Mr Snuggles and Phoenix Having Breakfast

Flock Dad got a new toy and tried it out while we were having breakfast with the Conures….

Please note …. Id just got out of the shower and…… I don’t usually talk like that….. that’s my birdy voice …. Hope you enjoy

PS….. Mr Snuggly is learning a trick….. video to follow

Gilbert Fighting and Biting and Meeper Update

Well Gilbert seems to be getting a little bit better..... hes getting some of his spirit back cuz he bit me today..!! Ive been keeping him away from the other birds incase he is contagious and feeding him baby bird food formula to try get some food down him. Ive seen him drinking and hes been pecking at some finely chopped broccoli shelled sunflower seeds some bits of egg biscuit and lots of grit.  Today i mixed a tiny bit of garlic oil and cider vinigar in the formula these are both supposed to be natural antibiotics and hopefully will help him fight off any bacterial infection.  All the birds in the Bird House look fine Big is still brooding her 5 eggs and nipping out for food n water when she needs to.  Im giving her extra egg food along with her veggies to try to keep her healthy without her man to feed her.  Dave is calling for Little..... but what can i do? He is close by the others but Petal and Big are both in the nest box most of the time so he only really has Bruce for company as well as Pedro and Eva the Conures....But he doesnt like them much since the fight!!

Pedro and Eva are eating loads and getting through a lot of oyster shell .... so maybe coming up to lay again.... i might have to invest in an incubator in case they dont brood properly again.... to have 6 fertile eggs the first time round was amazing.... and to actually manage to save 2 chicks without an incubator after the trauma the eggs went through is close to a miracle..... so id like to be prepared.  The chicks are doing well they weighed in at 7 and 14 grams on Wednesday Phoenix the big one has had his eyes beginning to open for a couple of days and Snuggly the little ones eyes just started today..... one thing i noticed tho...... they dont appear to have ear holes ..... and Kakariki ear hole are quite noticeable at a few days old.... i will keep an eye on the ear thing..!!! Phoenix has had a bit of a voice breaking thing and now squeeks more than meeps..... and has some tuffty fluff breaking through on his crop.... he still has a bald head tho and veins on it a bit like a Klingon... hes looking very dinosaurish! Snuggly is still looking sweet... but can stand up now and is feeding real well and likes curling up on my hand after a feed. Phoenix is very lively but also curls up for a sleep on me when he has worn himself out climbing about.  I caught Snuggly giving Phoenix a bunk up yesterday and he almost managed to escape the plastic tray they have been in inside the brooder...it might be time to rearrange it and give them a bit more room.  Will try to take some more photos later ... they are growing sooo fast!

Sad Day

Well for the last few days iv been trying to find the time to update the Blog with all the good news about how the Conure chicks are doing and then yesterday bad stuff kicked off again.  Firstly i went out to the Bird House to discover Gilbert sitting on the bottom of the cage... not that strange, he had been behaving a bit different over the last week by spending a lot of time in the nest box with Big who is sitting on 5 eggs.  I had thought that was because her last clutch hadnt been that successful losing 2 of her 4 chicks she hatched, and thought he was keeping an eye on her.... or that it has been really cold over the last week and he was helping her brood. Gilbert is normally a timid bird, well he doesnt like humans much but we have a mutual understanding .... he knows when im going to put something in the cage and moves out of the way and i speak to him respectfully (he is the Don of the bird house) but not try too hard to get him on side, and all was good.  His favorite place to sit looking all buff n hardcore was at the top of the cage quietly looking out checking every thing out.  So... on the floor? and not checking out his minions...? when i approached his penthouse he did nothing.... not complying to our mutual understanding.... I opened the big door and talking to him reached in expecting him to fly up .....but he didnt!  I picked him up and he didnt even bite..... now Gilbert has a good bite.... and as he doesnt like humans he lets you know... every time i have had to handle him he has managed to draw blood..... but this time ... nothing..... Realising something was badly wrong i wrapped him up in a bit of fleece i keep in the bird house for emergencies or covering nest boxes for extra warmth, and set up the travel cage one-handed... popped him in on a layer of fleece and whisked him off to the house.... moved the mountain of washing from the top of the dryer and snuggled him next to the radiator for warmth with water and some warm eggfood (his fav). 

