Post by birdguhl on Dec 28, 2012 16:45:57 GMT
Due to family commitments (fun ones) I had to spend my first budgie Christmas away from the boys. They had their usual set up of timed lights and Radio 2, heating and enough food to last about a year and half even though I was only gone for 36 hours. It is for times like these that I really want a webcam feeding me reassuring shots of them having fun playing with their raffia and balsa wood toys, nibbling happily and cuddling up for bedtime.
Although my fantasy is that they miss me when I am not there, for all I know it is a relief for them to have the place to themselves without me stomping around knocking stuff over as is my wont, all too often inadvertently spooking them, and all the while saying the most affectionate nonsense to them and even singing at times. If so, they would have been especially happy to see the back of me for the last day or two because I inflicted a very stressful episode on them on Christmas Eve – a visit to the vet.
The history of this is covered in ‘Lost flight and tail feathers’ but in short one of my two young untamed males, Berry, lost all his flight and tail feathers shortly after the move to their much larger new cage, making him look more like a wee blue sparrow than a budgie. After getting advice from good Forum people the main hypothesis was that this was a stress-induced moult in a nervous bird and the best plan was to try a protein-enhanced diet and UV regime and see how things went. I am not confident he ate very much of the egg food and cod liver oil soaked seeds I offered, but I was cheered by the fact that the wee blue boy grew three new long feathers quite quickly. But then I was worried again because they didn’t look that great and were a bit askew.
The story since then is that all three of the new feathers were recovered from the floor of the cage within a few weeks, and alongside this I became increasingly preoccupied by how small he looks compared to his sleek, fully feathered and much more relaxed cagemate, Woody. He has managed a little bit of flying but it was not confident and frankly probably too risky due to unscheduled stops on the way to the curtain rail. After a late-night session on the forum and beyond when I got more and more panicked about him being ill and me not having reacted appropriately, I booked a visit to the ‘exotics clinic’ of my local university vet school. I also took Barrie’s first aid kit advice to heart and now have a Guardian Angel, Daily Essentials, Calcivet and FS10C on hand, and Tricho Plus on the way.
The process of getting them into a transportable cage for the visit was a major phase of this episode. I set up my small cage (their original home) in front of the big one with the doors adjoining and put all the food in the small one. They quite quickly got used to going in and out to feed, and even spent some time sitting around and nibbling at the sanded perch cover in there. But they are not stupid. They knew something was up and if I made even the most miniscule sign of attempting to approach them with the intention of blocking their exit, they were off. It became obvious that some handling was going to be unavoidable. I bottled it and got my budgie owning friend to come and do the job whilst I squealed and covered my eyes. He did it well and was very brave about the good old pecking he suffered in the process. Although I hardly dare imagine how terrifying this experience was for the poor little budgie ones (I didn’t want to separate them as they have never been apart and also thought it might be helpful for the vet to see both), they seemed to settle down reasonably quickly: they were eating shortly afterwards, and they spent the night before the visit in there.
Come the morning we were all on our way to the vet hospital which is half an hour’s drive away. All three of us were really nervous, and my worst fear was that the vet was going to take one look at him and say “He is a very ill budgie. How long has he been like this?” and I would feel like the worst owner in the world. (I would have taken him before if I hadn’t feared that the stress of the experience would cause him to lose all his feathers.) Anyway, the vet was great and the vet students who were there were lovely too (and a captive audience for photos and video footage!).
The vet got all the history before looking at him. When she saw him she agreed he was small. He made a valiant bid for freedom during her attempts to get a hold of him but he couldn’t get off the floor so succumbed quite quickly to the towel strategy. Once on the scales, it was confirmed that he is underweight at 31g, with very little muscle on his wee body. He wasn’t felt to be acutely ill due to his bright eyes, nice pink mouth and tongue, normal poo and feisty demeanour. A viral cause for the feather loss could only be established by taking blood which would require a general anaesthetic and didn’t seem warranted in the first instance. What she did say straight off was that the situation was “complex” and on inspecting the scruffy recently lost feathers she identified overpreening as a factor. (A friend who had visited over the previous few days quickly noticed the amount of time he spent working on his very stubby wings compared with Woody, something I hadn’t clocked.) The vet did say that the new feathers emerging looked normal, so that was encouraging. I had been thinking the scruffiness of the recently grown and lost ones pointed to a systemic issue.
