Puff's FDB journey

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 fre...

It's been almost a year now, and Puff is almost fully feathered. It is truly amazing the difference that has happened, not just to her feathers though. She just truly seems more relaxed and happier, she shows more confidence in new situations, which is honestly quite amazing to watch. I brought her next door to my mom's house and she made herself right at home, she hopped right off my shoulder and started wandering around the table and a counter between the kitchen and living room. Simply checking things out all along the way, a confidence I enjoyed watching with a huge smile on my face and pride in my heart. She interacts so much more with me as well, she also puts up with the tiels so much better, without incident in quite some time now. She vocalizes so much more, much like she used to do, before any issues happened. She also chooses to be in the same room with the other birds and myself during the day again, instead of choosing to avoid any interactions with me or other bi...

I'm so happy to tell you all that the Metacam is doing the job I hoped it would. I'm also very happy and grateful to have such an awesome circle of people in my life that I can call friends who are so much more knowledgeable then myself. I just can not express my gratitude enough to the wonderful people who remind me to have faith in the good in people. I have such a hard time believing in people, I have been hurt recently by yet another person I would have thought would never be someone who would be so cruel, and I see every day the cruelty in people, so I'm truly thankful for those in my life who are so kind. Puff for the first time in a while finally was preening her tail and rubbing on her preen gland. So she was in fact having an inflammatory response from the two seizures she had last year. I never discussed this before as I didn't want to mix it in with her FDB story. However, I think I may do a separate post explaining what happened and when, since it is now be...

I know its been a while since my last post, not much has changed. She's still getting more feathers and to me she's my rock star. She's back to eating food and wanting bites of what I have, but still the pickiest girl ever. She still gets formula twice a day, I'm still trying to work in my real food mash however she's not a big fan. I really don't mind, as long as she's eating something and keeps her weight over 300. She holds fairly steady these days at 310 grams though. She has developed one thing, not sure if I should call it an issue or not yet. I notice her doing the motions as though she is going to preen her tail or get to her gland, but doesn't follow through. Meaning, she spreads her tail, turns her head to look at the tail area, but for some reason doesn't actually reach all the way to the tail. She will make it part way, stop, hold the posture then go back to a normal standing position. I have seen her just barely get the outer tail feat...

Hello all, I'm including some pics I took today of Puff as she is getting some new feathers in and looking great, imo! She's doing so well now I'm just so happy for her, she is choosing to interact in small ways with some of the other birds, which for her is a big deal as she has in the past preferred to not interact with other birds at all. One thing I have changed is that she sleeps in the bird room all by herself and comes out only when she wants to, I have found this to be a big help to relax her and lower her overall stress. In the past she has spent a great deal of time hiding out in my kitchen cupboards, so in an attempt to stop this, and stop this other issue I was having that she was hating going into her cage at night and freaking out, I tried allowing her to be in the bird room and not be caged. This actually accomplished quite a lot of issues I had been having with her and most importantly it reduced her stress level in a big way. Now in the mornings I open th...

Well, since Puff is pretty much stabilized on the medication there isn't much to report except for her progress with feathers. So the updates are more sporadic, hopefully with spring coming though we will see a bigger change in feathers. one thing I'm in the process of changing is switching from formula to real food mash in her syringe feedings. As I don't see me stopping those because she is such a picky eater and I want her getting a good amount of nutrients as possible and she seems to really enjoy the syringe feeding and eats it very well. So here is a couple pictures I took of her today, I still think she does chew a bit here and there once in while but she certainly looks better then she has ever looked since before starting this protocol. So in my mind this is a success no matter what, however I hope to see her fully feathered one day soon...

                                            before starting the protocol All seems to be going well, I've been able to increase her to .04 ml of the medication without any side affects. As far as I can tell she is not chewing any new feathers so we are just waiting for the rest of her new feathers to come in. Also, I'm happy to show that she is choosing to eat some foods on her own, as in the picture below. which to say shows she has come quite a long way since starting this treatment. In the beginning she had a huge loss of appetite, and lost a scary amount of weight. I started her on hand feeding formula and have been feeding ever since. well, I'm ready to also move on from that as well, I'm going to make a mash of sorts and puree it and still syringe feed her that instead. I think that she has become very attached to getting the syringe and she eats a good amount that way...

Well, here's a picture I took of Puff today, we are making progress, slowly. It feels much like two steps forward one step back. She did some chewing again and I increased her to .03 ml again and this time she seems to be handling it much better. So I hope I can keep her from any chewing again, however she's doing so much better and is handling the medication much easier now that I'm not as stressed or worried. She doesn't nap or hide out anymore during the day, she still eats formula but she does eat some foods. She's always been such a picky eater that I really don't mind giving her formula, although I'm going to look into making some mashes and feeding her that instead and see how that goes over.  Overall I think she's doing very well, I'm just going to have to be patient on her being fully feathered.

patience and being a very light sleeper and giving in to desire to sleep right next to me on my night stand has led to the problem, finally. she is falling into a deep sleep, and literally falling, she did it twice last night. I have a two tier night stand, top tier with a drawer, then lower level, she sat on the top level and fell asleep and boom, fell twice. Issue solved, now how to tackle this issue, first I will be keeping her in the travel cage for sleeping from now on, but i think i need to come up with some flat perches for her as well. I know it is not a seizure or anything because she is aware of what is going on as soon as i turn the lights on and check on her. will keep this updated as i go

