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Post by hettie95 on Oct 26, 2013 13:00:38 GMT 10
I've had my lorikeet for 10 months now, it wandered into the house in January on one of the extremely hot days. At first it was biting and screaming and could only be held in a towel, after a few weeks it stopped biting and now climbs on arms and shoulders .... and owns the house !! It can not fly as it's wings are too small, but i have noticed some new feather growing there as well as it's tail, as it hasn't got much of a tail at all..... i feed it pre-packaged lorikeet food and also fruit ... recently it has starting bathing in it's water..... really late at night... I was wondering if someone could help me with the sex and maybe what happened with the size of my lorikeet.... it's not a baby...so i'm not sure     |
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Post by avinet on Oct 26, 2013 21:45:16 GMT 10
I was wondering if someone could help me with the sex and maybe what happened with the size of my lorikeet.... it's not a baby...so i'm not sure Firstly welcome to the Forum - hope you find lots of useful information here. Your Rainbow Lorikeet cannot be sexed by looking at it - both male and female Rainbows are very similar and usually DNA or Surgical sexing is needed. DNA sexing involved getting a small spot of blood from a toe and sending that off to be DNA'd to determine the sex. Surgical sexing involved a quick anaesthetic and an internal examination with an endoscope to see the sex organs. In your case if you really want to know then DNA is the way to go. Turning to the wings and tail of the bird, it has a viral infection called Psittacine Beak & Feather Disease - PBFD. This is a virus that Rainbow babies sometimes catch in the nest as babies before their immune system is properly developed. In Rainbows it mostly causes the wing flight feathers and tail feathers to fall out and this is what has happened with your bird. By the time they leave the nest they have already lost some of their flight feathers and they fall to the ground - unable to fly. These birds are often called "runners" since that is all they can do. Unless they get picked up by people they will die since they cannot feed properly and are very vulnerable to predators. Some can make a full recovery and grow back a complete set of feathers, which remain attached and enable the bird to fly. Others never retain these feathers, they continually fall out, while still others will gradually lose all their feathers over time. Even those who apparently recover can still be carriers of the virus and so cannot be released back to the wild, and will always need to be kept separate from young birds in case they pass the virus on. There is an additional problem you need to be aware of that this virus can cause - it can also affect the liver, causing progressive damage to the liver, resulting eventually in sudden death when the liver can no longer function. If this happens, and perhaps a quarter of Rainbows have this liver damage, death normally occurs before 12 months old, often by 6 months. Your bird seems to be going OK so hopefully it has a healthy liver and lives a good long life. It may or may not get working flight feathers, but again by 12 months if it hasn't then it is not likely to. Hope this all helps you and if you have further questions then be sure to ask away. Your bird is lucky he found you - if he hadn't then he would certainly have died. cheers, Mike |
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