Tag Archives: parakeet

Chester budgie is unwell

When we returned from our vacation, Chestina the parakeet didn’t look too good. She had terrible itching and feather loss around the eyes, a dirty vent, and generally appeared ragged. Her head feathers had some kind of yellow material on them. I was concerned that she might have early stage scaly face, a mite infestation that’s a common budgie illness. We took her to the vet, and a physical examination revealed a serious abnormality, so we agreed to pay for X-rays. (Crazy bird parents!)

It turns out that her body cavity is full of tissue, and her belly and digestive tract have been pushed down out of position. She is having trouble breathing, and trouble digesting food. The yellow on her face is from her regurgitating to try and clear the way to digest her meals.

It’s probably some sort of cancerous growth on the liver or some other internal organ. There’s a very faint chance that it’s merely a bad inflammation from some internal bacterial infection. The vet suggested that euthanizing her was an option to consider. I wasn’t ready to give up, though, so I have antibiotics to dose her with for the next week or so.

Chances aren’t good, though. She’s spending her time fluffed up and wanting to sleep. If there’s no improvement by midweek, it’s probably going to be time to send her to the big outback in the sky.

Here’s a photo of her in happier days:

Chester budgie

She’s not even 5 years old. I really expected her to live longer. If there’s any consolation in this situation, it’s that there’s really nothing we could have done about this. It’s just cruel random fate.

It’s not all fun and tweeting

For Christmas, we got the budgies a new toy. It dispenses clean white paper in a long strip, so they can chew and shred it. Since they finished demolishing their Xmas tree last night, I put the new toy in the cage.

As soon as he got a good look at it, Chester went into a full scale panic attack. He was flying frantically back and forth, shedding feathers. Lola followed Chester’s lead and panicked too, though she clearly wasn’t sure what exactly she was supposed to be panicking about. I had to hurriedly take the toy back out and hide it away.

As soon as I opened the cage doors again, they both came out and demanded to sit on my shoulders in the office for comfort. Chester’s still a bit jumpy, and unfortunately unlike Lola he hasn’t worked out that I don’t like having my ear preened.

So, looks like I’ll have to introduce the new toy really gradually… Probably starting by hanging it up just outside the cage for a week or so for Chester to get used to it.

Lola the budgie in HD

YouTube has started offering HD video. I’m not sure it’s really HD, but it’s way better than the crappy pixelated video they used to offer.

I re-encoded the video of our new parakeet meeting Chester for the first time. I’ve uploaded it in HD. The result is much clearer. Now to re-do all my other movies…

For anyone else hoping to do the same, the magic settings for QuickTime / iMovie are: 1280×720 progressive, MPEG-4 H.264 1024kbps, AAC 224kbps. It takes a while for YouTube to work on the video before the "watch in HD" link becomes available.

The ‘keet now has a name: Lola.

Antipodean avian addenda

Baby girl had her first bath, after Chester showed her how.

Although she’s hand-tame, she still has trust issues–if she’s in the cage and doesn’t want to come out, she’ll run away and hide in the corner when you approach. Ah well, eventually she’ll learn that I don’t do the "grab the bird and make it come out" thing.

I got another play gym, a larger one. I also cleared enough space on my desk that I can put both of them next to each other. I’m hoping both ‘keets will spend the afternoon with me.

She’s eating well; in fact, she seems to spend a lot more time eating than Chester does. She already looks larger than when we got her, especially in the evenings when she’s content and fluffed up.

She has reintroduced Chester to the joys of sitting on my shoulders, which was wonderful until they decided to stop preening each other and preen me instead. I guess I need to carefully remove any random neck or ear hairs, and make sure I’ve shaved recently…

We still need a name for her, so suggestions are welcomed. Something cute and slightly comical, that works well as a counterpart to "Chester". Perhaps a name related to green-and-yellow-ness, or to climbing and clowning.

New budgie, day 2

This morning I put some seed on a piece of paper so she could "forage". She seems to prefer eating that way.

I let both birds out. Today they are getting on well. They just sat together for about 10 minutes, with Chester quietly preening the new girlie. However, the only place where she felt secure enough for that was on my shoulder, snuggled against the back of my neck. Nevertheless, it seems clear to me now that they’re going to be good friends.

