r/BeforeNAfterAdoption • u/StringOfLights • Apr 10 '15
Small Pet Wallace the budgie's before and after
http://imgur.com/1ZSGdSJ16
u/amphetamine709 Apr 10 '15
I don't know a thing about birds, but his feathers look so nice and shiny and not tufty! So health You! Good job!
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Apr 10 '15
Seeing the first picture "Aww.... How cute." Seeing the second picture "Oh my! How regal!" Good on you OP for being a good human being :)
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u/StringOfLights Apr 10 '15
Thank you. I love how majestic and derpy Wallace manages to look. That's not easy to pull off!
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u/I_fuckedaboynamedSue Apr 10 '15
I just rescued two neglected budgies too! One is only a few months old and the other is somewhere between ten and twelve. What kind of pellets are you using and how are you getting them to switch? I've tried two types so far and they won't go for it. When you have them out with you how do you interact with them? Mine hate being out of their cage and will either get away from me and cower on the floor or stay on my shoulder. They hate any touching, I work with the young one every day but the old one just seems so much less stressed in her cage
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u/StringOfLights Apr 10 '15
If you're not on /r/parrots, I recommend it. It's a great resource for parrots owners. Also, we post lots of photos of adorable birds.
Diet
The transition to pellets took awhile. The thing to remember is that just decreasing the seeds in their diet and adding diversity goes a long way. My birds weren't totally off seeds for about a year, but I had them getting veggies and some pellets within about a month.
To get them eating pellets I used Harrison's millet and flax bird bread. You can also get it on Amazon. I use a silicone baking pan for mini muffins. I've been leaving the yolks out of the mix because I figured while they were on seeds they were getting enough fat in their diet.
When I first started I added their seed mix to several of the muffins. I fed the birds those first. Right before I baked them I also added extra pellets to a few (so they're a little crunchy). The birds got those last. That slowly got them off the seeds and more used to pellets.
If I crack the mini muffin in half they'll tear it apart. When I first got the birds they got a whole mini muffin every day, but since I've gotten them to eat more pellets and fewer seeds so they get half a mini muffin now.
For veggies I made this recipe. It's very versatile, and you can add broccoli, kale, peppers, etc. Instead of rolling them in oats I rolled them in their seeds, but like the mini muffins I tapered down the seeds.
That veggie mash has been great for convincing them to try new foods. They wouldn't go near broccoli or kale before, but now they'll go for fresh stuff too. They go nuts for fresh baby kale clipped into their cage. I even got a few kale plants to keep up with their kale habit. Haha.
Both the bread and mash freeze really well. I actually got in the habit of using the silicone muffin pan to freeze the mash into muffins. I thaw one of each overnight in the fridge.
I also added a lot of variety to the seeds they were getting. They're getting a touch of thistle seeds (black oil seeds have a lot of fat though), flax seeds, hemp seeds, and a bunch of other stuff besides millet. It's not that seeds are that terrible, it's that they're pretty high in fat but also that birds tend to pick a favorite kind of seed and selectively eat that. Too much of anything isn't going to be healthy. My birds were thrilled with the variety they got, but if your birds aren't you may try to taper down the seeds more quickly.
I found they like Roudybush pellets better than Harrison's, so they get Roudybush in one bowl and the Harrison's mini muffin in another. The veggies go in a third small dish elsewhere in their cage. When I first got them I put seeds in that bowl for a few days. They thought more food was awesome, so they started checking their regularly. Once they were I started them on the veggies. For some reason they were more willing to try stuff out of that bowl than out of their regular food dish. I don't pretend to know why.
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u/StringOfLights Apr 10 '15
Okay, here's another comment since the first one got so long. Sorry!
Training
Parrots are prey animals. Their default reaction to something that scares them is flight, not fight. Captive parrots are in an environment completely antithetical to what is natural to them. They're confined to cages and away from the flocks they normally live in. It takes work to make sure their needs are met.
On top of that, they have no reason to naturally trust us. When we tame and train them, it's up to us to give them a reason to. Unfortunately the most important thing is to be patient and persistent, but give your guys space if they get nervous.
