FEATURE
H
ow time flies by, it doesn’t seem a year or two since our flock were all youngsters and to some degree they still are. Tommy Blue-fronted Amazon came to us as a re-home, we were told he was 12 years old, this was about 18 years ago which makes him approx 30. Probably not old for an Amazon, or is it? He’s never been very active, doesn’t fly and when he does only downhill. He now spends a lot of his day sleeping, but enjoys coming out sitting with me and watching TV. Occasionally he will run around on the floor, scattering the dogs in all directions. They know not to get too close to any of the parrots! Tommy enjoys coming in the kitchen of a morning supervising the chopping up and sharing out of fruit & veggies for the flock, he seems to think he’s chief taster. Woe betide hubby if he dares to enter the kitchen for a cuppa while Tommy is there, he will fly down to the floor and chase hubby along and has even been known to chase him up the stairs. Needless to say Tommy prefers me. I worry sometimes that he sleeps more than he used to (don’t we all) but he has a good diet, and some exercise so I put it down to growing older. A few years ago he was very unwell and was diagnosed with kidney and liver disease, with extremely poor liver function. Our vet had never ever seen such a high reading on the liver function results and had to check it was correct and it was. He also was slightly anaemic. He needed a course of antibiotics and his diet was
revamped also we were advised to give him some Milk Thistle drops in his drinking water.
As our birds have only ever had the best I felt very upset by this. We do wonder whether it all began in his formative years. When he came to us he was only fed on sunflower seeds and a huge bowl of monkey nuts, needless to say his diet was changed which included plenty of fresh fruits & vegetables, but was the damage already done, who knows? Needless to say now the odd chip or crisp is banned and that goes for the rest of them too. I make up a ‘dollop’ mix of EMP egg food, porridge oats and a tiny piece of Weetabix & some Harrisons, mixed with boiled water. Tommy loves it and so do the others, they now all have this every morning along with their fruit & vegetables and they all have Tidymix.
Our Moustache parakeets Squeaky and Pip are now aged 20 and 19 and I have no idea whether this is ‘old’ for
BIRD SCENE 43BIRD SCENE 07
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48
