Updates on all of the budgies
It’s been quite a while since I updated the blog. We had a new non-feathered member join the household in March, so things are very hectic.
Custard still still continues to enjoy life, despite his liver condition. He’s moved into Hector’s cage at night time, as this means he gets the large seed trough mostly to himself and I can slip in a little piece of millet to try and keep his weight up. I still give him a beak trim every 2-3 weeks and he eats okay. He was never a budge to be stick trained, but I am able to get him to step on the playground if I hold it up and then transfer him to the cage doors, he will usually hop in at night time.
Hector is cage bound due to his inability to fly. But every evening while I clean his cage, I transfer him to Blithe and Basil’s lair and Blithe will preen and sometimes feed Hector. Hector tolerates Blithe in small doses. Blithe can be overwhelming! Earlier today I left Hector’s cage door open for a few minutes to let him have visitors. I looked up to see him outside of his cage on the rope perch, squawking and flapping at me. I almost had a heart attack as I leapt forth and rescued him.
Blithe is continuing to be the energetic bundle of fun that he is. He feeds and preens Hector through the cage bars. If I dare to try and preen Hector this way, Blithe will fly over and bite me. Blithe enjoys sitting on the swing by the window and singing. In fact he enjoys singing anywhere, the playground, the rack on the wall, in front of any mirror.
Lucy and Polly have been spending lots of time together. United in their love of George (Hefner), they sit in Polly’s cage and either chew things, sing to the mirrors or just sit around on swings preening their beautiful selves. Lemon shares Polly’s cage at night times, they tolerate each other well most of time time, but I wouldn’t say that they are friends. Lucy shares a cage with George at night time.
Basil and Lemon have become firm friends. When Basil arrived here with George, he eventually forged a very strong friendship with Roswell. When Roswell passed away, Basil was a little depressed and didn’t really play with anyone is particular. Lemon arrived with a pretty bad case of scalyface and was in quarantine for 4 weeks, having treatment before he met the others. Basil and Lemon sit together and Lemon feeds him. Lemon is the dominant partner in the relationship, so much so that Basils cere seems to look like a hens. When he arrived all those years ago, it was bright blue.
George is affectionately known here as George Hefner. There are two hens here and George feeds them both. They both only have eyes for him. They don’t fight over him, as long as when he’s sitting with them, he feeds them equally, or he may get a biff from Lucy.
Hector is unable to fly due to possible arthritis, which means that he is confined to his cage. He used to come out and sit with me a lot, but these days doesn’t seem to want to.
However, he does enjoy the odd visitor. So we had the idea of putting a few small perches on the outside of his cage so that friends can visit him.
Blithe sometimes comes and preens Hectors head and occasionally I let him in to sit with Hector for a while. Blithe quickly becomes annoyed with being caged and runs back and forth on a perch, so I have to let him out. But with the visiting perch, Blithe can sit on the outside, bash the bars and preen Hector without getting too frustrated.
Other visitors include Basil and Polly. Polly has a fascination with Hector, so enjoys sitting with him.
Basil has always liked Hector but can’t seem to get the hang of it when Hector asks to be preened by tipping his head.
Here is Basil sitting with Hector.
It’s 8 years since we rehomed Hector on January 1st 2011 at the age of 2.
Happy Birthday little blue fella. Not looking a day over 3 year old.
Lucy managed to hurt herself somehow last month. We came home to find that she was bleeding all over the front room and one side of her face was covered in blood.
After managing to catch her (a feat in itself) I found that she had chipped a tiny part off of the side of her beak. I am guessing that she flew into something in one of her mad flying fits.
I cleaned the wound several times, but she kept rubbing the injury on perches and making it bleed.
We had a closer inspection of the wound and found that it was slightly swollen in a couple of places and possibly infected. My guess was that she would need a course of medication. A vet visit was in order.
The closest vet to us is not Avian but is able to prescribe baytril (an antibiotic). He consulted with an avian vet by phone, sending on some photos of Lucy’s face. Then it was decided that it could be a tumour, or possible infection, baytril was prescribed for a 5 day course.
We were to come back if the wound was not healing after 1 week.
Lucy did not enjoy the medication but did seem to take some pleasure in giving both of us some nasty bites!
Lucy is almost totally healed, I was sure that it was not a tumour as it only appeared after her accident. We weigh the budgies once a week and I would have noticed it if it had appeared before.
She’s going through a moult now and is very grumpy, but much better!
See attached before, during and after photos.
After a period of quarantine (4 weeks) so that he could overcome scalyface mites, Lemon joined the gang in July.
He has fast made friends with Blithe and Basil.
Lemon is such a sweet natured bird and easy to get along with for the other birds.
He is also stick trained, which means it’s not too hard to get him in his cage for bedtime.
I think he’s enjoying his time with us 🙂
Polly and Lucy have just enjoyed a bath in some wet coriander. It’s more fun to play with food than eat it 🙂
Lately, Polly seems to have become very interested in Hector.
When he’s laying down on his shelf, she sidles up to the bars and spends ages staring in at him – much to his annoyance.
Also, if he’s eating seed, she bangs the seed trough (that he’s standing on) up and down and try and get his attention.
Let’s hope that her beau George doesn’t get jealous!
Sky has been with us for more than 8 years (since 5/10/10), he’s known all of the other budgies that we have had, except Eric. Before he came to us he had not been out of his cage, he was 4 years old.
In the summer, Sky was diagnosed with Avian Gastric Yeast and was treated with a 10 day course of Amphotericin B.
Unfortunately he recently relapsed, losing lots of weight. This time, we were unable to get his weight up even though we syringe fed him, made boiled egg (normally a favourite) and gave him lots of tonic seed.
Last night, we lost him. When I knew he was about to pass, I help him in my hand, stroked his head and repeated that he was a good boy until the moment came.
Sky was 12 years and almost a month old. We’ll miss the way he zoomed around the room whistling loudly. Occasionally he’d shout at us if he wanted to land on us.
He also had a fondness for “playing” with the coloured balls in the soapdishes by the window.
Fly high little man, we wish you could have stayed longer.
Sky has been with us since 5th October 2010 and is 12 today.
Happy Birthday lovely boy!
Billybob came to us in December 2013 with his lifelong hen friend JoJo.
We noticed right away that JoJo would hardly ever let Billybob eat at the seed trough as they only had one in their original cage.
The cage was also meant for much larger birds, it had wide bar spacing and a huge java branch that Billybob and JoJo had trouble gripping. Their feet were slightly damaged due to this and they regularly lost grip and fell off their perches. Therefore we padded the bottom of the cage with a fluffy towel.
We gave their original cage away and moved them into a hagen vision cage, which we adapted with a series of rope perches, Y branches and platforms. Billybob also got his own small pot to eat from, this way JoJo couldn’t hog the seed. Billybob would always run over to his pot as soon as it was refilled, so that he could rifle through it for tasty morsels, in his case, oats.
Billybob wasn’t much for making friends and would prefer to spend most time on his own, chewing on oats or leather strings. He also liked to sit on the swings by the window. Occasionally he’d headbob with Sky, but Sky would chase him around the room afterwards and Billybob wasn’t the best flier.
Billybob was approximately 11 years and 4 months old when he passed away today. His poor feet and legs had completely stopped working 2 days before due to a stroke or seizure, he seemed to have given up and stopped eating today too.
We love you Billybob, thank you for coming to stay with us. I hope your reunion with JoJo is a happy one.
