whatever else we have laying around in a bowl, and millet spray. Are they too old for the yogurt recipes in the hand-rearing section? Any other options?

 

Thanks to everyone for all the help!

Thanks for the progress report

 

Re fattening them up....hulled oats and sunflower seeds addded to their mix.

Soaked seed ( soaked in water for a few hours and rinsed to soften it for easier eating )

 

Thanks for the update. Sorry I'm no good at giving advice for giving medicine, I'm lousy at it myself. I'd agree with Kaz in regards to fattening them up though

When you go back to the vet ask about crop needling and get them to show you how to do it too. A crop needle is a long metal tube that you attach to the syringe. The crop needle is inserted into the bird's oesophagus and down into its crop. This way you don't lose all the medicine everywhere.

If they are a true avian vet they will have a certificate showing this and you can ask if they are certified they will tell you yes or no, there are some vets are not certified that yes will say I see birds. You can also ask how many birds he has in his practice that he sees and on a weekly basis. Don't be afraid to make small talk and chat.

 

I have personally experienced the difference between the both when my Pretty was sick. The vet I went actually said the same thing yours did in respect of the throat and gave a broad spectum antibiotic as yours did. The key is to keep him very warm during this period of time to make sure he recovers and keep an eye on the poops to ensure eating and drinking. When I took Merlin for a check-up at an avian vet the experience was so different and I could tell who really knew what and who didn't.

 

Either way, good on you getting this little one to the vet :glare:.

I'll ask about the crop tube, we're going back for a re-check in 10 days. They look lots better today, and I don't think we got a single drop of antibiotics down either of their throats, so I think they're just recovering from stress, or maybe a mild virus. I hope!

With regards to the meds, I'm 90% sure he's getting none of them. I tip his head back and hold his beak open (He just loves that, lemme tell you) and squirt it slowly in. Most of the time, it just dribbles out the side of his beak. Today, I got 'lucky' and kept the meds in his mouth... so they just dribbled out his noseholes. The vet is 45 minutes away, so I couldn't go over to get help.

 

He's getting better, less fluffy, more active, etc. I'm tempted to just quit the meds, but I'd like to find a reference, video, something about putting medication in the crop in case I need to do this again. Any Youtube or similar?

 

If I should continue with the meds, will it help to put it in the water? I can reduce his water down to a small amount, but I'm afraid it'll smell foul to him and he won't drink it.

 

Thanks again, this is a steep learning curve!

don't put it in the water because budgies barely drink any and it will dilute the medications.

continue to do what you are doing even though it dribbles down the side I am sure some is still getting down his throat.

 

glad to hear they are feeling better.

It may not be water-soluble as well.

Just keep doing as you are, sounds like it's working.

Look up crop tubing on you tube.