Owen, Emily and Austin
Timneh African Grey Parrots
A trip to my favourite bird store led me to a room where these 3 beautiful bundles where scrambling around in a weaning cage frantically fighting over the last piece of Millet Spray. Immediately 2 of the tiniest Timneh's climbed right up the cage bars to approach the strange looking human with big eyes who just so happened to be glaring down at them. They were anything but shy, they were outgoing, active and very friendly little guys. Of coarse I had to play with them. 3 babies running up and down my arms, nibbling on my ears. I was in heaven and just fell in love with these amazing creatures.
I took time to examine them, feeling keel bones as for the age I was told they where, they where tiny indeed. I noticed they where thin and a mildly sharp keel bone. I was lucky enough to be there at feeding time and noticed the formula was so thin, it was runny. How could they get nutrition with that?. As politely as I could, I informed the assistant working with the babies. All was well i figured and left for home.
A few days later, I came back to check up on the little guys. To my amazement, they had lost weight and seemed thinner. I guess I was thinking it was the formula being so thin. My heart yelled at me of coarse and to make a long story short, these 3 bundles came home with me.
We quarentined as we were supposed to do, watching for signs of illness. I continued to hand feed them with approp consistency formula and even changed to a Macaw formula to ensure the extra calories and fat. They gained weight nicely, but stopped gaining at certain point and I excepted that was the weight that was normal for them.
They ate well on their own, played, sang and learned new words. Emily is a little teddy bear who snuggles every chance she gets. Owen is my independant baby, who likes to boss everyone around. Austin was both independant and cuddly and he was also the biggest and fatest of the 3.
There were no signs of illness after 30 days of quarentine, they were the way they were supposed to be to considered healthy. And after losing Austin to PDD, we are wondering if he's had it ever since he was a baby before he even came home. There is no test for PDD. PDD is a disease that can harbor in a birds body, showing NO signs of its existance and sometimes for many years before a stressful situation can bring on the symptoms. So to us, Austin was always perfect, healthy and gave no signs of illness the whole 7 months he was with us.
The only thing we question, is that Austin was the more layed back of the 3. Although cuddly and independant, he was often a loner and did things on his own with the company of his flock mates (Emily and Owen) close by. He had an amazing vocabulary for a young Grey. His appetite just always seemed normal and he weighed more then the other 2.
With PDD, the organs can swell (the crop, etc) and PDD also affects the digestion or G-I track of a bird. Slowing digestion leaves food in the Crop, Proventriculus, Ventriculus , intestines longer then normal, and we know question if Austins weight was always REAL weight and not lingering food in his system. There would have been no way to tell, especially when there is no visual sign of illness.
We wonder where he got PDD from and the rest of our posts will now move into what we've learned about PDD and the writings of when, how and what Austins struggles where up till the day we lost our him.
