Little Neenee is maturing 🥰

[Shivali]

Hi Laura and everyone!
I have been reading the discouraging breeding thread over and over…I have a few questions …
Neeloo is over a year old at this point, and she is exhibiting behavior of Constantly wanting to burrow or nest behind pillows on the couch or bed.
Birds are out and about with us all day, so it’s hard to avoid these two areas …

I am sensitive to materials and only tolerate linen for sleeping , so my bed is all linen as well as some of the couch pillows. However , I have found Neeloo loves to chew holes in linen- something about it! Because she is so adamant about burrowing , at times I would let her do it for a few minutes, then get her, then a few minutes later again she would have snuck behind a pillow and I would have to fish her out. only to find numerous moth holes in my expensive linen bedding and pillow covers which I don’t mind because I love her so much, of course!
my concern is her ingesting the material , even though it’s a high quality linen , very natural- and of course being stimulated by this nesty type of behavior.
I actually rolled up a little seagrass mat for her cage to try and get her out of obsesscouch and bed mode…

(I know ppl say don’t let them burrow, but I literally have to be grabbing her every 5 minutes,it takes all day to keep her from doing it, unless we are in a room like my office.)

Anyway she loves her grass mat and sleeps in it every night. It hasn’t exacerbated her burrowing (it’s the same!), or made her snippy. In fact almost the opposite bc she is able to have a little snuggle there which satisfies her a bit. at night when it’s time to go to bed she scrambled into it so happily, I’d hate to take it away but idk if it’s a good idea to even have it.

she has always been obsessed with being “snug” if that makes sense. She has plenty of enrichment and out of cage time.

however, I feed her a lot of fresh foods. She loves it so much and I wanted her to be healthy,so I give her tons of veggies, chop, mash, birdie bread made with veg and Harrison’s, etc.

so I think I may reduce to 2-3 x a week…they are with us all day so they eat with us and get a mini meal version of what we are having ( we eat alot of vegan Whole Foods), so it would be sad to stop that ritual and i think we’d have to eat in another room from hee. She is a real foodie!

she is obsessed with Apple and grape , I only give her as an organic treat in the morning. I would hate to give that up as it’s her literal fav thing in the world, and she will “ask” me for it every morning.

She gets 12 hours of sleep, however another thing in the mix is my incredibly hormonal budgie who constantly romances toys and vent rubs… with one foot on the toy,,,anywhere from 2-8 times a day, depending on the mood ! and is very hyper, excited, playful, talkative, just a normal adhd budgie who is obsessed with toys and also me.
Neeloo has grown up watching the budgie soooo …
Yesterday I saw her trying to imitate the budgie (lotus, probably biological male but preferred pronouns are she/her) , rubbing on the perch, and I was a bit alarmed- I know it’s normal behavior but it was the first time and I really am so paranoid about egg related health issues.
So I think the budgie is not the best influence hormonally…
And they are together all day, lotus is her role model…

But I think we can improve on diet right now… ?
these are my questions…
1)Am I needlessly worried and is all this normal?
otherwise:

2)If I increase her sleep to 14 hours, will that help? Should I do it for a month or two?

3)my budgies food is also out and I don’t know about putting budgie on austerity diet bc she literally only picks out blonde seeds-and she flies around constantly, burns a lot of energy throughout the day. (She has great muscle tone and is perfect weight, very slim and lean even with unlimited seeds, and millet . She’s not very food focused and only eats when really hungry. It’s a strain to get her to eat fresh foods so when she eats it I’m thrilled.)
Neeloo has been copying the white seed picking a bit . So Neeloo will just probably go pick seeds from budgies food /cage, if I give her less seeds.
how would you remedy this? They also eat lunch together and usually pick at a big bowl of fresh food at every meal. Cage doors are open all day for them to go in and out..they like to hang out together /separate, in both, when they want to relax or Wind down.

4) if I am giving her a Tbs of linnie mix per day, is that enough if she’s not getting chop or veg that day? It seems like if she’s not getting anything else, it would just be Tbs of linnie food, I always have her bird salad as well.., some bee pollen…and that would be it? I usually put the Harrison’s mash in the birdie bread but sometimes add it to seed…
It just sounds like so little food! (On top of that, it’s hard to get my husband on board bc he thinks I’m starving them if their dishes aren’t brimming with seeds and he will fill them up. )

5) sounds like you advocate for no egg food, but I always hear mixed on this. Egg food at all, or not?