New girl also loves playing with my earrings. She hopped onto the side of my cereal bowl and had a taste, but wasn’t too impressed with the Shredded Wheat.

Now Chester’s over on the play gym by the window, and girlie is snuggling my neck and preening.

Whoever trimmed her flight feathers did a pretty savage job. She can’t do more than fall like a stone. Oh well, they’ll grow back, and as with Chester, we’ll let her keep them if she stays well behaved and safe.

Even parity

We got a call from Gallery of Pets saying that they had taken delivery of two hand-raised budgies. We drove up yesterday evening to check them out. We came home with a new bird, a small temporary cage, some new toys, and some new veggie-enriched food.

The new bird is very young, barely fully-fledged. Her cheek patches are still stick feathers, and her vent is bare. She seems to be a climber. Because she was reared by a small breeder, she’s already hand-tame and used to finding food in a cage, which should allow us to start introducing the two birds this week rather than having to tame her first.

She’s much more active than Chester was when we first got him, less scared of her new environment.

Photos and video on Flickr!

(Note that in general, if you get a new bird you should quarantine it for 30 days in case it has any illness that can be passed on to the rest of your flock. In this case, since new ‘keet is from an independent breeder and the same store, seems good and healthy, and Chester is robustly healthy too, we’re risking early introduction.)

Budgie update

Chester has continued to be well-behaved, so we’ve let him keep his flight feathers. He flies around, but he lands in places we’ve taught him are safe–windowsills, his play gym, and so on.

He now likes to come out of his cage most days. He’ll typically want to sit with me for an hour or so when I’m working.

Weekends, we’ve been sitting on our back deck with him, by taking his cage outside. Sunlight is good for parakeets: they are tetrachromat and can see ultraviolet, so it helps their mood. Also, when they preen, they spread a chemical from their preening gland on their feathers; sunlight then causes a reaction which produces vitamin D, which they then lick back up next time they preen.

As far as training goes, Chester will now fly to my arm when I call him. He’s also good about being taken back to his cage when necessary.

We’ve purchased a larger cage, a flight cage big enough for 3 budgies. We’re going to get him a budgie friend. Also, a lamp with a daylight bulb for winter, when it’s too cold to spend time outside.

Pet angst

Once Chester had finished his molt, he began growing new a lot of new feathers. This included his flight feathers.

The flight feathers are the outermost 6 feathers on the trailing edge of each wing. When the bird has his wings folded on his back, they stick out at the bottom . If the flight feathers are clipped back so that they no longer protrude beneath the wing when it’s folded, then when the wing is unfolded the bird can’t gain enough lift to gain altitude.

In other words: with clipped flight feathers, a budgie can fly downwards, but can’t fly up. A bird with a full set of flight feathers is referred to as "flighted".

The question of whether a companion bird should be flighted is somewhat controversial . It’s said that being flighted makes a bird more confident. On the other hand, a house can be a dangerous place for a fully flighted bird.

My feeling was that so long as Chester’s flying didn’t become problematic, and he continued to be well behaved enough that we could keep him safe, he could keep his flight feathers.

Sadly, it didn’t work out that way. Last week his flight feathers got long enough that he was able to demonstrate his ability to fly up to ceiling level. When he landed on the floor, I bent down and offered my hand so he could step up to safety, which he had been trained to do and had always done in the past. He gave me a look as if to say "Screw you, human, I can fly !" and took off.

He flew around the kitchen. He flew into the utility room. He flew back out onto the windowsill above the sink. It became clear that he could easily end up on top of the kitchen cabinets, down the back of the fridge, behind the washing machine, or in the sink disposal. This was not good for him or us.

So regretfully, we took him to the vet and had his wings clipped again. It is, of course, a totally painless process. He was fluffing his feathers and enjoying the car ride by the time we were driving home. But for the time being at least, he’s grounded. He can make short hopping flights, but no soaring around the ceiling fan.

Ironically, he loves his cage so much that if we were willing to let him spend his life in the cage, he probably wouldn’t make any effort to come out, and we could let him stay flighted. It’s because we want him to come out and have a rich and stimulating life that he needs to be clipped for the time being.