Putting the viral theory to one side, it seems probable that the move to a new cage triggered feather loss in a nervous bird (Berry is quite often to be seen looking all thin and tall when Woody is quite chilled) and as new big feathers have begun to grow the inevitable discomfort caused by lots of them poking through his skin has led to over-preening in an attempt to try to relieve the sensation. It may also be that the preening behaviour is an attempt to self-soothe on account of elevated anxiety levels. This is in turn is causing feather damage, further discomfort and yet more over-preening. It is a vicious cycle, and could be difficult to break. Looking back on it he has always gone for raffia and other feather-like items in a big way, and absolutely loves engaging in preening-like behaviour with them so this propensity has been evident even prior to the feather loss.
Whilst I am pleased and relieved to have it confirmed that he doesn’t seem ill, it is not so good that we seem to have a tricky behavioural problem to deal with. I came away with some painkillers to try to relieve the discomfort and perhaps lessen the urge to preen. But, now there is the challenge of getting him to ingest any of it… As an additional strategy I am trying out making a sharp ‘psst’ sound when I catch him at his wings and this does usually interrupt the behaviour.
Aside from its distressing aspects for us both (and not forgetting Woody as he clearly misses their shared curtain rail time and flying games), this situation is really quite interesting. My job involves working with people with very significant and disabling OCD, and now it appears that I have a budgie with a not entirely dissimilar problem. It is said that pets come to resemble their owners, and although I am not small and blue with scruffy feathers, some people would say that I do display some OCD tendencies myself. How fascinating is that? (Oh, and my budgie catching friend says that his birds behave EXACTLY like his parents, but I won’t go into further detail on this!)
For now, it is on with the painkillers for 7-10 days and then review.
This situation prompts various questions: on a practical note - has anyone else come across this harmful overpreening problem and do you have any advice? And does anyone else recognise their own psychological quirks or those of their loved ones in their birdies?
Although my fantasy is that they miss me when I am not there, for all I know it is a relief for them to have the place to themselves without me stomping around knocking stuff over as is my wont, all too often inadvertently spooking them, and all the while saying the most affectionate nonsense to them and even singing at times. If so, they would have been especially happy to see the back of me for the last day or two because I inflicted a very stressful episode on them on Christmas Eve – a visit to the vet.
The history of this is covered in ‘Lost flight and tail feathers’ but in short one of my two young untamed males, Berry, lost all his flight and tail feathers shortly after the move to their much larger new cage, making him look more like a wee blue sparrow than a budgie. After getting advice from good Forum people the main hypothesis was that this was a stress-induced moult in a nervous bird and the best plan was to try a protein-enhanced diet and UV regime and see how things went. I am not confident he ate very much of the egg food and cod liver oil soaked seeds I offered, but I was cheered by the fact that the wee blue boy grew three new long feathers quite quickly. But then I was worried again because they didn’t look that great and were a bit askew.
The story since then is that all three of the new feathers were recovered from the floor of the cage within a few weeks, and alongside this I became increasingly preoccupied by how small he looks compared to his sleek, fully feathered and much more relaxed cagemate, Woody. He has managed a little bit of flying but it was not confident and frankly probably too risky due to unscheduled stops on the way to the curtain rail. After a late-night session on the forum and beyond when I got more and more panicked about him being ill and me not having reacted appropriately, I booked a visit to the ‘exotics clinic’ of my local university vet school. I also took Barrie’s first aid kit advice to heart and now have a Guardian Angel, Daily Essentials, Calcivet and FS10C on hand, and Tricho Plus on the way.
