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.

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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

What have the budgies been up to?

[caption id="attachment_1854" align="alignleft" width="595" caption="Do you think those budgies in there would like to come out to play?"]
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[caption id="attachment_1855" align="alignleft" width="595" caption="Roswell: Why would you take a photo of me from this angle, you loony?"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1856" align="alignleft" width="595" caption="Hector, Do you think I could lay eggs in that compartment below?"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1857" align="alignleft" width="510" caption="I was dozing and you woke me just to take a photo?"][/caption]

 

Fly my pretty!

Got a great photo of little Lilek flying towards me yesterday.

It makes him look a little more chunky than he is cos his wings are behind him and it makes them look short.

Look at the eager expression on his little chops :)

[caption id="attachment_1848" align="alignleft" width="595" caption="Dumpling...coming through...make room!"][/caption]

 

Brave budgies? - I think not.

The new toy - a wonderful ladder with lots of colourful things and nice wood to chew - has been here for a couple of weeks now and the budgies have barely been near it!

I have tried putting it in the following places:

inside a cage, stretched from side to side, hanging down from the main mirror on the wall, on top of a cage, across the front of a cage, hanging down the front of a cage.

It's been mostly ignored and feared.

The closest they have got so far to it is Lilek biting some of the blue plastic chains when I have dangled them in front of him.

They can be such scardy birds at times. If I was a budgie (which I am not, I think) I would love this toy!

The contrived tree rends a healthy workload.









 

 

Hector and Abbie

Hector and Abbie have got increasingly close over the last few weeks. The little blue terror can be quite rough sometimes but she gives as good as she gets and is not scared of any of the nine boys!

I even saw them preen eachother in a brief moment of tenderness yesterday, but of course they stopped and pretended it hadn't happened as soon as I got the camera out and then it ran out of power!

Rest in Peace Custard - you will be missed

Sadly my little Yellow Pied budgie passed away yesterday. She was a sweet little bird and will be greatly missed. She was great friends with Roswell and Jerry although very shy had come out of her shell a lot in the past few months.

We're not entirely sure what the problem was but suspect a tumour and internal bleeding from this.

I held her in my hand and spoke to her as she passed, she did not suffer.

We miss you little Custard, you will not be forgotten.

NO Don't go out again!

I have been out three times already today - once to the Post Office, then to Mudchute Train Station and then to see the Doctor, each time I got squawked at by Dumpling for leaving. He even tries to climb into my shoe as I am putting it on and flaps his wings at the Velcro as I pull it together.

When I got back from the third trip he had decided that I wasn't allowed to go out again and attached himself firmly to my foot, determined not to let me move!

He is one determined little blighter isn't he!

Who da Pretty Boyz?

It's a nice morning for admiring yourself in the mirror don't you think?

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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Just the two of us, you and I

It's good to have a budgie buddy.

Blueboy and Hector are very cute together, they preen, feed and take care of each other. Budgies are sociable little fellows being flock creatures and enjoy each others company immensely.

Right now they are chasing one and another around the budgie playground, Blueboy stops to give a budgie "high five Kissy-face" to Hector now and again and then they are on their merry way.

All day is play-time o clock with these two.

I'm just a girl

What a lovely sunny bright day it is today, and HOT (22 degrees Celcius ... in April!) I am so glad (and I am sure that the birds are too) that we made the Window Screen last summer so that we can fully open a window and let the breeze and and allow some air to circulate. We need to make one for the other front room window so that we can have the full experience!

I am sprouting some seeds for the budgies - Alfalfa Sprouts, so that they can have something tasty and nutritious to eat. It'll take a couple of days but it's worth it and costs next to nothing!

The husband kindly put the budgie play-ground structure back together for me (well for the budgies really) today so I took advantage of this by pegging Basil to it for them and they enjoyed this a lot. Especially Snowy as he did what he always does, climbs up, nibbles on the stalks and throws the leaves to the floor!

Had to put a huge pink water bottle in Budgingham Palace as the little blue one kept leaking and soaking the newspaper, I am sure that this had absolutely nothing to do with the budgies penchant for climbing all over it and biting it. So far the pink monstrosity hasn't leaked so fingers and wings crossed that it stays that way.

