Rosy Bourke Hens and Black Spots

On Jul 6, 2011  Thomas wrote: "Why do my female rosie bourkes have black spots all over their backs?"

Here's my response:  

Female Rosy Bourkes are usually darker than the males, especially their faces. However, there is a wide variation of color possible in Rosies since all of them are descended from Normal Bourkes (the wild color in Australia). If your birds are receiving adequate nutrition, the dark spots are not unusual. My hens aren't completely pink on their backs either. The dark edges on some of their feathers may not show up in the photos, but they're there. The males are less likely to have this, but can.

A young bird of a different color. See comment attached to
this blog for information on pied colors, different than this one.

Occasionally, we will get a baby that isn't truly pink or rosie. They can be "pied" and I've also heard people refer to "rainbow" Bourkes. Here is one of ours.
  

It's unlikely the dark color on your hens is caused by a deficiency, but all birds can show feather damage if they suffer an illness or go through a period of time where they receive inadequate food. Starving birds don't produce healthy feathers. I discussed stress bars on feathers in an earlier article. Here's a link to it. 

http://thesplendidbourkebirdblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/birds-and-their-feathers-selecting.html

Rosy hens are likely to have darker areas on their backs, and it's not at all unusual. One of my hens suffered egg binding and lost feathers due to a treatment with mineral oil that saved her life. The feathers came back very dark. A few months later, after another molt,  they were pink again. Here is a link to that post.  

http://thesplendidbourkebirdblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/parakeet-egg-binding-what-to-do-to.html

After losing feathers damaged by mineral oil, they grew back
in dark. This is Sugar about a year ago.

This is Sugar after molting off the darker feathers.
They came back in as they were before being damaged
and then regrowing in darker.

 These are before and after photos of Sugar, who suffered egg binding and survived.

Currently, she's on eggs again without any problems. Trust me ... this REALLY IS the same bird.

Peace & Blessings,

rosie.birds@gmail.com

PARAKEET EGG BINDING ... What to do to Rescue Hens.

Spicy, a Normal Bourke with his mate,
Sugar, a Rosy whose feathers came in
darker after recovering from egg binding.

An offspring whose mother suffered
egg binding and his egg was fostered.

I’ve mentioned egg binding in other posts, but thought I’d do one specifically targeting the subject. Until a more experienced bird breeder gave me excellent advice, I lost a few hens to this.

Symptoms: Most hens already with one to three eggs will leave the nest and look lethargic and ill. Interest in their eggs will be gone. They will fluff up and appear inactive and obviously sick. If they are sitting on the floor and puffed up, that’s an obvious sign something’s seriously wrong. Death can occur within 24 hours, so it’s important to act fast.

Pick her up in a warm towel. You will be able to see a bulge near the vent, but do not press there or you will kill her instantly if the egg breaks.

Common Advice:

I followed directions given in my bird books, but it was not enough. They say to wrap the hen in a towel to restrain and protect her while holding her vent over steam. This is called “steaming the egg.” They also recommend carefully adding Vaseline to the vent area being careful NOT to massage the area. I followed this advice at different times with three hens, but none of them subsequently laid the egg and sadly all three didn’t survive.

Bonnie and Clyde, Rosy Bourkes.
Bonnie survived egg binding and has
had several successful clutches since.

What Worked:

Instead of Vaseline, lukewarm mineral oil was carefully put into the vent with a small eye dropper. It was also given to the hen orally. Surprisingly, my hens seemed to want to ingest the mineral oil and I had no trouble feeding it to them via the eye dropper. Next, I also held them over steam for a minute or so…being careful not to let them get too hot as my bare fingers were there too. Once they seemed moist and warm, I put them into a small carrying cage with water and seed present. I completely covered the cage with a towel to give them privacy and warmth. Next, I boiled a large mug of water and put it inside the towel so that the steam could reach the hen. Don’t put it in the cage with her…she might injure herself on the hot liquid.

An area heater nearby is a good idea too. You want her to stay very warm, about 98 degrees or so, if possible. Don’t forget the steaming cup of hot water inside her “tent.” Moisture helps, and for this reason a very small cage is an advantage.

Sugar's dark feather pattern after suffering egg binding
and losing feathers. I expect her to be pink again after a molt.

