Model African Grey Parrot.....

Not only did our little broccoli-eating buddy, Arrow get 400,000+ views on a live stream, she will now be featured in a coloring book!!!!! Purchase this great coloring book here at Praise My Pet titled 2020s Wisest Pets!

Parakeets 2.0....

Introducing Pilot Heisenbird and 

Apollo Applehead.

UGH 2020 is a big stink!!!

RIP Baby Jace 

 

Good thing the girls are young.....

Trying to wrap my brain around this and do the math.
African Grey Parrots can live for 40 to 60 years.

RIP Stormy.....

This guy is cray-cray.......

Don't let this sweet face fool you......

An African Grey Parrot literally acts like a 5-year-old 24/7!

The result...

When your African Grey Parrot won't stop making fire alarm noises in the building.

~

Meet Arrow, African Grey Parrot......

No matter how many pets you have, it always sucks when............

one of them passes away.

Over the years, the girls have named pets
after their favorite tv/book/movie characters.  This cutie is Finnick, as in
Hunger Games.  "Finnick Odair in his underwear."  Finnick is the first parakeet we (A17) had.  
He lived a good life and can now join his former cage mates, Styles and Esther.  We will miss you little birdie and don't tell anyone but I always thought you were the 
most handsome parakeet. (SHHH!!)

The Originals

Gang of Six.

RIP Styles, we will miss you..........

Pretty Boy, Styles passed away this morning.  #bummedout

I love Pinterest and DIY, especially since we are still decorating our new apartment......

Sadly we have an empty bird cage but I am thinking of trying out one of these ideas.

RIP Esther. You put up a good fight. We will miss you...............

What in the world is cloaca prolapse?

The picture at the bottom of this post may be disturbing.  I am only posting it in the hopes that if someone has this issue with their parakeet, they might learn something from this post that can help their keet.  There are many sites with pics just like ours that helped up figure out what was wrong with our keet.  I am so grateful there was.

  

Over the years, we have had many, many pets.  We have also had many, many pets that have had many, many babies.  We have experienced the birth of a horse/pony and the birth of a mule.  At one point, we had two guinea pigs give birth to at least 5 baby guineas.  An outside cat had a litter of kittens we helped out with.  We have witnessed parakeet eggs being laid, incubated, hatched, and die.  We have found wild bunnies alive with their guts hanging out in our yard and tried to help.  We helped out a Red-bellied woodpecker and a blue jay after a stray cat attack.  We tried to help out a hermit crab that was dragged out of his shell and stabbed in the abdomen by another hermit crab who wanted that shell for himself but last night was a first for us.  A parakeet laying an egg that got stuck.  UGH!  The girls discovered that our only female keet was having trouble passing an egg.  There was blood every where.  Her cage looked like a mini-crime scene, and the egg was literally hanging outside of the keet's body in a bloody mess.  Just entered freak out mode!

So what happened?  This is what we found out.

C17 was navigating the internet and giving us the information and the skinny on what to do.  (She is the web queen, she can find anything and everything).  Of course, going to the vet was the top of the list but since this was 11:30 at night, and I did not have $500, that was not going to work.

My future vet, A15, went into action and between A15 and C17, things went pretty well (I mean pretty well as far as finding our 3 ounce keet a bloody mess).

An oviparous animal (animals that lay eggs-reptiles and amphibians) have an oviduct which is a special part of the bowel.  This is a tube that an egg passes through from an ovary.  

A bird also has a cloaca which is an opening for the urinary tract, genital, and intestinal canals to empty.  The outermost part of the cloaca is called a vent.  When a prolapse occurs, the inner tissue protrudes through the vent opening which can lead to exposed uterus, cloaca, or intestines.  You've got to be kidding.  This is not good or pretty, not at all.

When a bird is straining and having trouble passing an egg, cloaca prolapse can occur.  Calcium deficiency is usually the reason for this to occur.  Female birds need a calcium supplement to help prevent weakening of the muscles.  You can simply put a few pieces of rinsed spinach leaves or a little rinsed kale (organic).  

