Keely's Keets Stories:


The Beginning

Kenny is the patriarch of our budgie clan, he may not be the alpha male (Evergreen is), but he started our aviary and breeding hobby. He was a vagabond and mistook our closed window for a large hole in our home, which he thought would be a great place to hide and get warm. He slammed right into the window and knocked the wind out of himself. My brother (the site administrator) and I were arguing over something at the computers in front of the window when I saw this small yellow blob slam into the window. We then looked over and saw Kenny in the corner of our fence and the neighbor's brick wall. He was obviously disorientated. My brother, our best friend (who was staying the night), and I chased Kenny into our brick building in the back of our lot and up into the rafters. We then used a cat carrier and some cantaloupe seeds as a lure. (I was cutting the fruit when I went to argue with my brother.) We caught Kenny and he was then a part of the family. We then got Kenny a friend, Lindy. (My mother is Linda and my father is Kenneth.) About three years later Lindy passed on and after about a week or two we bought Skylark, Dove, and Evergreen. From there, it's just history.

Skylark is the first bird to have bred in our home when she chose Evergreen as a mate over her other two male cage mates, Dove and Kenny. So before long they were mating and I wanted to make them a nest. I did make a nest, but at that time, I didn't know that budgies needed a dark hole in a log (so to speak) to breed. I had made an open wood box with layered indoor/outdoor carpeting to make the concave for the chicks. (I at least knew they needed a concave.) However, it was never used for making babies, she and her good pal, Dove ate it all up! She then started kicking out all the good seed from the food dishes to make a nest. I kept telling my parents that we needed a nest box and finally my Mom told my Dad to go get a nest box; and the next thing I remember is my Dad buying a nest box at the pet store. Then we put the nest box up in the flight cage and Skylark immediately started staying in the box and stopped kicking the seed out. That night is when she had her first clutch and that is when everything just happened. Later we bought breeder cages, nest boxes, food, accessories, and everything you could ever need for taking care of birds. The hardest to do was the price/product comparison shopping and the endless research, both still continue on today.


The First Incubation

Squiggle's first baby hatched on 12/29/08 between 5:10 and 5:20 pm. How do I know the exact time? Let me explain. Around 2:30-3:00 pm I was getting ready to start pulling out dirty bird dishes and get started with the daily food changes, when I came into the bird room and looked at Squiggle's breeder cage. There I saw on the floor about 5 inches from the nest box opening, an egg. I then grabbed a disposable examination glove and removed the egg. So far every thrown out egg I have found was completely cracked, infertile, or both. But I always check the eggs for such things. I noticed that: yes, it was a fertile egg; and yes, it had a small puncture in it. I then talked it over with my mother and we then decided to try and save the egg, knowing it was fertile and that the hole was very small. We then applied a thin amount of some very lightly colored nail polish to the hole in the egg. I had placed it in a napkin and blew on it to dry the nail polish. We then discussed who to place the egg back in with. Back in with Squiggles? Sunday? The other breeders have larger babies and no eggs . . . . "let's use our incubator we set up when we first started breeding birds that we have never used!" I then left the egg on my desk in the napkin under the warm ray of sun light running through the window shade. I then ran out, because I felt like running, and sifted through the storage shed and grabbed the incubator, brought it inside, set it up and then set the little doctored egg in the reverse side of a chicken egg carton. (Anyone find irony in that?) I had two thermometers in sight, one was an area temperature gauge and the other was a direct touch reader, both were placed in the egg carton holes right next to the egg. I then ran around did some things and every five minutes I adjusted the temperature. After a bit I sat down to take a breather and read a book at my desk still checking the temperature every few minutes. Then at 5:15 pm. my mom asked how I could tell if the baby inside was alive or not. I got up and was saying "I don't know..." and then looking at the egg I saw something burst out from the egg! Well it wasn't just something at all, is was the baby bird inside the egg's protective shell! I then called out "Oh my God! It's hatching!" My mother watched the baby hatch as I scrambled and got the camera recording, a few seconds later my brother came home and the three of us watched the little baby hatch out of his shell. A few pictures, a video tape, a wonderful memory, a big thanks to God and about 8 minutes later, we placed the freshly hatched baby in Blossom's nest, next to her one and only baby. Just that morning we had candled Blossoms 3 over due eggs out of 4 and found them to be infertile and tossed them out. She had only 1 baby that clutch who was only 5 days old at the time. We then held our breath as we placed the less than 20 minute old baby in Blossom's nest box. We left the mother who is slightly skiddish alone and waited ten minutes and checked on the baby. The baby had a full crop (it was fed) and was being kept warm with its new foster mom, dad, and big brother. We were so excited and floating around all evening. Squiggles had 5 other eggs that hatched and were fine. We named the baby Inky, for the fact that he hatched in an incubator. He is now a very handsome olive green male, making himself home in our aviary.


