05/10/2026
Athena (Cinnamon Blue female, exhibition budgerigar) is 3 days old today. She's from the very first clutch of her inexperienced parents (Bobby and Ador).
First-time parents can often be unpredictable. Contrary to popular belief, nature doesn't always know what it is doing. Both parents come from lines of excellent parents, and while there's a genetic influence on what kind of parents certain birds grow up to be, for some, it's a big learning curve.
Initial problem with this pairing was that the mother hen never learned that she needed to sit on her eggs consistently to maintain viability. This was remedied by letting her practice sitting on dummy eggs while her eggs were incubated artificially.
Athena was the first to hatch, who was immediately accepted by her mother. Unfortunately, one of the parents (and the hen is usually the culprit) has assaulted Athena after around 30 hours from hatch. I was at work at the time.
The right lateral side of Athena's head sustained several superficial injuries, along with bruising over the right wing, and over the cere. When discovered, Athena's cere was bluish in colour instead of translucent pink - indicating hypoxia from blood loss. Interestingly enough, her mother was still incubating her and she was very well fed. Generally when parental assault occurs, abandonment goes hand-in-hand. While I cannot say with certainty who or what caused the assault, I hypothesize that unexpected movement may have triggered a fight response from an inexperienced parent.
Athena was critical but demonstrated fighting spirit in spite of injuries and blood loss. I've taken over her care exclusively and have been monitoring her round the clock. She had to travel to an event with me in her incubator because I couldn't be in two places at once.
She's on her way to be 4 days old pretty soon, and her recovery looks promising. I am concerned about injuries around her eye and ear causing permanent disabilities with development, and she's too young to be assessed for anything at this time. Her eyes haven't opened yet.
She has a minor case of ruptured air sac from trauma, which leads to accumulation of air in and around her crop, but with careful husbandry, this should resolve in a few days to a week.
In about 30 hours from now, if she's still here with us, I'll be doing a more thorough wound cleaning with betadine. I am choosing to wait so that blood clot isn't dislodged, leading to more bleeding at this time. Most of the wound should have closed by then.
Handraising neonates (and chicks in general) is risky. Death by aspiration is very common in neonates. Even with a lot of experience under my belt, raising neonates makes me nervous.
I'm preparing another very experienced foster pair in one of my breeding enclosures who will most likely adopt Athena and take over her care, and of her siblings who are due to hatch starting next week. Her parents were released back into the flight cage as I'm not comfortable with them raising any more chicks any time soon.
Wish us the best of luck, and I hope to provide more positive updates on Athena over the coming days.
