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Emmy

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Posts posted by Emmy

  3. Posted · Report reply

    Hi Dave and Sarah,

    I'm beginning to think budgies are even more inquisitive than cockatiels. Love where it is sitting Dave. 

    Sarah my cages are beginning to look as though they are waiting for the washing to be pegged up - using clothes pegs now to secure doors and hang millet spray.:D

    I have a toy budgie fixed on a perch and it whistles when Billie moves it and he sits cuddled up to it - it works with 2 small batteries.

    The toy budgie had stopped whistling so I thought it needed new batteries but when I went to remove the batteries  Billie had already opened the battery section and had removed the batteries for me :o- so no more batteries going in!! Now Billie has  a very quiet toy budgie. I can't understand how he managed to do that because I find it difficult to open the battery case:rolleyes:

    Maybe be easier for us if we had beaks instead of noses:lol:

    Emmy

  4. Posted · Report reply

    On ‎1‎/‎31‎/‎2017 at 10:55, DaveP said:

    Got these on Sunday a late Xmas present .

    20170130_152720.jpg

    I must have missed this photo at the beginning of the post- lovely birds Dave. The blue and white one is something like the one I got but mine has a bit more light blue in it. Found out today my one should have been named Houdini. It's in the conservatory and I got a shock when I noticed it was sitting outside its cage waiting at the door to get back in but the door was closed:o. It had pushed its way out from where the feeders go - so now the cable ties are out once more;)

    Emmy

  6. Posted · Report reply

    What a beautiful photograph Sarah.

    Last month guess what I bought?  A  budgie!! (Billy boy) just fell in love with it --I was at our bird sale last month. I was selling finches and the woman next table to me was selling budgies and I just fell in love with it -

    (I'm trying to convince my family its one of my young cockatiels but it's an unusual colour :lol:)

    (It's light blue and a lot of white.)

  9. Posted · Report reply

    Why did I think you lived in Carlisle:rolleyes:  ?  :lol::lol: (we must have had a discussion about that  at one time.) Only problem with the birds/hens is having to keep them  locked up because of the bird flu virus- and the date for letting them out has been extended until the end of February :(

    Emmy

     

  11. Posted

    That's great news Daisymay, I've just separated the one chick from my pair of Bengalese into another cage because she has started laying again.  Just wished I had the courage to remove the eggs from the nest because I really didn't want them to breed again so soon but I can't bring myself to do that-  the only way I could do that is if I was 100% sure the eggs were not fertile.:( 

    How many chicks have hatched?

    Emmy

  12. Posted · Report reply

    Welcome to the Forum Shelley. What  wonderful way to  begin the New Year but could I please ask why you are getting two male finches? OK maybe you don't want to breed them but  you will be missing out on a lot of excitement seeing them build their nest, then getting excited when they lay eggs and when they first hatch. There is a problem with that too though because it does become difficult to part with them when they have fledged.;)

    These are two photographs of Shadow one of my zebra finches that I hand reared ( hatched the egg out in my incubator.)

    This is Shadow at 1 hour old on the  3rd April 2016

    3rd April 2016 Shadow 1 hour since hatchingresized.jpg

    and this is him this morning (9 months old)  when he had a fly about in the shower room

    resizied.jpg

    (There is my Blog on here about the stages when I was hand rearing him.--(Blog is  "Hand Rearing Birds")

    Emmy

  15. Posted · Report reply

    5 days ago I found one of the cockatiels had laid an egg on the ground in the outside flight  (this is the first time this has happened) So I went in and picked up the egg only to find, although it wasn't broken,  one of the other birds had pecked the shell and there was  tiny hole in it.

    I decided to try the nail varnish trick and put a little bit nail varnish on the shell where the tiny hole was. (This reminded me of the post from a while back re all the things birds would use -lipstick  etc etc-it was a good laugh)

    I let the nail varnish dry --(wasn't going to do this any more meantime, but once again;)- this egg found its way into the incubator.  :lol:)

    For 2 days nothing happened then the 3rd day the yolk of the egg expanded, usually when this happens, although at this point you don't see any veins inside  the egg, just my opinion- it's the first sign the egg will be fertile, and tonight using the ovascope I found this egg is definitely fertile.

    This is the egg tonight on the 5th day of incubation:

    14th December 2016 (4) 1,2 3,,4 allthe same egg 5th day in incubator.JPG

    No idea which bird the egg belongs to-so if it hatches I'll be starting  2017 with anther baby to hand rear. :D

     

    • Like 1

  16. Posted

    Must admit sometimes I don't know if I'm coming  or going;) but this coming year I'm going to cut back on the number of bird I have (I'm saying that now ) but I have decided, well almost, to stop keeping the Texan White quail but I'll keep the Chinese painted quail and in the Spring I'll put them back into the outside flight. They spend the winter months in insulated hutches outside that also have waterproof covers on them.