The Ballon Baby: Pin Cushion
Once upon a time in Keely's Keets' Avairy, 9/22/2009 to be exact, a beautiful birdy baby boy was born strong and healthy into our flock. 6 days later he was banded with the number 254. At 8 days old, however, this little birdy developed a ruptured air sac. His skin then started bloating up with the air that was seeping from his hurt air sac. This was the second time we had had this problem, so we knew just how to fix the problem. We punctured his skin to release the air presure and let the ruptured air sac heal, or so the plan was. But this little guy did not heal up like the first birdie that had this problem, he bloated up again right after the puncture in his skin healed, which took only a few minutes. If his skin kept bloating up he would die, so we had to keep releasing the air by poking him over and over.

The air was still collecting under his skin and we were still having to puncture him where the air sas accumulating. Under the circumstances, he was very patient with us, and he always felt much better once the air went down. We were then able to feed him when the air was down and the crop was free too fill up, before he blow back up with air. His mom was no longer able to feed him, she probably thought that his crop was always full, when in reality it was not, he was just full of air. We were praying and hoping that the original problem healed soon, as we were not sure how much longer this little guy could go on like that.

9 Days Old.

Pin Cushion - that is now his official name. He was looking better, but that was not saying much. He had puffed up again like the Pillsbury dough boy and we sterilized a needle, punctured several areas that we felt would relieve the pressure and not hit any internal organs. Then we sprayed Colloidal Silver all over the baby to make sure that the places that were punctured would not become infected. He had grown so much over the night, we almost didn't recognize him. That's was good news because it ment that between us and his mom who was trying, he was getting enough nutrition. But another problem popped up, because of the extreme pressure on his delicate little bones, Pin Cushion developed splayed legs. We treated him for the splayed leg by putting a splint on his legs. If his legs were extended out for to long, because of the pressure in his body, it would have become irriversable. With all he had been through, he showed a very strong desire to survive and that was half the battle.

Day 10.

The good news was that he was not blowing up quite so much and it was taking him a little longer to reach maximum capacity . So that left us believing that there was some healing taking place in the original rupture site. We felt we should keep the splints on the little guy until he was no longer experiencing the balloon syndrome, to make sure that his little legs don't get pushed out of shape from the pressure.

So far so good, he was very active considering the fact that he couldn't move much with the splint on his legs, and that he blew up like a balloon every few hours. He was actually getting used to the puncture routine, and we would feed him afterwards every time.

Evening of Day 10

We punctured the air from Pin Cushion two different times that day and the baby was then sleeping comfortably that evening, he was breathing a little better aswell. Otherwise he was the same. He ate good, seemed to be breathing better, but the constant ballooning under his skin was still extreme. He was crying when we had to put the splint back on (We took it off to let his legs rest.) and started biting us. We told him we didn't mind and that he could bite us all he wanted. We just had to put a bigger splint back on as after a few hours without the splint, because his legs were protruding again. Poor little guy. We were doing all we knew to do and it just didn't seem to be enough.

Day 11

When Pin Cushion would blow up with air, his skin expanded away from his body. We would use a needle and put a hole in his skin to release the air. However his skin would heal so fast the air would accumulate again because there was no where for it to go. It was almost 4:00 in the morning and we tried another procedure to try and keep the air from accumulating so quickly. It had more of a danger of infection setting in, but at that point, we didn't think we had a choice. So we sewed some floss threw his skin on his back. The floss kept the holes open, so the air could continue to escape, no longer accumulating, blowing him up. Which allowed his air sacs to heal, since the persure was no longer hindering the healing process. He was on his way to full recovery.

