Interesting. How is he doing now? We have a severely splay legged budgie hen. She is quite disabled and cannot walk or stand or jump or even scratxch her head in a normal way. She will be 2 years old in this coming January, and we love her dearly. She is a LOT more work than our other budgies, but she is absolutely perfect. A wonderful little friend in a down coat.
With time you learn what they can and cannot do, and you come up with ways to help them lead their best life. When Hima was young, we didn't even trust her not to drown in a water dish and only gave her water by hand out of a bottle cap a few times a day. At this point she is safe around a small dish, but we don't have a spare one so we still just give her water by hand. Her legs actually form a shallow V shape, and slightly bend back over her back when at rest. She has some ability to move them
from this arrangement, but she often will rest with one or both legs bent over her back... hard to describe. We have to not only keep her wings clipped, but clipped short. Otherwise she gets her legs caught on the wing feathers when she tried to scratch her head. She can only reach parts of her head to scratch, so we help her out when she gets a case of the ole' itchyhead.
This write up makes her seem unable to do much of anything, but I assure you she is all budgie. Sass, sweet, and she is mobile enough to get into all sorts of trouble(pestering the other birds, eating floorcandy, mining for shirtgems(I have a shirt with rhinestones on it), shimmying her way around to get to areas she isn't supposed to be, etc etc etc.) She is a very, very hands on pet. We spend most of our time with Ms. Himawari supervising.