So.... what was i doing? oh yeah i was going to clean out Big n Gilbert n Dave n Little's cages.... Back out to the bird house and when little comes out of the nest box to say hi, im really not very happy about how she looks.....Her abdomen is very red and very swollen to me obviously not right... she chats to me quietly n pops back into the nest box... Im worried ... so i go and check out a couple of books and look online reading about egg binding and start to worry even more .... to me it looked like 3 lumps... surly she couldnt have 3 eggs stuck inside ? I decide to bring her in check her out more closely and make her safe in the small pet pod... this is not good.... we decide to take her up to the Avian Vet call and get an appointment in a couple of hours time.... The Vet is lovely and takes a look at her and then starts to explain whats wrong..... its Acute Egg Peritonitis.... i wasnt sure what it was but it sounded bad..... as he explains it slowly sinks in that this is really bad and i start to anticipate that hes going to advise me to have her put to sleep... Basically she had an egg blocking her egg duct which had then filled up with partially formed eggs...and then still producing eggs her abdomen had filled up with what he described as scrambled egg... Little had nibbled a bit of cream cheese before we left and was chatting back to the phone in the waiting room... she was nibbling my finger through the holes in the pet pod and although she was obviously ill she seemed her normal self... so the decision to have her put to sleep was hard... she and her sister Big were my 1st ever chicks and Little had always been cheeky and tame..... but i had to do it... She would get worse and suffer and couldnt get better.  The Vet said he would giver her some gas before the injection and she wouldnt feel anything he brought her back wrapped in tissue and we buried her in the garden under a hibiscus bush.... Sad...

Little After A Bath

Little Being a bit nosey and checking out my camera

Little Trying her first call

Little such a character

Little was my only bird not to take off her plastic split leg ring.  She loved jewelry and nail varnish.

Breaking Out Meeper Number 2

Yesterday we started to get more worried about the second egg. It had started to pip the shell the day we first warmed them up but had not really moved on much since, and the tapping was getting quieter. The chick had made a small hole in the shell but only in one place and you could see it moving but not very much.  At midnight we decided we had to check it out. You have to be really careful doing this and  re-read the relevant section in a useful book I have. with the egg on a heat pad covered with kitchen towel and tweezers sterilised cotton buds and  sterile water at the ready Rich took charge of the tweezers and started peeling back some shell from the hole the chick had made. it was soon very obvious that the chick would not have got out on its own ...so we had made the right decision.  The membrane had dried out and looked like thin white paper stuck all over the chicks head with just the tip of a beak poking out through a tare, the chick could not actually move at all.  I dabbed the warm sterile water on the membrane while Rich broak back more of the shell very carefully with the tweezers then tried to remove the membrane this was real slow going and you have to be really careful if you rupture any of the blood vessels they start to bleed....! We put the egg back in the brooder for a while to allow it to warm up again and for the water to soften up the membrane.  Rich wasn't confident working with the membrane so i did it and he passed me cotton buds.  using wet cotton buds i gradually and carefully uncovered the chicks head and dampened the edge of the shell.... seemed to take ages.... eventually the chick got his head out and started to unwrap himself.... but he was still stuck down his back so i gently used a cotton bud to dampen inside the shell.  There was no yolk sack but there was quite a lot of what looked like poop in the shell after a few minutes of wriggling he flopped out of the shell but started bleeding from his naval..... not badly i just used a dry cotton bud and held it there for about a minute and it stopped.  He is a lot weaker than the 1st one i think he might have been struggling for a while.  I knew the humidity wasn't as high as it should have been, which probably caused the drying out and sticking of the membrane. I did have a glass of water in there but i have now blocked off more of the ventilation and added a bigger tub of water.  we still have 2 more eggs that look good for hatching in maybe a few days and 2 more that are not looking so good.