The process of getting them into a transportable cage for the visit was a major phase of this episode. I set up my small cage (their original home) in front of the big one with the doors adjoining and put all the food in the small one. They quite quickly got used to going in and out to feed, and even spent some time sitting around and nibbling at the sanded perch cover in there. But they are not stupid. They knew something was up and if I made even the most miniscule sign of attempting to approach them with the intention of blocking their exit, they were off. It became obvious that some handling was going to be unavoidable. I bottled it and got my budgie owning friend to come and do the job whilst I squealed and covered my eyes. He did it well and was very brave about the good old pecking he suffered in the process. Although I hardly dare imagine how terrifying this experience was for the poor little budgie ones (I didn’t want to separate them as they have never been apart and also thought it might be helpful for the vet to see both), they seemed to settle down reasonably quickly: they were eating shortly afterwards, and they spent the night before the visit in there.
Come the morning we were all on our way to the vet hospital which is half an hour’s drive away. All three of us were really nervous, and my worst fear was that the vet was going to take one look at him and say “He is a very ill budgie. How long has he been like this?” and I would feel like the worst owner in the world. (I would have taken him before if I hadn’t feared that the stress of the experience would cause him to lose all his feathers.) Anyway, the vet was great and the vet students who were there were lovely too (and a captive audience for photos and video footage!).
The vet got all the history before looking at him. When she saw him she agreed he was small. He made a valiant bid for freedom during her attempts to get a hold of him but he couldn’t get off the floor so succumbed quite quickly to the towel strategy. Once on the scales, it was confirmed that he is underweight at 31g, with very little muscle on his wee body. He wasn’t felt to be acutely ill due to his bright eyes, nice pink mouth and tongue, normal poo and feisty demeanour. A viral cause for the feather loss could only be established by taking blood which would require a general anaesthetic and didn’t seem warranted in the first instance. What she did say straight off was that the situation was “complex” and on inspecting the scruffy recently lost feathers she identified overpreening as a factor. (A friend who had visited over the previous few days quickly noticed the amount of time he spent working on his very stubby wings compared with Woody, something I hadn’t clocked.) The vet did say that the new feathers emerging looked normal, so that was encouraging. I had been thinking the scruffiness of the recently grown and lost ones pointed to a systemic issue.
Putting the viral theory to one side, it seems probable that the move to a new cage triggered feather loss in a nervous bird (Berry is quite often to be seen looking all thin and tall when Woody is quite chilled) and as new big feathers have begun to grow the inevitable discomfort caused by lots of them poking through his skin has led to over-preening in an attempt to try to relieve the sensation. It may also be that the preening behaviour is an attempt to self-soothe on account of elevated anxiety levels. This is in turn is causing feather damage, further discomfort and yet more over-preening. It is a vicious cycle, and could be difficult to break. Looking back on it he has always gone for raffia and other feather-like items in a big way, and absolutely loves engaging in preening-like behaviour with them so this propensity has been evident even prior to the feather loss.
Whilst I am pleased and relieved to have it confirmed that he doesn’t seem ill, it is not so good that we seem to have a tricky behavioural problem to deal with. I came away with some painkillers to try to relieve the discomfort and perhaps lessen the urge to preen. But, now there is the challenge of getting him to ingest any of it… As an additional strategy I am trying out making a sharp ‘psst’ sound when I catch him at his wings and this does usually interrupt the behaviour.
Aside from its distressing aspects for us both (and not forgetting Woody as he clearly misses their shared curtain rail time and flying games), this situation is really quite interesting. My job involves working with people with very significant and disabling OCD, and now it appears that I have a budgie with a not entirely dissimilar problem. It is said that pets come to resemble their owners, and although I am not small and blue with scruffy feathers, some people would say that I do display some OCD tendencies myself. How fascinating is that? (Oh, and my budgie catching friend says that his birds behave EXACTLY like his parents, but I won’t go into further detail on this!)
For now, it is on with the painkillers for 7-10 days and then review.
This situation prompts various questions: on a practical note - has anyone else come across this harmful overpreening problem and do you have any advice? And does anyone else recognise their own psychological quirks or those of their loved ones in their birdies?