So it happened, she chewed a little bit again. I've increased her back up to about .025 ml or what my best guess as to what that is, I'm not seeing any signs of her getting tired or not wanting foods so I will continue on with this. I knew I was in a scary area with that dosage and was trying to be very careful but it happened, however it isn't bad. I will get some pictures for reference on my tablet and get them uploaded to the page on a later date as at this moment i am charging it up since I have not used it in a long time. It is my only decent source for taking pics at this time as I'm still without my cell phone. She is still doing well though, gobbling up her formula and eating a few almonds and cashews, as though are her favorites, here and there. Once in a while she will join me in what I am eating only for a bite or two though, but that is fine at least she is showing interest.  She is still doing the extreme clingy thing though when it comes to being put to b...

my phone is sick so i won't have pics for a while until it get repaired, however she is doing pretty well. i have noticed she has chewed feathers under her wings, i am not sure if that is new or old. also, she can remove a feather and it just comes right out, so not sure if that is because it is damaged or something. this is very strange to me and will have to do some research on this to understand it and be able to explain what is going on better. she is now sleeping in my room again though, i noticed she was just having a very hard time in her cage, so i moved it and it didn't get better. she was just not comfortable, i am not clear why but when i brought her to my room and put her in the smaller cage she didn't fight me and actually gave me a tail wag and went right in. the last two nights she has been in there and done very well, we spend about a half hour playing on the bed before i put her in the cage and shut the lights off and go to bed myself. also, in the morning...

Puff is doing well with the change I made and I'm still feeling very nervous with the dosage however it seems I'm doing well and so is she. No more napping and she's eating more as well. I'm still taking it day to day and checking so very careful however, she's still not chewing.

Good news, the reduction I made actually worked! She's sitting in the window and her favorite friend came to visit with his son and we were outside so we went to the window and she was super animated and talking and making noises and wanted so bad for me to bring her outside with all of us. Which I can't as it's just at freezing here in Minnesnowta right now, so way to chilly for birdies to go out. She hasn't mapped today and is just enjoying herself. She is just so incredibly sensitive to this medication, she is now at the absolute lowest dose I can go with her though, 02 ml, which is 1/2 ml lower then I had been giving her. So I have to be very exact and clear with her dose now which is just very scary for me because if I'm off at all she could easily chew her feathers again. So I'm just being very careful and fingers crossed. Here's some cute pics of her enjoying her window seat 😉

Well I've been looking at her neck and I don't think she's chewing there. I'm also watching her chest very closely. She does have a couple 'v' feathers and I'm trying to keep track that it stays that way, they don't get worse and more others get that 'v' in them. I check her tray every morning, and change it every night before I go to bed. She has gone back to sleeping a bit more again so I cut back just a very small amount and am considering doing the dilution again. I am hesitant though as when I went below 02 ml she chewed again so I don't have much room to adjust. So I'll wait a few days and see how it goes.

Looking at the pic from today and yesterday I'm not sure if she is chewing her neck feathers or not. Can't tell if this is old feathers or some new ones, I'll have to keep watching and look through the old photos. Her chest feathers though are looking good still. New behavior with hand feeding, I think it's old baby behavior but I'm not sure. She now making these new little squeeky noises and bouncing her head/beak a lot. I normally just give her a mouthful and back off but now she's wanting it to just flow. I'm trying to discourage, by giving her even smaller amounts at a time, will see where this goes.

Well look here, we have some new feathers coming in. I've included a pic from before the new ones as well so you can see which ones are new. From what I see the damaged, V shaped ones are the older ones, so you really have to pay attention. So now I'm really going to stick to the daily pics now, so I can keep very close tabs on all the new feathers. Oh boy, I'm getting excited...

OK, here's today's pic. I don't think I see any difference but not sure. I'm trying to keep an eye on the full ones and the ones that are still partially full. Trying to make sure they aren't being chewed. She isn't really all that interested in other foods, so I'm going to decrease the amount of formula I give by small amounts and see how that goes. I'm not clear on if it is the appetite that is the issue, meaning she's not hungry because of how much formula, or if she isn't interested because of the medication. So I'm going to very slowly decrease the amount of the morning formula only. She's currently eating between 25-30 ml. So tomorrow I'll only give her 20 ml and see how it goes.

It's been a bit, not much has been going on. I think I have stabilized Puff's dose at 03 ml of the full solution with no dilution. The only issue is I was extremely sick and missed a morning dose twice in a week but not two days in a row. Not clear on how bad it affected her but I can tell there was some chewing. I'm now going to start daily pics again so I can determine if she is still chewing or not. This is a very frustrating process and because I missed a couple doses it's making all that much harder. I hope that I'm now at the right dose and can move forward. I totally understand why Don asked me to give him three months now though, this does take time. However, she has made some progress even though it may not seem that way. She has a much more full feathered neck line and she no longer has any bare patches on her chest. I'm going to go back to daily pics to make sure she is no longer chewing and for sure moving forward. Because it is just hard to tell ...

I haven't been feeling very well this weekend and Sunday night I forgot to give Puff her dose. She did a bit of chewing but not too bad, hopefully it will work itself out. She's still doing really well and I'm hoping to see some feather changes soon. Maybe by X'mas she will finally have a new look. That would be the best present ever.

So I've been giving Puff the 1/1 mixture at 05 ml for a week now. She has some new feathers, so all I can do is watch and see. Her personality is in full bloom, she's still the picky eater I know her to be. With me giving her hand feeding formula twice a day, fresh foods and her daily nuts and pellets her weight is staying steady at about 315 grams.