Jasper Budgie

This is Jasper. He is eleven years old and has liver disease and gout. When he stays with me, he gets special attention. He is on medications and can occasionally go into "episodes" where he stops eating and goes into a dive. This happened over the weekend. He really had me scared. His parents left me detailed instructions on caring for him. When I saw him idle and resting too much, I went into action. I increased his meds as instructed and fed him warm baby food with a syringe every two hours. This usually gets him primed to eat on his own. However, this time, he didn't eat. He was getting weaker so I moved him to a hospital set up. I put a heating pad under half of a carrier lined with towels. I scattered his seeds on the floor of the carrier and covered it up. This allowed him to rest and not expend energy trying to perch. I continued to feed the baby food and kept him in the warmed carrier. But since I couldn't observe his energy level and didn't know if he was eating seeds, I moved him to his cage for a while during the day on Sunday. He was weak and couldn't get around very well. He ate a little but I put him back into the warmed carrier for the night. This was the longest episode that I had ever experienced with Jasper. This morning (Monday) Jasper was chirping and active! I was so relieved and I can happily report that he is now back in his cage and playing with his bell! Whew! His messy face is my fault! He will get cleaned up tomorrow. Right now, I'm just glad to see him happy and chirpy.