The supplier I normally buy Dalai, Perry & Lennie’s seed from, put up their prices. Significantly! This led me to source another brand with a view to mixing them & thereby reducing the cost but still retaining quality. This approach also ensures that we are never dependent on one brand.
L: New seed, R: Original seed
To make sure they approved of the new seed I had selected, I put some in a separate seed pot. In Dalai’s cage it was in the small treat pot, & in Perry & Lennie’s cage it was in the seed pot at the back. The new seed looks pretty much like the old seed, but with less red millet (see side photo). I then just had to monitor their preference.
Dalai seemed non-committal in that he ate from both the seed pots, with no obvious preference.
Perry appeared to prefer the new brand, eating quite a lot of it, even with the old/current brand available next to him.
Though Lennie ate the new brand, he seemed to steer more towards the original brand.
Conclusion? Budgies are individuals with their own likes & dislikes! Dalai, Perry & Lennie are generally okay with the new brand.
A couple of days later I forgot I had separated the different seed brands & mixed them, so the experiment had to end! So currently, they are eating a mixture of the brands although still a majority of the original one.
A few months back, I posted that Phinny’s bedtime swing had been damaged beyond repair. Initially, so Phineas had somewhere to sleep, I gave him the Toyboys’ ttmss swing as they only used theirs sporadically.
Parcel from the US of APhineas breaking in the hot pink perchA manly Phineas on his hot pink swingPhineas loves his swing
When the new replacement swing arrived, that was slightly different to the old one, I gave it a ‘test drive’ in the Manor. Both Cagney & Bezukhov completely ignored it. The next test was in Phinny’s cage. One day, when he was out & about I replaced the Toyboys’ old swing (I hope you are keeping up with the swing versions!) with the new replacement swing. However, that did not have as good a reception as I had hoped. I found Phineas stopped dead in his tracks on the perch next to it (where he then jumps onto it), looking puzzled, confused & bewildered. I put the old swing back.
It was then time to return to the internet for a proper replacement. Previously, I had found it online but the cost for postage & packaging was expensive, hence buying the slightly different (& now I know, completely inadequate) one. I thought I would bite the bullet & pay the P&P costs, but it was out of stock! Cue another frenzied internet search!
So, I found another swing that looked pretty similar, in the US. P&P was obviously high for the UK, but was not as high as the out of stock one. I decided to get it! Surprisingly, the swing arrived within a few days & with much hope, I opened the parcel….
Fantastic! It is virtually the same swing!
Oh goodness me! What a bright, garish, girly PINK!
Well, I knew they would not have a problem with the design & structure…. but the colour? Even *I* had a problem with the colour!
I checked to see if the old perches could be interchanged with the new one, thereby reducing the amount of pink on the eye, but they were too fat to fit into the gaps. The new perches would fit the old swing though, so to break Phineas into the new swing (& colour!) gently, I gave him one hot pink perch. Would he sit on it?
Naturally, the change was made whilst he was out & about. The first one to notice it was Cagney. He bounced onto the open door platform, about to go in to eat Phinny’s seed, but looked up at the hot pink, stopped suddenly, then turned tail & flew back to the safety of the Manor! This did not bode well.
Phineas it seems, is made of sterner stuff though. He took the new hot pink in his stride, so much so that the very next day the whole of his bedtime swing turned hot pink. You will see from the photos that he is happy with it. It also has an extra feature of a little loop on the bottom so I was able to hang some beads in case he wanted to count them to help him sleep.
Not so long ago, I wrote about Cagney & Bezukhov’s favourite chewy toy that has become threadbare. I have been adjusting the remaining stringy bits to provide maximum illusion of bulk but it was starting to look rather ridiculous when one or other of them attempted to “hide” behind it. I decided it was time to upgrade! Unfortunately, I could not remember where I bought the original one so I had a major internet search ahead of me.
The new one had to be the same as the existing one, albeit in its original form. There are many chewy toys around, made out of similar materials but I inspected the photo of each contender closely as I knew the slightest deviation from the original could mean yet another toy to go in the Rejected Toys box.
Fortunately, I found them! I was so pleased, I bought two! One for current chew & one for future chew.
The new chewy toy has been placed where the threadbare one usually is & the threadbare one has been moved along the perch a bit. I thought that if they were quite close together, Cagney & Bezukhov could each sleep behind one, even if one would be more hidden than the other.
I should perhaps add that the preferred bedtime sleeping spot is ‘behind the chewy toy’ & there is still a rota of sorts on whose turn it is. (Cagney probably sleeps behind it an average of 7 out of 10 times). Having two chewy toys may reduce the nightly bedtime faffing routine.
You can see in the last photo that a section of the new chewy toy has already been chewed off, exposing the knot & the first in-between piece of red string.
Puddings & Toyboys 