After a cup of tea and a rest I managed to feed them both but it is really hard feeding a chick soooo small the 1st meeper has got the hang of it well now and you can see his crop filling up he jumps up and down n flaps his wings.... looks so funny makes me laugh every time despite only having about 7 hours sleep in 3 days.  The 2nd meeper is way more hard you have to have the formula really runny which is of course then not so nutritious and it has to be the right temperature. I use a 1ml syringe and it cools down really quick so have to keep warming it up in hot water, then I check the temp on my wrist like with a baby bottle.  Today the 2nd meeper has had a few good feeds but hes still looking weak.  I didn't take pics last night I was to concerned about the chick but I got a couple today.

This is the second meeper a while after his struggle to escape the egg having just had his second feed

To the right both meepers tonight cuddling up to the remaining eggs please excuse the poop

Hatch video

check out the video

Drama in the Bird House!

This isnt the Blog i was going to do today, I was going to do an update on Perdo and Eva the Conures.......and how they had their 1st ever clutch of eggs..... how i didnt think they would be any good as they are both only just a year old and Eva wasnt really brooding right.  They are supposed to brood from the second egg for about 22 days and only leave the nest box briefly to do bathroom stuff.... And how i had candled the eggs and they were all fertile and that despite my worries they were still developing.  Well a few days ago i moved 2 eggs and put them under Petal the Kakariki who was sitting on 11 infertile eggs.  She was fine with them but we had a cold night last night and today when i looked in the nest box she had buried all the eggs ....giving up on her clutch as she had been brooding them far longer than needed..... So panic i dug out the shavings and found the conure eggs...they were cold!! i took them in the house and started to warm them up. when i went back out i noticed Eva was still out of her nest box and checked her eggs and they were cold too....not quite as cold as the other 2.  I was really upset that they had got so close to hatching and were most likely all dead... I took them all in the house and Rich and i sat by the fire holding them in our hands to warm them.  we candled them and fond movement in 4 and veins and a definite chick in the other 2.  Rich took over the brooding while i set up the home made brooder.  Then massive excitement from rich as he hears one of them meeping inside the egg....!!  And then tapping and a little crack appear and a small crack in another.  The brooder got up to temperature and we put all but the 2 pipping eggs in and monitored the temperature.  After a couple of hours we decided to put them in as well and see what happened.

After an hour or so Rich said maybe we should have a look and he got 1 out... and it had cracked half way round the shell..... i grabbed my phone to try film it and we sat there by the fire and watched it hatch in Riches hands..... It was amazing..!!! The chick is now back in the brooder with the other eggs and meeping and wriggling about..... I hope he survives...!!!

Hot n Spicy Corn Muffins

Ive just had a little experiment with baking something healthy and interesting that my birds will like and i can eat too... I tried the kakarikis on Polenta Poridge.... but they turned there beaks up at it!!! Sooo i have this large bag of polenta which is maze meal.  what to do....? well there just happened to be a recipe on the side of the bag so i altered it a bit and had a go.  Check it out for a healthy treat for you n your birds.

Ingredients

140g Corn Meal (also called Maze Meal or Polenta)
1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda OR 3 tsp baking powder
50g grated cheese
1tsp chilli powder or chopped whole chillies
1tbs Cumin seeds
1tbs Ajwain seeds
2 tbs olive oil
200ml milk
1egg..... from a hen.....not a Parrot

Makes about 12 depending on size of tins

you could use any curry type seeds or fresh herbs like corriander I just used what i found in my cupboard

Method

1. put oven on 200'C 425'F and put muffin tins in to heat up
2. chuck all dry ingredients in a bowl and mix it
3. measure milk in a jug add oil and egg and mix it
4. add liquid to bowl..... and...... mix it
5.take tins out of oven and spray with a little spray oil (or you can grease with normal oil )
6. spoon in mixture about half full
7. bake for about 20 mins turn out and cool
8. fight your parrot for the hot n spicy muffins....