What we ended up doing was this.  We filled up a small plastic container with warm water, and A15 held the bird/egg in the water.  This actually worked really well.  Our keet seemed to be trying to push the egg out into the water.  Then we bundled her up in a towel, and A15 amazingly massaged the egg out.  What?  She also tried to push back in some of the tissue that was protruding out, OMG!  That did not go so well so she cleaned off the area with water, wrapped her up, and put the heating pad on while the keet was in a dark room.  Back to the internet..........there was too much information on things to try.  We ended up sprinkling sugar on the injured area and rinsing it off 15 minutes later with warm water.  Did I mention it was midnight?  It was midnight.

I was really surprised how calm this bird was for most of this.  I was worried she and I both would died from being stressed out.  We both made it but they still wanted to make a midnight run to an emergency vet but sadly, there was just no way that was going to happen.  We did read that even when birds have emergency surgery for this type of injury, they can still die anyway.

I finally convinced them to leave her alone for the night around 1:30 a.m., even though I went back in at least five times between 2 a.m. and 7 a.m. myself to see if she was okay (okay as in not dead). Luckily, she was alive every check considering all the trauma.

It is amazing that exactly  24 hours later, she is still kicking.  I am so glad.  I know there is still a possibility she will not make it but these girls were veterinarian rock-stars last night.  They are so awesome!  I am kind of awesome too, they get it from me.

This is a good place to learn more.  Pet MD

For the love of pigeons...............

No matter where we go, there is always excitement and usually an animal involved.  So the girls were taking a few new head shots to submit for another movie role, and I was standing up on the balcony looking down at them and talking, as usual, to someone when out of no where, this cute little pigeon flew right up to me and practically landed on me.   After a minor freak out, I realized that the pigeon had two identification bands, one on each leg.  We did a little research and found out that this could either be a homing pigeon, which could have flown from several hundred miles a way, or a fancy pigeon, which is not able to travel far distances.  I know, so helpful!  Anyway, we, of course, had bird food and unsalted nuts to feed the pigeon, and we had this bird literally eating out of our hands.  We kept an eye on the pigeon until dark and found that if flew up to nest, hopefully, for the night.  We will be looking for this new friend tomorrow and maybe find the owners.

It's time once again for...............

the Great Backyard bird count by Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society.


Get started here.

Get your printout to keep track of your birds here.


We have been doing this for years.


This will be the last time we do the count in our yard so I hope we see a lot of awesome birds!!!!

You can see our other posts here, here, and here.

Parakeet eggs update.

Pics from 11/08/2015.  Three fertilized eggs making progress and sadly one did not make it.

A very eggy update.

Parakeet egg pics of the day.  It appears that you can't trust what the folks at the pet stores say about having parakeets that will just randomly lay eggs but nothing comes of them.  They claim they have never had parakeets in their store lay eggs that have been fertilized.  I just think they might have tossed them out but whatever, now we know!  So far there are 4 fertilized eggs.  We were candling them again today and actually saw some movement inside.  This is making for great hands on science but it looks like we might be about to have a few extra parakeets on our hands by next week.  

This would make a perfect Christmas present, send me a message, and I will send you a parakeet.  For real!  

Here is a cool fact.  A newborn parakeet weighs around 2 g.  Need an example?  This is how much three playing cards weigh, another example is that a penny weighs just under 1 gram.  See how small that is?  An adult parakeet weighs between 20 and 40 grams.  These little budgies are born naked, blind, and they cannot lift their head.  They are completely dependent on their parents.

Please excuse the poop!

Styles is the proud papa.  He is guarding from the top of the cage.

Little Esther does not like us messing with her eggs so she is inspecting them after we put them back.  Stay tuned for more!

And eggy makes three.............

We just discovered this tiny egg in Styles and Esther Winchester's cage, and we are freaking out!!!!  Not sure what will happen with this tiny egg but we will soon find out!

Esther Winchester

Eggy

Eggy in a make-shift nesting box.