Progress of a Blueboy

Blue boy has recently moved in with Roswell and Jerry. He didn't have much to pack but he did bring with him nightly millet rations. He, Jerry and Roswell enjoy sharing these in the evening as a team-bonding experience.

It was decided that Hector and Abbie were being a bit mean to Blueboy, pushing him off the perch and not letting him eat. He was very reluctant to leave but now he enjoys his new digs.

Roswell and Jerry however are a lot kinder, of course there is a little shuffling about to get the best position but in the end they all eat happily side-by-side.

Blueboy is sleeping a lot better too - actually I have no idea whether he'd sleeping but he's calmer and quieter at night. Much less stressed.

Yesterday I witnessed Blueboy sing twice, Very small songs and quite short but it's the first time he has sang since September.

Each morning Lilek tries to bash beaks with a reluctant Blueboy. It's good that other budgies are trying to socialise with him.

A new toy was bitten a bit the other day but Blueboy says it wasn't him. Sometimes I wonder if they realise that I want them to bite these things and play with them or they think that they are being naughty!

Fun frolics and drinking your meds

Blueboy likes me to know that he's drinking his calcivet. He shouts at me til I watch him then has a nip of water and flies off squawking!

Lilek is getting cheekier than ever. I put the budgies seed to one side while I had some egg out for them and Lilek found the seed and tucked in!

Here is a photo of the budgies relaxing in the evening for your enjoyment, aren't they colourful :)

And another of the cheeky Lilek..

The Blueboy Ultimatum

My little Blue fella Blueboy has been through the mill recently, ever since October he has been very poorly.

First of all I thought it might be Canker, so the flock got the treatment. Blueboy No better.

Then because of his being unable to eat on his own and constantly neck-stretching I thought maybe Air sac mites. Treated with Ivermectin. No Better.

So I took him to the PDSA and got some Baytril in case he had a respiratory infection. No Better.

I also bought iodine and added it to his water in case it was a goiter, he doesn't use the iodine block at all.

At one point he was not eating on his own and we had to syringe feed him crushed pellets, Guardian Angel and apple juice. Then he started to eat millet so I put some in his cage every night to make sure he ate (still am).

We took him to the Avian Vet and she said that he had Aspergilliosis so gave us fungizone meds to give him once a day for two weeks.  He had his last treatment yesterday. He hated being caught and syringe fed every evening but we got good at it and did it in less than 10 minutes.

He is still neck stretching and is very scared and nervous at nights and sleeps during the day. I have taken to leaving the cover on his cage at night slightly open and he's been better the past two nights. Less nervous and noisy.

I have been advised by the Birdcare Company (and have started him on Calcivet today) that it could be a calcium deficiency due to the following reasons:

Birdcare Company

"From what you have described it sounds like the bird is calcium deficient.  Calcium plays a huge role in the body.  

The first thing that you said, was that he wretches and stretches his neck a lot.  This can be a sign attributed to star gazing, which in turn is a sign of calcium deficiency.

The next thing that tipped the balance is that you said the bird is nervous, and excessive noise is being made.  Again this is a sign of calcium deficiency.

Another reason why I thought the problem is calcium deficiency is that your bird has a wheeze and a rattling breath.  There has been research done on some birds that have these sort of problems, and it has been found that it is due to calcium deficiency.  Birds do not make the mucous properly and also have a trouble coughing it out, this then gets infected and wheezing and rattling breath becomes apparent."

I asked What is Star Gazing?

I have noticed that he does this thing where he goes to the top of his cage and moves his head round one way and then the other, he has always done this.

Blueboy is one of our rehomed birds so we do not know of his history, we have had him for a year and two months.

Birdcare Company said

"From what you have asked, this sounds like star gazing.  It is a technical term for when birds look "over their shoulder".  It certainly sounds like a calcium deficiency that your bird has."

At the moment he's eating on his own and de-husking seed but could do with putting a little weight on.

I have high hopes for the Calcium restoring him to full health.

Special thanks to my friend for loaning me the money to take Blueboy to the vet. You know who you are and I will pay you back.  Slowy but steadily.

Also thank you to the Ebay seller that conned me out of £60 I paid for a netbook. I got a refund and it helped to buy more things for Blueboy. My Blueboy is worth more than a netbook.

------------------------------------------

Money spent on Blueboy so far:

Blueboys health: Priceless.