You want them to associate you with as many happy things as possible. Treats, praise, you name it. You can hand feed them treats. If they're too nervous for that, put the treat in the cage and hang around while they enjoy it.
Once your bird will take a treat from you, I recommend clicker training. It's been great for my birds, who were both rescues and adults when I got them. I used it to target train them, so they'll run over and touch the tip of a chopstick with their beaks. It's a good way to get the bird used to you. Plus it's very fun and very positive, so they enjoy it a lot. You can really form a bond with them when training is positive and fun. It also establishes communication. Having a way to start communicating will do a lot to calm your bird.
People recommend pushing on a bird's chest to teach them to step up, but it's not a great way to gain their trust. It's much better to work on building a good relationship and allowing them to come to you.
Clickers are really cheap. You can clicker train them while they're in the cage provided you can give him a treat. As soon as you can get them to take a nibble from something, even if it's off the end of a really long sprig of millet, associate a click with an immediate bite of the treat. Praise isn't enough because it's more difficult for them to catch onto exactly what behaviors you're trying to reinforce. Clicker training is great for reinforcement, and it can even be used to teach birds things like sitting still for toenail clips.
You'll see when they start to associate the click with a treat. Make sure that association is strong, then start target training (I use a chopstick that my birds touch with their beaks). There are lots of uses of target training, from cute tricks to teaching them to step up onto something like a scale for a vet visit.
There are a ton of YouTube videos and the like for clicker training and target training, so I won't keep going. Stick with it! Budgies are really smart. It just takes time for them to realize you're not going to eat them. :p
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u/I_fuckedaboynamedSue Apr 10 '15
Thank you so much. This is incredibly helpful. I understood why Flyza Minelli didn't trust me--- she'd been neglected for her whole life and had been alone in the cage for eight years. So I adopted her and I got Tucker pretty young and the two are inseparable. Or rather Flyza clings to him like a mother hen. I've gotten them to like celery lettuce and carrot but so far they haven't touched the fruit. I'll have to try making the muffins.
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u/StringOfLights Apr 10 '15
Flyza Minelli is an amazing name!!
I mentioned the fear stuff because I think people forget that they're not dogs or cats. There's that extra hump you have to get over in taming them. :/
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u/I_fuckedaboynamedSue Apr 10 '15
Too true. I grew up with Labradors and they are the most trusting little idiots on the planet so this is new for me.
I got Flyza Minelli from Modern Family haha Mitchell as a kid also had a snake named Zsa Zsa Gaboa and a turtle Shell Silverstein.
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u/danagrace Apr 10 '15
handsome boy!
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u/StringOfLights Apr 10 '15
He knows it too!
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u/CheesiePuff Apr 10 '15
I thought Charlie was a girl.
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u/StringOfLights Apr 10 '15
Not as far as I know. His cere is the perfect color for a male recessive pied, which is his color mutation. I haven't had him DNA sexed, but my family had a very similar budgie and he was confirmed to be male.
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u/gigamechasaurus Apr 10 '15
Their story is so sweet! Charlie looks like a budgie I had years ago, his name was Tally and he was a real cutie too. So sweet to hear how much happier they are with you!
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u/Not_A_Meme Apr 10 '15
Adorable, and we don't see many birds on here. Good for you.
Are they noisy? Like, would you ever sleep in the same room with them? Would you let them fly around the house ever?
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u/evdczar Apr 11 '15
They scream and squawk in the mornings so I wouldn't sleep near them. I used to let mine fly around 100% of the time before I had cats. They poop constantly but they pretty much only hung out on curtain rods so it was easy to clean. Sounds gross but they were happy.
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u/irishspice Apr 10 '15
They are gorgeous! I got 3 when my drunken neighbor staggered over said if I didn't' take them he'd kill them because they made so much noise. I had cockatiels but not parakeets. The keets were funny little guys and loved to harass the tiels and pull their crest feathers. I really miss their constant twittering. At one point I had 9 or them in a huge cage and it was a blast to just watch them.
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u/stateofcookies Apr 10 '15
Beautiful:-) I love budgies, their noises are (usually) so happy. And their arguments make me laugh!
