Hey look, I’m just trying to help the birdie. I don’t care if you know 20 times more about birds than I do. I’m saying I had a similar experience and none of my book knowledge or previous experience helped. The one I had seemed to come around nicely. I put her on a pellet only diet and her feathers were starting to fill in nicely, etc. I would have just left her alone if it was a single budgie, but she was a lot smaller compared to my other one. I took her to the vet, and sure enough she was underweight. She had an infection and some antibiotics cleared it up. Within a week she gained like 10% of her own body weight. Sorry if it sounded like I know everything and you know nothing, but you said lethargic. That word is a bright red flashing light indicating a problem. Anywho, I really hope the little guy does OK. Budgies are the coolest birds.
Silver Fire I moved after I made the complaint so I don’t know how it turned out. I’ll admit, I was a pussy about that situation. I had no idea what to do when I saw it, and had to ask someone. I called, but then never went back to the store. I have a really hard time with things like that, and like I said, I wussed out about follow up.
I didn’t know about puppy mills. That’s pretty freaking depressing.
(sigh) I’m going to play with my birdies now.
Mango sounds like you’re doing a great job. I’ve had parakeets as pets for 30 some odd years. Even if they’re older, they frequently are a bit freaked out by a new environment (such as when you first get them home alone), and may be somewhat lethargic, or too flighty, or other “odd” behaviours.
Sounds as if you’re already doing the right thing, as he/she is responding (if the slightly puffy looking part with the nose hole in it, called a cere, is blue once it matures, it’s a male if the cere is beige or pinkish, it’s a female).
They’re great little pets, I went looking for one myself tonite as an “apartment warming” present to myself when I move in on Tuesday. I haven’t had a 'keet since I left Anchorage in January, and he’s living with my former boyfriend.
Even though the feeding thing was a pain in the butt, one nice thing about getting the really young ones, is that they’re much easier to hand tame, if they aren’t already.
Or, you could ask the pet store about their breeder. It has been awhile since I worked in a pet store, but I am still in touch with the owner, and he still gets his birds from a very good breeder. The chain stores don’t buy birds from him, because he won’t sell to them. Brent (the breeder) checks out a store first, looks at the conditions the birds are kept in, chats with the staff, and if he doesn’t like what he sees, he leaves.
To me, this is ideal, and I agree with you. However, a lot of breeders won’t sell to the public, but are willing to direct you to a store they sell to. I see more shitty pet stores than reputable ones, but it’s possible to find them, if you know what questions to ask beforehand.
I disagree that lethargy is always a sign of sickness, though I don’t argue it can’t be. It’s common for a male canary to stop singing for a number of weeks before he feels comfortable in a new home to start singing again, even when he was piping out the songs in a store. It’s common for a talking bird to quit talking altogether, for more than a few days, before he starts chatting again. A bird that can do some particularly neat tricks, may show no interest in a once favorite prop/toy, all the while appearing lethargic, apathetic and indifferent in a new home. Some birds are literally too frightened to even explore their cage, and from the sites I listed previously, a good suggestion was to move food and water right next to the perch the bird is sitting on, until it begins to relax enough to move around.
Or you can do some research first. Besides asking about their breeder, what general conditions are the pets kept in? How often are the cages cleaned and completely broken down and disinfected? Are the dishes disinfected daily, and is the water then cleaned of stools in a reasonable amount of time during the course of the day? What about the other animals? How are they cared for? Does the store carry fish that get several feet long and are more suited to a public aquarium? How about reptiles that really don’t make suitable pets for most people, i.e. a large batch of baby green iguanas for $9.99? If you yourself are knowledgable, it’s usually fairly easy to weed out the non-informed salesperson and decide what to do with their suggestions, while not having to take their word for it while deciding whether a potential pet is healthy and will work for you.
I do agree that a lot of pet stores can be likened to a devil, but a high percentage of people shopping in those stores are not necessarily much better. Rare is the person who will purchase a book or even bother to look up information beforehand. More typical is the person who relies upon the store for all their information about a pet. A person interested in doing things as cheaply and easily as possible, whether that is the best thing for a pet or not. Hang out in a pet store for a day or two, and watch the people shake their heads when a book is pointed out, but want to buy the pet anyhow. Or listen to the person who has had tons of experience with a long lived animal (or often they’ve had more than one), but is ready for another one and won’t listen to any suggestions from an employee. What happened to all their other pets? Sure some pet stores view animals they sell as disposable pets, but that doesn’t mean they all do, nor does it mean a good percentage of their customers don’t either, unfortunately.
I worked at a pet store that specialized in fish & reptiles. When we sold iguanas I would spend as much time as possible going over what the critter needed, and telling people that their cute little 12-inch iguana may grow up to be a five foot, twenty pound monster… why? Because noone ever bought any books! A seven dollar book for a twenty dollar iggy? No way! I eventually started giving out free care sheets for them. I think maybe ten percent would take what I said seriously, maybe fifty percent would listen half-assed, the rest didn’t care.
This amazes me. When I got my first budgie, I also bought a book to go with it. Ditto when I got my cockatiel. I certainly can’t imagine getting something as exotic as an iguana without reading up on it first.
I bought my cockatiel from a married couple of breeders who owned their own store. It was great, any questions I had (my bird likes to eat highly spiced rice off my dinner plate, will that hurt him?) no matter how silly, I could just call the store and they were happy to give me any advice I needed.
Sadly, I lost Parker when my mom left the balcony door open while I was at work and let the bird out of his cage unsupervised. This despite the fact that she knew that the bird was not allowed to be out when I was not home- he had gone mean when I had taken a second job, and I was trying to retrain him. To this day, I still give her a hard time about that. I was pissed, because it seemed like I was making some progress.
If you buy birds from a pet store, make sure they have relationships with local breeders, like the pet store I used to work for in Chicago, the one that was in the same location and the same family for 80 years but had to close because all their customers defected to PetScare to save a few pennies on dog food.