I always hear that birds who are frustrated sexually are not being given proper attention or enrichment… but if anything I spend too much time with them. I’m interacting with them literally all day long. I’m always making toys for them that they obsess over. We have lots of rituals … if anything I might overdo it and spoil them
I hope I’m doing the right things for them- especially Neeloo as she’s my little hen. Again, she doesn’t seem that bad but… I just don’t know.., she’s my first linnie, I’ve heard love of burrowing is normal .. but then it should be discouraged?


Thank you for any advice!

 

[Shivali]

Hey all, just an update...
So this is an issue i had been struggling with for a while, trying to keep Neelu out of the bed ... but i finally put a large sheet over the bed and the pillows, so its just one flat surface... neelu literally cant burrow now, so its made a big difference! I honestly dont know why i didnt think of this sooner, i havent figured out what to do when im *in* the bed, but for now i can do this during the day, i also move all the pillows off the couch when we go there... its not ideal for us humans but it does seem to curtail the burrowing for the most part. She hasnt exhibitd any vent rubbing since that one incident...im certain that she was just imitating our budgie. of course, as soon as a pillow appears she is trying to hide and munch a hole in it.
I bumped up the sleep from 12-14, which seems like alot, but i do think it helped.
Im still not sure on the food but i stopped feeding fresh everyday, which was a difficult adjustment. im sure it must be helping as well for hormones.
The only issue i still face is budgie food, since the budgie needs more seeds (she will just not eat if they arent there, and is super duper active, flying around the house all day) but ive started just feeding her in her cage and closeing the door, when she needs extra seeds. Neelu, if she eats all her seeds, will go into Lotus' cage and start eating those seeds- and vice versa.since they are cage free it can be hard to monitor, but ive started doing controlled feeding of the seeds.
of course if my husband walks in and sees there are no seeds, he will pour a big bowl of them for Lotus, and then Neelu will eat them too.
He thinks im starving them, lol. Lotus know she can ask Daddy for seeds anytime, and i'm sure she tells him that no one has given her any seeds that day.
Im still confused, no matter how much i read about it, about exactly how much to feed Neelu if im not breeding her. And whether or not to supplement with pellets or Harrisons. And does a TBs of seeds equal, just seeds, or the Linnie Mix? I feed her the Chirp central mix...
If i dont give her fresh every day, am i really only giving her a TBS of food on the off days? No greens? Is birdie dried salad ok?
Thanks so much
Shivali
Happy holidays!

 

[Eddie's Aviary]

Sorry for the delay in answering, I was down for the count with the flu.

Glad things are better. Good work figuring out how to stop the burrowing! If the grass hut thing is nest like, I would ditch it. Do 14 hours of sleep year round. Austerity diet is good when they are in perfect condition as that is the breeding condition. Letting them run out of food also encourages them into eating more of the ingredients in the food in front of them. Linnies have a naturally high protein need, so you have to balance that with triggering. I would do a sprinkle of an egg food or miracle meal 2-3 times a week on fresh as that is the amount to serve fresh when trying to knock them from breeding condition anyhow. Times of molt, feed daily. Bird Salad isn't a food, its a self medicating mix, so should be always offered, not considered as part of what you are feeding. The tablespoon of food daily, depends on the bird. If active, may not be enough. The way to tell is by gauging the speed at which it is totally consumed. You want a few hours daily of them being out, after consuming all they had, not cherry picking favorite ingredients. Austerity diets serve not to trigger, but aren't a diet, so weighing them weekly is a good way to make sure you haven't cut the calories too much. When a molt comes on (not often in Linnies, but frequent in Budgerigar) its pig out time. LOTS of protein, spray baths and if they don't eat lots of other things like sprouts, bird bread, veggies.... then consider a good molt vitamin like Multivet.

Hope this info helps, Merry Christmas!

 

[Shivali]

Thank you SO much, this is really helpful!
Hope you are feeling a lot better, and happy new year