Mar
8
2008

10:54pm

Kiwi

Posted by Marisa E. (gedoena) in General

6 comments

Featuring:
Kiwi

Kiwi


Kiwi is our sweet little green budgie. We took him in as a companion for Sugar. He was living in a multi-bird household in which he was the lowest bird and was picked on by everyone. Now he just gets picked on by Sugar :).

He likes to make new pretty little budgie songs all day. He also likes to imitate Dewey (unfortunately to human ears Dewey's conure sounds are nowhere near as pretty as the rest of Kiwi's pretty singing).

He struggles with his weight so we weigh him every couple of days and adjust his diet accordingly, as well as encouraging him to have lots of active play time outside of the cage.



Discussion

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6 comments found.
by the way...he isn't as fat as he looks in the picture ... he is fluffed up in it :) I should put up a different one.
oh my!

How many grams does Kiwi weigh? has he seen an avian vet?

My Peridot had trouble with her weight,she was up to 50 grams at one point.She did have a couple of small tumors as well. We took her to the vet and they switched her over to an all pellet diet. The tumors just literally disappeared after she switched over.
She was ok with that for a while, but her weight started to creep back up.
So we took her back and the vet put her on a med (just a but in her water I think it was a 1/2 of some sort of pill we had to crush). It was for her metabolism and that did the trick with the all pellet diet.

We do have an avian vet. He didn't find anything wrong with Kiwi other than the weight, so suggested switching to pellets.

Kiwi has gone over 50 grams periodically. We now have him on a mostly pellet diet with very limited seeds and ofcourse some fresh foods. The difficulty with restricting his diet is that he shares a house with Sugar who tends to get a bit underweight especially while molting or if she needs her beak trimmed (she has had problems with her beak ever since we got her because of the beak mites she had then). So, we weigh them each every couple of days and adjust food accordingly...and let them out a lot so Sugar will chase Kiwi around and he will burn calories :). This seems to work well.
Marisa E.
Marisa E. (gedoena)
4 months ago
Reply
PS - he isn't actually as fat as he looks in this picture...he is fluffed up!
fakeblonde511
fakeblonde511
4 months ago
Reply
Does Kiwi have a special diet to help with the weight?
Marisa E.
Marisa E. (gedoena)
4 months ago
Reply
Sort of. He has pellets and vegetables and otehr fresh foods available to him all day but he (and Sugar..they are roommates) only gets a limited number of seeds a day, twice a day, and when they are gone they are gone. If Kiwi starts gaining again we lower the amount of seeds...and make sure he really flies around outside of his cage when they are out. The main thing is that we weigh them frequently so when he is on an up-trend we adjust. It is funny (but sad) that when he gets a few extra grams he actually starts having difficulty taking off or landing on high objects.