The birds had a very sleepy afternoon after their Basil Munch but they are now in full evening song - today's song of choice on Kerrang is "I'm just a girl" by No Doubt!

Monty seems to particularly like the lyric "Oh I've had it up to here" :)

Photos..

Sky talks to a young lady

I was talking on the phone and I just caught something moving on my desk out of the corner of my eye. It turns out that Sky has taken a shine to the clay painted budgie. It's strange really because all of the other birds are scared of it.

He was dancing round her, showing off, really amusing to watch :)

Custard moves in with Roswell and Jerry, Dumpling on a Swing, Double Trouble

Custard has now moved into Budgingham Palace with Roswell and Jerry. It seemed such a shame to keep her away from Roswell at night seeing as she seems to dote on him so much so we decided not to!

I made up a little girly corner for her with her Olympic rings and a pink mirror although so far Jerry seems to love it a bit more than she does!

So far so good although night times are awkward as Jerry likes to leap about a lot before he settles down and this unsettles Custard. No danger of moving Jerry out though as he does this wherever he is put the little naughty Green boy. Besides he's Roswell's best mate so it would be a trifle unfair.

Lilek AKA Dumpling has been playing on the Parrot toy swing that arrived with him all those months ago, we have also seen Monty and Roswell take a liking to it.

I caught a frightening photo of Lilek earlier, it looked like there were two of him - two "Dumpling's" nipping at my toes would be too much even for me to tolerate!

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!

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Pouting, Preening and messing about

Lots of photos as I managed to find some old batteries in the "spares" pot that actually powered my intensive juice-sucking camera for long enough to take a few shots and upload to my PC.

1/ Oooh Roswell aren't you big and strong

Custard admires the big Grey fella.

2/ What is this stuff?

Jerry dives in and makes faces at the treats laid on for the fiends.

3/ Monty knew it was time to give up smoking when the munchies had almost run out

I want the worlds biggest bag of crisps man!

4/ Sky is just hanging around

Being nosey!

5/ I am waiting for you

Lilek waits with intent on my husbands chair - hoping for some toast crumbs.

6/ A Moulty Custard

Custard looks a little ragged but still very pretty and fluorescent.

7/ Custard singing

If I sing a song then Roswell might come and pay attention to me.

8/ Preen me Blue-boy

Hector makes his demands clear.

There aint 'alf been some changes

I have been in hospital for five days and my wonderful husband has been taking care of the gang for me.

He has also come up with some innovative things to make both of our lives easier.

Layout changes

My long suffering husband has had the ingenious idea of using newspaper on top of the tiles on the cages (tucked in at the sides) which is saving no end of time and mess - at the end of each evening I usually clean the tiles which is a painstaking task. Now I just take off the newspaper and throw it away to be replaced in the morning by fresh paper :)

Also Hector and Custard no longer eat in their own cage separate from the other 7, they have been firmly integrated into the group, with the help of one small ramekin for budgie 9 to eat from as we only have 8 seed trough places. We think that the budgie that gets number 9 seed trough is very lucky though cos it holds slightly more!

Social changes

Blue-boy and Hector:

Blue-boy and Hector have become firm friends, they are inseparable, they hang out together all or most of the time. Blu-boy has taken to "pinging" the cage bars with his little beak to get attention. Hhis attention is mostly required from Hector although my husband said he walked past the bird cage late at night to check up on them and he heard a little "ping" then too, Blue-boy was letting him know he knew he was there!

NEWSFLASH: I also saw Blue-boy preening Hectors head earlier today which was really sweet.

Since Blue-Boy and Hector struck up this friendship my husband says that Blue-boy has been sleeping far less and enjoying jolly japes with Hector instead, I am really happy about this as Blue-boy tended to spend a lot of time on his own before.

Custard and Roswell:

Custard has formed an obsession with Roswell, "she" (we're not clear yet as here cere is pink because of the mutation she is, we may never know for sure) follows him around for most of the day "Ooh aren't you big and strong Roswell " she murmurs in her best small lady voice.

Custard along with Monty are our smallest birds and Roswell is the biggest - so opposites really do attract. Luckily it is not al one way as I have seen them bashing beaks and singing together too!