Day 12

While feeding Pin Cushion and his clutch mates, we noticed that he kept leaning against the other siblings and it appeared that he was wanting to hold up his crop. the crop was so totally stretched out from all the swelling of air. We made a crop brace from a piece of material that was for our next sewing Project, but it was ok, anything for our little Pin Cushion. We couldn't believe it! It seemed to be working. You couldn't tell he's a bird. Floss in his back, stretchy black stuff on his feet, and now purple nightgown material on his chest. Pin Cushion was doing great so far. He had not blown up with air so we did not have to puncture him with a needle anymore. He was standing up by himself, even with the splint, and he started grooming us, so we knew he was feeling better.

We took the splint off his legs as he had outgrown it and we didn't want to chance having the splint too tight. It was late at night when we took off the splint, so we decided to give him a rest and not put it back on until the morning. But now that the air sac rupture was no longer affecting his legs and he was now walking normally, he no longer needed the splints. We were also noticing some difficulty in Pin Cushions breathing and the last thing he needed was to be in splints unable to find a more comfortable position in which to breath. We also noticed that standing him in an upright position helped him breath a little better while we were feeding him.

Well, our little pin cushion was 13 days old and the last four days had not been the most comfortable for him. But the little guy is a trooper and if anybody could make it, he would be the one.

Pin Cushion was still doing great. Without the leg splint he was walking normally. The dental floss was still working and he had not blown up again. We changed his crop brace that afternoon, at first it looked like he didn't need it, but within a few minutes, his crop began to sag again. So on went a clean crop brace.

At 16 days old, Pin Cushion was the most precocious little bird that we have ever seen and, was making up for lost time. We were finished feeding him when, he got on Linda's hand, flapped his wings and jumped down to the desk, climbed up her arm, ran over to her heart, sat down and went to sleep.

Pin Cushion was doing fantastic. He was getting bigger and bigger every day. He still had his crop brace on to give him time to heal and the dental floss was still in place with room for him to grow. We didn't want to take it out too soon, so we wouldn't have to do it again. He just needed time to heal. We took off Pin Cushion's crop brace. We were waiting to see how he was doing later and if the crop is still where it should be and not stretched out, we would keep it off permanently.

Pin Cushion's crop brace was no longer needed. He was doing wonderful. Now the only gadget that was left was the dental floss. We were not sure exactly when to take it out because we don't want him to blow up again and need to repeat the process, on the other hand, we couldn't leave it too long as he was growing and feathering rapidly.

We pulled out the dental floss on Pin Cushion - he was getting so big and lots of feathers where growing in we could hardly find it. He no longer needed it either, his air sacs had healed!

We didn't recognize Pin Cushion, he was almost all grown up and he was all healed. Pin Cushion was awesome, his mom had started laying eggs again and he sat on the eggs for mom so she could play with her hubby.

Pin Cushion flew the coop, so to speak. He was still not completely feathered, but we had him out and he started flying. We guessed he was tired of sitting on his mom's eggs, and after all, that little guy had been through, nothings going to stop him. So we put him in the nursery flight cage. He was no longer a baby but a fledging.

Pin Cushion was doing fine in the nursery flight. At first we thought he might have a hard time because he was not very friendly and wanted the other birds to stay away. So we took him out and fed him for old times sake and put him back. That evening, he had found a friend, and they were leaning on each other sleeping. It just doesn't get any better than that.

Pin Cushion was taken from the nursery flight and he will be staying with us forever and we placed him in the breeder flight cage. He just loved going from cage to cage through the tunnels. He knew he was home.

The Beginning...

Update: He is now 8 months old and doing fantastic. No special gal yet, but is definitely flirting with all the girls.

Update: Pin Cushion is now in the breeder cage waiting to be a father.

Update: He is now a proud husband and father of 1! His wifes name is Spring and their new baby is a beautiful yellowface teal, little girl. They have also adopted another chick that needed some more attention. They are very happy to be parents!