Item	Amount
Medicine and consult	£68.35
Aspergilliosis meds	£25.00
F10	£9.43
Humidifier	£9.99
Calcivet	£10.25
Probiotic	£7.75
Total	£130.77

We took him to the PDSA he escaped from the box, actually hatched his way out and sat on top of the box - don't worry he was also inside a Ferplast plastic pet carrier:

 Here he is from earlier today

Din Dins for the Fiends

The fiends are currently dining on a lovely nutritious meal of Sweetcorn niblets, Broccoli and Carrot enriched with sprinklings of Harrison's bird pellets, Avian seaweed and a tiny sprinkle of Guardian Angel.

I expect to find tiny sweetcorn husks all over the lino in about oooh five minutes!

Gotta love 'em, but they certainly do keep me busy.

Treats and sunshine

It's a lovely sunny day and I thought I would treat the fiends with a big plate of their favourite food - sweetcorn!

I hacked the nibblets off the cob and washed them. Then I smashed up some pine nuts and harrisons bird pellets. Sprinkled this mixture on the corn with some avian seaweed. I can get the fiends to eat nutritious stuff this way that they would ordinarily ignore - sneaky huh!

They love it and have no idea how good for them it is. Poor little fiends :)

I gave them some basil too so don't feel too sorry for them. These birds are treated very well indeed, they eat like kings. Of course Monty is the only true king!

Getting the fiends to eat their vitamins

I just gave the budgies a big plate of vegetables and egg and they are currently tucking in and flinging it everywhere with glee.

The vegetable mess contains the following:

The Bird Pellets and Pine Nuts are sprinkled into the mix just to make sure that any fussy birdies still get their vits!)

Sweetcorn niblets (rich in vitamin B)
Broccoli grated (rich in vitamins B, C and K)
Carrot grated (A, K)
Egg chopped (A,D,E,K)
Chopped Pine Nuts (B,E,K)
Crushed Harrisons Superfine Bird pellets (All manner of healthy things)

A social Dumpling

Dumpling has been socialising and playing with Roswell. They happily ran back and forth on the perch, played kissy-face and bashed beaks for about five minutes this morning.

Big step for Dumpling (aka Lilek) because he's not the most sociable or tolerant budgie, when we first got him he used to chitter and raise his beak at the other birds if they so much as got within a whisker of him.

Dumpling currently thinks he's a human, we're hoping that this is a step towards the self-realisation that he is in fact a cute feathery little bird and not a large scary human.

Here are the two boys mucking around.

Blue-boy and Hector get comfy new perches

A very kind person on the budgerigars.co.uk forum made me some new perches for Blueboy and Hectors cage as they had those horrible plastic ridges ones and none of the other long wooden natural perches that I have fit in their cage - I have two Hagen Visions and one Ferplast-a-like cage and they are a totally different length, width and everything, and some of the bars are veritcal.

I gave the wrong measurements for the perches and so they were too long (oops) so my husband kindly shortened them for me yesterday and we put them in the Blue budgies cage. Blueboy was first to try the perches out and they got his enthusiastic nod of approval.

The great thing about them compared to the rope perch I had temporarily put in as their bedtime roosting place is that they are long enough for Blueboy to run up and down pinging the bars at night-time as he does -
ordering me to cover him and Hector so that they can go to sleep (or whatever little budgies do when they are covered at night, who really knows?)

Here are some photos of Blueboy exploring the cage and also a video of Blueboy and Hector saying good morning to eachother and then flying off!







 

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Happy Valentines day!

Today I have made the birds a lovely egg, broccoli, Dill and carrot heart shaped food plate thingy for dinner. So far they are a bit scared of it and only Monty has ventured over to have a look.

They're tired and moulty so I thought I would mix up something special for them - there is more in the fridge for tomorrow - I am sure they'll be over soon to sample it!

It's been a bit of a crap day today - if you go on over to my personal blog (http://mariannemarlow.wordpress.com) you can read all about it.

For now here are some pics!

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Boisterous fiends splashing about and a dumpling being naughty as usual

The birds had a little bath-ikins yesterday which they seemed to enjoy tremendously - especially Monty. We have a little shallow saucer which my husband thought might make a good "bird bath" so I put a little tepid water in and Monty came bounding over and jumped in it - look at the picture below you can see that he was very enthusiastic about it!

I don't know if I have mentioned this before, I have a confession to make - I call Lilek "Dumpling" - it's his slightly rounded shape and the way he waddles along - of course I mean it affectionately and cutely. He also dives at our plates of food whenever he gets the chance.

