Introducing Eight, the Elderly Budgie!

[BoomBoom]

Abigail, thank you! It's an honor coming from team RB!

 

[Rival_of_the_Rickeybird]

My wife often says that budgies are so often treated as less-than,although they are great little parrots.kudos to you for your good deeds here.

 

[Cardinal]

You have done a great job taking in an old budgie. Wish I could do the same but current scenario does not allow me.

Here are some tips on caring for an ageing budgie.

Care Of The Ageing Budgie

Not sure about the milk part but rest are all useful I presume.

I just took a look at this page on "Caring for an Aging Budgie", and although there is some information that is useful, there is a lot that isn't accurate and may actually be counterproductive...

They start off by saying that "If your Budgie is already 5 or 6 years old, then this is a testimony of your care"...Well that's a horrible statement to make, as Budgies in captivity can life well into their 20's! My first Budgie that I got when I was 6 years old lived to be 18, and died just before his 19th birthday! He went to college with me! So please don't read this and think that the "average" life-span of an American/Australian Budgie is under 10 years of age, as that is just not true (though it does seem to be what most inexperienced people think when they go and buy their kids a pet Budgie, as I've heard/read many people state that a Budgie's average lifespan is between 4-5 years old, when in-fact the average, if well-cared for and fed a healthy, varied diet is actually in their early to mid teens)...


I don't know who wrote this, but they also make a statement that "I find that Budgies stop feeling gorgeously young at 7 years old and molting becomes a huge "problem, and this is why upping the protein is important...If you do so, they can possibly live to the ripe old age of, say, 9-11 years old!".....

This is not good at all...I have owned American/Australian and English Budgies my entire life, literally since I was 6, and grew-up in a household where my mom and grandmother had been breeding and owning Budgies for decades, then I bred them from the age of 16 until just a few years ago when I turned 35 or so...And I have never once seen a Budgie who started having "trouble molting at age 7", nor would I ever consider 9 years old a "ripe old age" for a Budgie...the fact that they suggest feeding an "elderly Budgie (7 years old, lol) regular cow's milk twice a day for extra protein because otherwise they will not be able to molt" honestly scares me a bit...

Well, I just realized that this was written in the year 2000, I actually figured it was much older than that since they state at the bottom that the average age to expect your Budgie to live to is 8 years old...On second-thought, I would not go by anything on this page, as it is not good advice at all, and is inaccurate...I take my Budgies seriously, lol...
!

Hi Ellen

While the potential lifespan of a budgie is definitely somewhere near 20 years, unfortunately the average lifespan is probably closer to 10% of the above figure.

Average takes into consideration all the birds that are there in the pet trade.

We don't know how many budgies are out there. But let us say across the whole world there are about 100 million budgies (figure is probably much higher).

In most of the world , they are sold for a very inexpensive rate.
Here in India It costs more for 4 people to have a single cup of coffee at Starbucks than to buy a pair or sometimes 2 pair of budgies at a pet shop.

When you take this factor into consideration, do you really think the say 25 million or so budgie owners across the world are going to commit to keeping their birds for the 8 or more years that the budgie can live.
In fact if the budgie lifespan average is 8, i would actually be happy, but I am afraid it is closer to 3 years or much less.

This page, even though it is 2 decades old

The Long And The Short Of It

states that the average age of 3000 breeder birds sent for a necropsy, probably in the 90s was 2.09 years. I strongly suspect the figure would be very similar even now. May be it would have moved up by a few months.

 

[EllenD]

I'm glad it wasn't mites, and I'm also glad that your vet seemed to have "scraped" the area, even if it did make it a bit worse in the interim, as that means he was actually testing for mites. I couldn't see the texture or any close-ups of the areas, but I have seen so many Budgies with cases of mites (not just SFM, but different types of mites) that it's not something you want to mess with at all...In my experience with having up to 50 Budgies in the house at one time, all in the same room, mites spread like wildfire, depending on what type they are, so you never want to mess with them, especially if you have multiple birds.

I'm also glad that he didn't give him the meds for mites if he doesn't have them, as it's not meant to be a precautionary medication; this is the same situation with giving them an antibiotic "just in case", except it's a much harsher medication (regardless of which one he typically uses, there are many, depending on the mites)..They are all poisons, and that's why I told you to not go out and buy one of those things for mites that you're supposed to hang on their cage..Don't ever, ever, ever buy one of those! They don't work first of all, and secondly they typically slowly poison the birds and/or any animals that are near them over time...bad news. Most mites are very easy to treat, the only time I ever saw a mite-infestation almost kill a bird was a horrible case of feather-mites that started to cause her to dig at her body, which caused a secondary-infection. So mites are usually easy.

Keep an eye on his cere, if the discoloration doesn't resolve itself within a reasonable amount of time then you'll know that it's not simply bruising, but something else is going on...