It has been a while since my last post and even longer since this all started and I only have positivity to share. Puff is getting .02 ml of meds every morning, and only in the morning. So she gets one dose only, every morning with her breakfast, no evening dose and she is doing so amazing.
The reason I chose to try cutting out the evening dose was because she was falling from her sleeping perch during the night, and most nights. Because I'm a very light sleeper I would hear her flap and get up to find her on the bottom of her cage looking stunned and a bit dazed. After moving her into my room to sleep so I could better observe, the conclusion I came to was the med was puting her into a very deep sleep and she lost balance control and/or fell as she was relaxing so much into a deep sleep. After stopping the evening dose I was no longer having this issue and she continued to leave all of her feathers in tact.
One other thing I decided to do is every other Sunday she gets a med free day. This came about by circumstances that I missed her morning dose and wasn't comfortable giving a dose in the evening any longer and found she left her feathers alone the entire day and had quite an increase in her desire to try and eat multiple food items which she just doesn't do now with taking the meds. I tried two days in a row and found a feather or two she started on, so one day every two weeks has not caused any issues to her feathers and it seems to do her good. When given the medicine she doesn't have as good of an appetite as the break day she gets. She is truly quite sensitive to this medication and I know I give her the absolute minimum to keep her healthy. The appetite is really the only difference I see on her "cheat" day, yet it's enough to make me continue to do it as her weight and desire to eat has continued to be the one concern I still have. She stays at a steady 305 grams, I still like to get her to eat foods as much as possible, however her main diet consists of a mash I make up a give by syringe, her pellets and a few cashews for training. She seems to prefer a fairly bland diet, I interpreted this to be the med either decreases her appetite and/or causes her some upset. So I feel giving her a break every now and then as it seems to be well tolerated is acceptable.
All in all this has been a total life changing and saving experience for Puff and me, I'm so glad I chose to take this journey and as tough and scary as it was at times I'm so happy I stuck with it. I never thought I would see her have the beautiful dark to light grey "V" feathering on her chest that says so clearly she is a timneh. I worried she would go from having down looking feathers to bald and then chewing her skin and having open wounds. I KNOW I saved her life, I have given her a less stressed and anxiety filled filled life, and replaced it with overall happy, relaxed and healthy life because of this.
I'm so grateful to Don Scott of The Chloe Sanctuary for sharing his knowledge and taking his time to talk to me and help me through this very stressful journey. I wouldn't have been able to stick it out without his patience and guidance, a huge thank you for caring about parrots and their well-being so much, and for all that is done to educate others on being better companions. Now my girl is going to live a very long, happy and healthy life because Don cared enough to share his knowledge, expertise and experiences with everyone. It inspired me to do the same with this blog and I will be doing even more in the near future. I think we should share our experiences good and bad with others, if even one person can be helped or a bird can live a happier life because of some things we go through and share I think it's a great reason to do that.
So much negativity on the internet, we can choose to not contribute to that and find the positives in anything if we just look. So, I'm going to start making some ideas into plans and try to share my silly, crazy and goofy world with others who might want to see it. So I think I'm done on this journey, and will take a break, get some ideas together and then I'll be back with more fun and interesting stuff. (Well, I hope others find it interesting, but either way I'm going to be back)

Thanks for taking this journey with us,

Jodi & Puff

Puff, current

Puff, current

This is what she would do to her feathers, bite most of it off, leave that small 'V' at the base and then chew that little bit to get the down look you see in the next pictures.

 

These are pictures at various times throughout our time together before starting the protocol