    That's great there are two more chicks. Are they from different nests? Just wait until you hear them all chirping to get fed - they can make some noise for being so small :lol:

    Emmy

  17. Posted

    I missed that competition :huh: I usually enter them just for fun and get a surprise if I win anything. 

    Not sure if that voucher would still be valid I got it a long time ago - now where did I put it????:rolleyes:

    Thanks for the information Andy if I find the voucher I may enquire to see if its still valid.

    Emmy

  18. Posted

    Well done Dave better they send you the product rather than a voucher ;)- I got a voucher from them ages go and forgot all about it but you had to order seed etc. to use the £10 and a lot of that would e taken up with P/P nd   in the end I would be giving them money:lol:

    I'm sad that both the chicks died the first one didn't surprise me because it wasn't really feeding properly but Squeek was coming on fine then it got air in its crop. The vet told me if that happens and you cant expel it with your finger on the crop then if that didn't work you could pierce the crop with a VERY fine needle but you can only do that once and no more- I wish now I had tried that but I was afraid in case I didn't get it right -now I'm wishing I hadn't been such a coward it maybe could have saved it.

    Emmy

  19. Posted

    I've answered this on another post (Egg shell Colour) before I read this one.

    One other thing you can try if you find one on the bottom of the cage is to hold it in your hand to keep it warm more often than not if they were on the verge of dying heat sometimes bring them round. I'm lucky I have an incubator and I usually  pop them in there - last year I had 3 chicks  that fell out of their nest in the outside flight and they had landed on the wet ground and all three weren't moving  and looked dead. but when I had them in my hand I thought I felt a slight movement so they went in the incubator sadly one was dead but the two others recovered.

     

    (So sad here tonight I've just found Squeek has died too.:cray: Guess it was just not meant to be)

    Emmy

  20. Posted

    Sorry to hear you have lost one of the chicks could be a number of reasons and it could well be it may not have been able to get breathing etc. and I know it must have been horrible for you to find that  one of the new  chicks had died

    Sometimes you may even find a newly hatched chick on the floor of the cage -your first thoughts may be that  there must have been something wrong with the chick, but if this happens and the chick is still alive pop it back into the nest - it's more likely that the parent bird has accidentally knocked it out from the nest when it has been leaving the nest to feed.

    One other thing Angel don't move the position of the cage to another position in the room -if you do (this has happened with mine) it's more than likely that the parents will leave the nest and stop feeding the young. 

    Soon I'll need to go and feed my 3 baby cockatiels and my wee baby finch yet again - hopefully then it will be MY feeding time (:D)

    (No worries re the Cockatiel babies they are OK they are 4 weeks old and have just had  a 'flying lesson' (lolj

    Just wished the next few days were over re the baby finch.(all part of the 'joys' of hand rearing ;))

    Emmy

    • Like 1

  21. Posted

    Sadly little 'Pip' died I noticed it wasn't feeding properly but had hoped it would get better. 

    Squeek  is still in the brooder but the feeding times for it are all over the place. It has some air in its crop which isn't good but its still begging for food. So, although it 's not the correct thing to do, every time I check it (which is quite often- at least once every 30 minutes) if it is begging for food I check the crop and if it isn't too full I give it a little formula .

    It's doing better at night time too - 11pm last feed of the day- then 4am if its crop is empty if crop isn't empty, even if it's begging for food at that time I wait until  a bit later before feeding it. So far this seems to be working. The other thing that  is important is to make sure it is 'poohing'  and so far it's doing that between feeds.  BUT it's still only 8 days old, so I'm just keeping my fingers crossed all goes well.

    This is Squeek this morning

    Squeek 13th December 2016 8 days old (1)resized.jpg

    Emmy

  22. Posted

    Hope it works out for you - but beware you can become 'hooked' and then  find it difficult not to pop 'found' eggs into the incubator to save them if they are fertile:lol:

    Emmy

  23. Posted

    (lol) I don't think your wee one is deformed there is usually  no sign of a tail when they are tiny (just a very tiny stump ;)) and their 'wings and legs' are so tiny it would be difficult to see them in a nest.  I've enlarged this photo quite a bit to let you see the limbs but  in normal photos you could say they resemble 'spiders' legs :lol:

    8th December new chicks (7)resized.jpg

     

     Their eyes don't open until later  on so it does look as though there are no eyes in the head.  Don't worry about them the best is yet to come:good:

    Emmy

  24. Posted

    One thing you will soon notice when some of the others have hatched out will be the noise the wee ones make when they want to be fed. Their tiny heads go back and forth and their beak is opened wide. Lovely to see this happening I'm sure you will enjoy seeing and hearing this.

    This is Squeek almost a week old.

    resized.jpg

    • Like 1

  25. Posted

    I feel like that whenever any of my chicks hatch it's a little miracle.:D  (It's not the first time I've sat up during the night when I've noticed an egg pipping just to make sure I can see it hatching :lol:

    (At the moment I'm hand rearing a zebra finch that hatched out in the incubator it's a week old now)

    Hope the other eggs hatch out as well.  

    Emmy

    • Like 1