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner are spent fending him off of toast and pasta - he actually landed on my sandwich yesterday and the day before got some ketchup on his tail from waddling through my husbands food.

I know that he just wants to eat with us as he sees us as part of the flock which is fair enough, so yesterday I sliced up some apple and fed him some from my plate (not the same bits as I was eating obviously) as we watched TV and he seemed vaguely satisfied with that, although I am not sure he liked the apple and he still tried to eat my sandwich!

Maybe if I only ate budgie food there wouldn't be a problem...pass the trill and babycorn!

[
[gallery]

Monty in a bowl

I think Monty likes the Jungle Munchies, he's sitting in the bowl so that none of the other birds can get to them.. :)

It's the fruity oats he's after, they all seem to love 'em. They give Monty the energy he needs to be able to command the troops satisfactorily for the day.

Seven birds eating breakfast

It's not easy to get breakfast organised when you have seven hungry beaks to feed. Especially when they don't all stay in the same place at the same time, sometimes it's possible to get a good photo though.

Yum yum say the birds.

Basil makes my birds nuts

I am sure that basil is like some sort of wonderdrug that makes budgies go crazy-insane. Monty is currently singing to his food (the aforementioned basil) dancing around like a loon, not sure what song he's singing but maybe it goes something like this:

"basil basil, you are so green and tasty and leafy and I want to bite bite bite you"

I am beginning to understand the inner workings of a budgies mind.

Will someone please tell Roswell that there are lots of interesting things to bite here such as cuttlefish, iodine blocks, branches etc and that he does not need to bite the budgie playground every few minutes - it's really noisy because the wood is quite hard and we're frightened it will hurt his poor beak.

Now all four budgies are making a swiss cheese style pattern in the remaining basil leaves and totally ignoring the fig that I had cunningly placed beside it in yet another failed attempt to get them to eat fruit..

Wall of Dill-iciousness

We're a bit worried that this might make Monty have 'Nam flashbacks and bring on his PTSD but we decided it was worth the risk. Today Dill has been pegged to the new "adventure wall" to see what the budgies make of it. So far it's been flown over by four very nervous budgies, then picked at and stood on to show it who is boss. I even got a photo of Monty and Jerry standing together, being "almost" friendly.. Enjoy!

Four Sticky Yellow-faced Budgies

We thought we were going to have to lock the fiends in for the day as we had workmen arriving, so we gave them some corn which I ingeniously managed to wedge onto lolly-sticks and the husband hung up in the cage on a wooden clothes peg. I also draped Basil all over the cage too to try and keep them amused. Snowy took great pleasure in chewing the stalks so that all the leaves fell to the floor of the cage and all of the budgies now have sticky yellow faces and beaks. Might have to give them a rest from corn tomorrow and wash their little faces with a flannel, mummy style :) Budgingham Palace looks like a tropical rainforest

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Budgies LOVE corn on the cob

Yes they had fun today nibbling on their first ever corn on the cob.. lots of battles over it and of course Monty claimed it as his. YUM YUM Look at this, all that is left - not a kernel unnibbled..

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New member of the flock!

It’s a clay budgie that my mum brought me back from Eastbourne, it’s a third of the size of a real budgie and it’s a female, but my four feisty boys are petrified of it :)

With the absence of my camera (husband is borrowing it) today the photos are going to be a bit cack, sorry!

 

I’m evil evil evil as can be, don’t mess around with me

 

Some lovely vegetables to try and distract the boys from fighting and cussing each other

 

What shall I try first Monty, corn or Mange Tout?

Did you know that they buy the expensive stuff for us, they don’t eat any?

 

 

Hey, that Mange Tout and corn is the same colour as me!

 

 

Basil, you have not defeated the Montyraptor, I’ll be back.

 

Mmmm this Trill is GOOOOOOOOD!

 

 

I might jump in this and roll about in a minute

 

 

Must ask them to get some differently coloured foods

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We’re all friends now

The budgies are getting along a lot better today, right now they’re all on the budgie shelf rack snoozing and preening.

Monty even took some time to stand next to Jerry for a while and sing (show off)

Hello Green one, it’s King Monty, pleased to meet you

I wanna be in the photo too. CHEEESEE!

This is most unseemly, can’t a bird sing and poop in peace?

Daily Pose from Roswell

 

Someone’s clipped some basil on our play centre. Better nibble it off quick!

VEGETABLES….Mange Tout, Carrot, Corn and Courgette..