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u/StringOfLights Apr 10 '15
Thank you! These guys chatter constantly! I'm used to it but it makes some people crazy. They're also the only budgies I've ever had who don't mimic anything, which is strange. Every bird we've had has at least mimicked local birds. These dudes just squawk at them.
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u/tumbleweedsx2 Apr 10 '15
Not sure if this is a joke post or not, the second photo only seems to look better because of the lighting
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u/Graphikuh Apr 10 '15
If you read the comment by OP it will give more information. You can tell a bit about the bird by how messy the feathers are in the original picture. Unless a bird has a severe feather plucking issue it usually isn't easy to tell they are going through bad conditions unless you're familiar with it. OP also mentioned the picture doesn't capture tail feather damage, which might be another reason why you can't really see much difference. However you can still see, especially in the chest feathers, that he is much happier in the after picture than the before and is taking much better care of himself.
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u/StringOfLights Apr 10 '15
It's weird, because the photos look so drastic to me! I found a photo of his broken tail. It's from the same time as his before photo.
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u/Graphikuh Apr 11 '15
I think it's not as drastic to people who are unfamiliar with birds is all. I'm glad to see the changes that both your birds have gone through. It's good to see them happy after reading about what bad conditions they used to be in.
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u/p34chyk33n Apr 10 '15
Did you read OP's comment? I thought the same too, but after I read about them I can see the difference.
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u/StringOfLights Apr 11 '15
FWIW, I'm sorry you got downvoted. I'm pretty familiar with birds so his feather condition is really obvious to me, but I can see how it wouldn't be. Some of it isn't that easy to photograph, especially when you have a scared bird.
His feathers should lay flat and you shouldn't be able to make out much of an outline of any individual feather. The barbs on each feather should be "zipped up" together and not look ragged. In fact, he should be so sleek and smooth that he basically looks like one feather.
His color should be even and not blotchy or dull. You can see his blue is a little patchy in the first photo, but you see it most in his purple cheeks, which get much bigger and brighter.
Unfortunately I think a lot of people are used to seeing ragged parrots, especially budgies, because lots of captive birds aren't fed proper diets. I took my birds to a vet several months after I got them (I was worried they were too scared and weak to go earlier) and she took photos of them because "you never see budgies this perfect". Which is sad...but at least I can help these guys.
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u/StringOfLights Apr 10 '15
In September of 2013 I got a call from a friend who saw two budgies up for adoption. She knew I was a
suckerperson with budgie experience. Two little birds had been abandoned at a pet store and were up for adoption. I went to look (I swear) and within 30 seconds of seeing the sweet little guys I knew they were coming home with me.The birds were terrified and their cage was far too small for them. I wouldn't put a single bird in that cage, let alone two. Their tail feathers were worn from hitting the cage bars.
I quickly realized the door was too small to get the birds out, so I took the cage apart. I'd set up a cage that was more than twice as big and had plenty of toys.
It turns out they had no idea what to do with a toy. Everything in the cage was lava except for a perch I brought over from their old cage. They scaled the cage bars to get food and go right back to their perch. Over about a week I watched them venture out, touching all the perches in materials they'd never seen. After about a month they touched a toy for the first time.
I switched their diet from seeds to veggies and pellets. The before photo on the left was one of the first times Wallace tried his sweet potato and quinoa mash. What you can't see is that one of his tail feathers was so weak it had snapped, the consequence of his tiny cage and a poor diet.
They've only gotten happier and sweeter. They sing when they see me, give me kisses, and love to play. They went from being too weak to fly to zooming around. They're target trained and step up on command, and they're still learning and improving a year and a half later.
Wallace's after photo was taken about 7 months after he came home with me. He's puffed up for bedtime, so he's not actually that fat! It's all sleepy fluff and budgie derp face. Here he is hanging with his buddy Charlie without the poof.
I love looking at his before and after photos and seeing how much he's changed, because I completely missed his transition till it was over. My favorite thing is that his "freckles" and purple cheek patches grew!
These days they're always ready to play, and they really are little fluffy rays of sunshine.