The photos today are going to me a bit rubbish as my batteries have run out and the rechargeables take a about a day for 30 minutes of power - hopefully some decent ones tomorrow!

Monty has been vying for attention, landing on my husbands arm and nipping him and then chasing Jerry away when he tries to land near. Monty does some little spins in the air he's a real agile little budgie.

Lilek was very pleased to see my feet for the first time in 5 days and made light work of "wooing" them, I had to put my shoes on in the end.

Snowy still loves the green ball in the soap dish and last night he was singing to it, chasing it around and biffing it with his beak.

Sky is loud and confident, likes to play with most of the other budgies on a Rota-basis, likes to spread himself around a bit - at the moment he's interrupting Blue-Boy and Hectors nap by trying to engage Hector in a beak to beak!

They are all doing very well, my husband did a great job looking after them in my absence.

I wasnt able to post yesterday but just to let you know it was Roswell and Snowy's first birthday (they're not really one but it's the date that we got them, I think they were 4-6 months old). Paul gave the fiends some millet to chomp on in aid of this momentous occasion, I found the evidence of it on the floor when I returned home. Note to self: Must train fiends to sweep floors.

Thank you Brian for supplying them, they being us much joy.

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Monty and Eric painting by my sister

It's coming up to the anniversary of Eric's passing (23rd January) my sister kindly offered to paint Eric and Monty for me - this is from one of my favourite photos of them too - Monty looking in charge and Eric looking like a little puffin :)

Rest in Peace Eric, I am sure you have your favourite swing to play on and lots of millet to eat.

Cage invasion!

Custard came out to investigate as Roswell, Monty, Jerry and Snowy came to see the newbies in their abode. We know that Roswell and Jerry probably just wanted to steal some food.

Monty and Snowy however were genuinely curious about the two new arrivals.

Actually I think that is Blue-boy staring into Custards eyes, as Hector was off flying around with Sky - the two seemed to hit it off immediately - Hector calls to Sky to come over and play!

The two new budgies Hector and Custard have a very different calling sound to the previous 7 birds, they actually sound a bit like Magpies and make a sort of chuck chuck sound. They also sing differently, sometimes it can sound like a Spectrum loading up a game by tape or dial up in the early days struggling to connect to the internet.

What is that terrifying bird?

The budgies have been freaked out by a pigeon on the balcony.

Seconds earlier they were all singing and squawking away happily. The room fell silent and we wondered what was up - what fresh horror had scared the poor little birds. I looked out of the balcony window to find a pigeon strutting up and down the balcony and stopping to coo every 10 seconds or so.

They were transfixed for about five minutes while the pigeon put on a proud show for them, he then flew to the rooftops opposite and sat back to stare in the window for about 20 minutes.

Was he calling them to come out and play?

At some point I am sure I fill find Roswell cooing, strutting and entertaining the others, either that or a pigeon will fly up to the window - squawk loudly and then hop off.

Welcome to Hector and Custard

More news!

We have two new budgie additions to our flock a normal blue and a small yellow pied which we have decided to name Hector and Custard.

The budgies previous owners (a lovely lady called Maria and her husband!) weren't able to devote enough time to them as they both work full-time and wanted someone to have them that could cater to their every budgie whim so here they are!

They almost got the names of Chelsea football players as their previous owners husband was a Chelsea fan, so they could have been called Lampard and Terry but they have had a lucky escape :)

We happen to have a cage spare that was slightly larger than the one they came in so we have cleaned it and put some new stuff in for them (bell balls, a mirror and a dangly hanging hoopy toy thing with a bell on the end) and of course millet which they both gobbled up while we were not looking. Millet eating seems to be private business for the moment..

Hector and Custard certainly seem very healthy but are currently in isolation from the other birds while they acclimatise to their new surroundings and settle in a bit. They have been calling to the other budgies and squawking at them from afar so we think they are going to fit in very well.

We are informed that Hector likes his swing so we made sure to transfer this to the new cage, also a new wooden swing which custard immediately leapt on and off of.

Here is a picture I took of them earlier, it's not the best because I didn't want to frighten them.

By the way we're not sure of Custard's sex yet as he/she has a pink cere and is a recessive pied.

Watch this space.. :)