Kirby’s Capers

[ravvlet]

Oh HECK yeah. I have to check during bath time to confirm but - this could be his last clipped flight feather! It took over two years, but I think he’s officially molted them all! What a terrible clip, I’m so glad it’s behind us. Now hopefully we can at least get him to the point where he can glide and not just drop like a rock.

Also - got a call from the vet. Looks like he’s going in for his third nasal flush at the beginning of April! Now what I wanna know is, when’s my massage??

 

[SailBoat]

It is so very easy for that to happen!! All of us that work with these very Special Parrots are faced with this common problem. We remember where we had been with our dearly departed sweetheart and want the relationship with the new member.

Spend far more time being thankful for the small moments. They are such special creatures as they busy themselves creating Hugh Warm place in our hearts!!

You are a Winner!!
Never forget that!!

 

[ravvlet]

Well! What a day. Had to reschedule his drop off (but were able to upgrade to an in person appt) because I got so dizzy after taking a new med this morning I didn’t think driving for two hours would be safe. He’s going next week, and we are hopefully going to sort out a nice, regular nare cleaning schedule if he needs it. The expense and drive isn’t a problem if I know when and how often to expect it. Alternatively maybe she’ll have more we can do at home, like nose drops!

I showed Kirby Sammy through the window after bathing them separately. He was not impressed, but not upset. Sammy did some head bobbing and bowing that seemed…promising. They’re still at least a couple weeks away from being in the same room for real, unless the vet gives us the ok early.

Kirby is putting on weight, which I take to mean his bacterial infections are fully behind us! Which also means…I have to start watching his pellet intake again, haha. Only an Amazon could get chunky on pellets…

 

[ravvlet]

Today was chop day! Kirby is sitting next to me chowing down on pellets. After getting the snot bitten out of me by a very upset Sammy I have come to really appreciate his gregariousness. My partner was quick to remind me however that Kirby has bitten her as hard as Sammy has bitten me, so I guess I’m just spoiled from being the favorite for so long now!

Kirby has been extra affectionate lately. He’s also spotted Sammy through the window several times, especially the day we were assembling his cage and let Sammy hang out in his travel kennel outside on the patio. Is he buttering me up to bring Sammy inside, or is he trying to ensure he remains the favorite? I guess we’ll find out eventually.

Nasal clean is Monday, and I forgot both kids will be out of school! Going to be a very LOUD car ride, with a repeat episode on Friday as it’s Sammy’s turn to see the vet then! Never a dull moment.

 

[ravvlet]

Consolidation of birbs, now a one stop shop for Sammy and Kirby info

Sammy once again refused to stand on the scale. Time to look for a different T stand that will please his highness!

We tried weighing him while he’s still on the step up stick, but it seems if the stick isn’t balanced just so or if his tail feathers touch the table it doesn’t get the right weight. So frustrating.

Until then here’s a video of him entreating my toddler for attention; I showed it to Kirby and he bit my phone!

This morning Sammy let me give him lots of scritches through the cage, and he managed to scramble off the scale and up on my partners shoulder.

 

[Henderbird]

Consolidation of birbs, now a one stop shop for Sammy and Kirby info

Sammy once again refused to stand on the scale. Time to look for a different T stand that will please his highness!

We tried weighing him while he’s still on the step up stick, but it seems if the stick isn’t balanced just so or if his tail feathers touch the table it doesn’t get the right weight. So frustrating.

Until then here’s a video of him entreating my toddler for attention; I showed it to Kirby and he bit my phone!

View attachment 38438

This morning Sammy let me give him lots of scritches through the cage, and he managed to scramble off the scale and up on my partners shoulder.

Sounds like quite the day you've had with him!
Spring time shenanigans

 

[ravvlet]

Kirby’s vet appointment was yesterday! She got more gunk out of his nose but said it wasn’t as inflamed looking. Her working theory is that this is all just stuff slowly draining out his sinuses, and the hope is that we can do this one more time in 4-6 weeks and there will be less. At that point we can decide on a slightly less aggressive schedule for regular nare flushing/cleaning. He did well and came home and slept off the mild anesthesia and by evening was mostly himself, although not as hungry as normal (but his weight was stable).

 

[wrench13]

That is very encouraging!

 

[ravvlet]

Sammy is still very recalcitrant about being weighed, and today has decided he doesn’t want to come out of his cage at all! He’d rather nap. I did manage to get some pets on him earlier.

He hasn’t shown any interest in the myriad of veggies, frozen and fresh, that I’ve offered, so I tried blitzing them in the food processor and that might be the ticket! At least it looks like he’s nosed around in the bowl this time instead of just dropping pieces on the floor to get to the seed we mixed in.

If I recall correctly, getting Kirby to try veggies was difficult too. It came down to just accepting that I’d be throwing a lot in the compost bin and offering a different assortment of fresh veg and produce a couple times a day until he was consistently trying it. At this point I’m excited if I see that Sammy has touched his bowl at all, even if he didn’t eat anything.

Meanwhile, Kirby HATED the puréed veggies, so I had to mix in coarse chopped sweet pepper and blueberries.

I am reasonably certain he’s only eating the peppers and blueberries; but if he accidentally ingests the other stuff I will consider it a win, haha. This morning he ate all the lentil noodles out and left most of the veg!

