How did your vet visit go? Tell us all about your new little friend! This forum needs more parrotlets!
Back for an update! I wanted to give it a few days just to get to know him a little better and understand his habits slightly before giving an update on our new little buddy. We decided to keep the same name as our first one who sadly passed away after one day with us. Phthalo seems to be doing good though!
We took him to the vet last friday. The Vet gave us some great advice on keeping him along with detials about their health and care ( we had researched allot, but sitting in person with a vet for well over an hour just talking about daily care and needs was amazing and very knowledgeable). We had a poop sample taken to test for anything bad and it came out negative which was good news. The day before the vet visit I ended up having to pluck one of his blood feathers as he had injured it and it kept bleeding so I googled it and thankfully got it right the first time! The vet was a little shocked that I was bold enough to do it because I guess if not done properly you can pluck wrong and break it off without the umbilicus which can be very bad and lead to great loss of blood as she stated when done properly it should barely bleed at all for a second or two and stop quickly, to my surprise when i plucked it, there was no blood what so ever haha. She did check his flight feathers and he is unable to properly glide without falling too fast to the ground. His weight was 26grams and she said he could gain a few more grams but this was a good weight.
Also the vet did say that UVB bulbs didnt help and he should be outside in the sun at least once a week for a little bit of time (supervised to make sure he doesnt over heat), but I was wondering if yall have had good luck with them as if yall have a different opinion on them I would love to try it still.
today I noticed he has new feathers growing on top of his head so maybe he is starting to molt? Not entirely sure how to tell but it seems like he has about 4/5 new feathers coming up on his head. He is very active for short parts of the day and seems to have a little nap during the late morning before lunch, and then after lunch for a short time. I was a little worried about him this morning though because he was shivering in his cage and puffed up, but I took him out and held him in a blanket for about 10 min and he stopped. I think he was just cold and was trying to warm up.
Phthalo is very jumpy in his cage when I put my hand in and seems to run away a little but He has no problem climbing on a stick and then i bring him out that way and he seems to prefer that over my finger when getting out of the cage.
As for diet, the vet recommended that I primarily feed pellets and try to only feed a small amount of seed, I told her that He was only on a seed diet after being weened from him baby food from the breeder so Currently im trying to get him to eat pellets. He doesn't seem to have any interest though. Its hard to tell if he is eating them as I started with small amounts of pellet with larger amounts of seed and have slowly worked up to 50/50 so far (not adding massive amounts of food but more so enough for one days serving). Today I cut up some different greens along with some carrots and green pepper and jalapeno pepper and put it in a dish to see if he would try some. Not sure if he will but I figured id offer it.
As for giving him a bath or what not, It seems that he doesn't like dishes with water in them for bathing and doesn't like being sprayed by water, and pretty much hates anything to do with water on him lol. I tried to look up videos on this but most just show birds liking it and phthalo seems to hate it. He runs away from the mist, and the dish if He is perched on my finger and I put his feet in the bowl he just hops off my finger and away from the bowl of water, so I am just going to keep trying until I figure out what works best.
I will attach some pictures after this to show y'all him in his new cage along with his new feathers showing up on his head!! Im hoping he is molting though, because I really want him to be able to fly and it sucks that he had to get his flight feathers cut ='(.
P.s
Sorry for the long post, just trying to fit everything in and having a new bird is soo exciting but also so much work, and I just want to make sure I do it the right way for his heath.