 

[Laurasea]

This is a win in my book!

Terrible 2s each wanting different lol

 

[ravvlet]

This is a win in my book!

Terrible 2s each wanting different lol

Yes, half the reason I blitzed them was because I remembered that Kirby would never try to eat the cockatiel’s finer chopped veg, so I reasoned if Kirby hated it then Sammy would love it, because of course. I should start buying the stuff Kirby hates for chop; I bet that’s the ticket to get Sammy to eat it.

 

[ravvlet]

“If I hide in here, they won’t be able to see me.” - Sammy, probably.


I am extremely baffled, but elated, to report that in spite of his less-than-stellar history and diet, Sammy appears to be a perfectly healthy, slightly obese parrot!

We went over diet changes with the vet, and will be working him off seed pending his CBC/liver levels, but ultimately she said he looked pretty good. His heart rate was normal, she didn’t find any masses or anything, and he doesn’t seem to suffer from arthritis/mechanically he is sound. She didn’t even want x-rays, which I was expecting to have to pay for, haha.

We are still waiting of course on his CBC, culture, DNA sexing, and some viral disease testing we had them do (it was a cool $600 I’ll never see again, haha), as I want to be certain he won’t get Kirby sick somehow and also the local boarding facility requires it.

Anecdote, the vet tech was very nice and has her own amazons, but I think she must have thought I was some kind of idiot, because when I’d said I was keeping Sammy away from our other parrot because Kirby has heart disease, she immediately replied, “They can’t catch heart disease.” LOL! I know that! I’m not worried about SAMMY…

I also got fussed at (by the tech, not the vet), for not being comfortable having Sammy step up yet. I do spend a lot of time with him in spite of him being in quarantine, but I have been mostly trying to let him go at his own pace, and I dunno, I don’t like shoving my hand in his face because I just don’t feel acquainted enough with him (it’s only been almost 2 weeks) to feel like I “know” his body language to know when he is saying NO like I do for Kirby.

I mean, I’m also a little scared of getting bitten (again, lol…) but I feel like I had the same problem with Kirby and we’ve sorted things out and are fine now, and I am 100% confident in asking him for step ups and him telling me no without a hard bite. I guess I feel bad if I’m doing this wrong somehow, but I think it’s ok to be less comfortable handling him at this stage. She was pretty insistent that if he were her bird, she’d have him stepping up already.

But I mean, I’m just happy he is healthy. I am sure we will get to the point where I feel confident in consistently asking for step ups, but right now when I do get him to do so he tries to march up my arm and I don’t trust him on my shoulder yet.

 

[Henderbird]

That's such good news!
That's all we would want.
And also, "perfectly healthy and slightly obese..."
Ha! Describes me perfectly I guess

 

[ravvlet]

That's such good news!
That's all we would want.
And also, "perfectly healthy and slightly obese..."
Ha! Describes me perfectly I guess

Haha, I feel that. The vet said some birds are just genetically predisposed to be healthier? I would have thought with the smoking etc that Sammy would be worse off than Kirby, but am happy that I’m wrong. Hopefully that means he wasn’t exposed to it for very long! At the time we went to see him he was living with the owner’s extended family, and I never got good details about how long he’d been in that arrangement etc.

 

[ravvlet]

On Kirby’s side of things - vet says he looks good and his flight feathers seem to be coming in, but he’s still losing big feathers. They don’t look chewed, though? I’ve just never seen him lose SO MANY big feathers in such a short amount of time (the last 2-3 months). He’s got a tail feather dangling/about to fall out right now, and the top of his head, where he definitely can’t pull or chew feathers, is covered in pin feathers.

Not sure where this one came from but the kids just found it on the floor!

 

[Zoruace]

Ha! I could relate

Last time Tiki molted I genuinely thought she was plucking

The feather don’t seem chewed on
Im pretty sure the kirb is just having a very bad molt

 

[Laurasea]

its probably great news and indication of improvement in health to molt out the big feathers!!!

Penny ha been on a poor diet prior to me, tgen the flock outbreak hadn't molted big ones in two years. But after getting healthy and reaching her ideal weight. Bam! Big molt.

 

[ravvlet]

Argh, I woke up this morning to find a blood feather on the floor of his cage??

We put them to bed at 9pm (and cover them) and wake them for breakfast at 9am. I don’t know when he could have lost it as it seems like it’d be hard to knock it out…

I don’t see any blood though? I’m so worried. He was quiet when I went to wake him up, and I snuck in last night to adjust the temp and check on things and he didn’t stir.

It looks like a tail feather, and he did have one about to fall out last night (that I also found), maybe it got caught on this one? I really hope I’m just being paranoid!

Edit: ok, I peeled it apart and - I think maybe it was damaged during development. It was gooey but clearly sealed off and only a drop of blood. He does sometimes bc of his arthritis have clumsy incidents where he might have bumped his tail on something, maybe he damaged it and it came off after a couple days?

 

[ravvlet]

Ok, no blood anywhere on him. His tail looks sparse and there’s another loose feather but- I haven’t seen him pulling on it or anything. Maybe this is just a monster molt. He has a half-sheathed feather on his wing that’s been coming along nicely for the last week or so. His wings were pretty sparse before the new feathers came in too, so maybe it’s all just one big molt??

 

[Laurasea]

that first one needs to go in the POM!