Check on Her Every Hour:

If the egg isn’t laid within an hour, repeat the whole process again. Then check after another hour and keep checking and repeating the process until the egg is laid. I’ve never had to do it more than twice before it successfully helped my hens lay their oversized egg.

Right after being subjected to this unpleasant treatment, my hens have not wanted to return to their current nest and I successfully fostered their previous eggs under other hens. However, the egg that is covered in mineral oil doesn’t hatch…probably because air cannot penetrate the shell in spite of attempting to rinse the oil off of it.

Admittedly, I always wonder if I’ve given a hen enough mineral oil, or too much. You don’t want to injure her with too much. However, too little may not do the trick. So, if the first application doesn’t work, I use a little more the second time. So far, I’ve used this method with three hens at different times and all three hens laid their egg and have recovered. Two of the three have gone on to raise several more clutches without further problems. The third has laid infertile eggs without a problem.

The first time I attempted to feed mineral oil to a hen, I used a tiny syringe instead of an eye dropper, managing to get mineral oil all over her head. As a result, all the feathers around her head eventually fell out and she looked awful for several weeks. When they came back in, they were much darker than before. See the photo. I expect her to be pink again after another molt.



Sugar and Spice successfully mating
while she was still pink.

My bird books say to wait 60 days before allowing a hen to breed again. I’ve chosen to wait an entire season, typically nine months. I see no reason to stress a hen further. Besides the mineral oil tends to leave them unable to achieve fertility until it is completely out of their system.

It’s always important to have enough calcium present for your birds. A bird that is too young or who doesn’t have enough calcium can produce soft eggs, causing egg-binding. My birds always have cuttlebones and mineral blocks available, as well as oyster shell and grit. The problems I’ve had with egg binding didn’t appear to be soft egg shells, but rather eggs that were too large for them to easily pass.

Spicy is a handfed bird, rejected by his parents.
He's a male Normal Bourke. Notice a tiny bit
of blue above his cere (nostrils). This is
only present on mature Normal males,
not on Normal hens.

If your birds don’t appear to be using their cuttlebone or mineral block, there are calcium supplements available to add to their water. If you decide to do this, however, follow the directions carefully…you don’t want to over medicate them.

In other posts I covered advice given to me for hens who had fertile eggs that didn’t hatch. Two readers and a friend recommended adding small salt blocks intended for rabbits. These contain iodine. For a long time the birds ignored them. However, I notice recently that the birds are beginning to chew on them, so I’m hopeful that those hens in the past that had fertile eggs that didn’t hatch will now be successful.

May God bless you and your feathered friends

with good health and productivity.

Birds and Their Feathers: Selecting a Healthy Bird

Healthy Splendid Parakeets, Rainbow & Jewel.

When selecting a bird to add to your flock or as a pet…There is much to be learned by examining a bird’s feathers since feathers are a good indication of a bird’s health and well-being. Molting is a normal process where feathers are periodically lost and replaced with new plumage. I’ll attempt to identify the difference between a molt and when something might be wrong with the bird, such as disease or malnutrition.

One-week Rosie Bourke babies, pink tipped feathers
just starting to show.

Budgerigar parakeets (budgies) appear bald when they hatch. Bourkes and Splendids both have “natal down” covering them. Like any chick, it’s wet at first hatch, but quickly dries to become fluffy. These are actually downy feathers, those that provide added warmth by underlying the larger outside feathers in mature birds. A baby bird’s feathers begin to form in the follicles as the bird grows. These appear as darkened areas under the skin that are easier to see in larger birds than in small parakeets such as Budgies, Bourkes, Splendids and other small members of the avian family.

Feathers gradually protrude through the skin, encased in a sheath. The fuzzy tips of feathers soon begin to show through the end of the sheath. If you are raising Bourkes and have a mixed pair (one Rosie and one Normal), you can begin to recognize their future color at this stage. Rosies will show their pink at the ends of feather sheaths on their backs one to two weeks after hatching. You’ll also know their sex since color is sex-linked in Bourkes. Hens from mixed parents will be the color of their father. Males will be the color of their mother.

Rosie Bourke babies with some down still present.
No stress bars on them. Lines are color and fade as they mature.

Until their first molt, most young birds have the same color plumage as the hens of their species. This is especially true of Splendids. Males develop their scarlet chest after their first molt. However, even the rose color in Bourke males’ deepens and seems to become richer as they mature.

Sexing Baby Splendids: Although young Splendid parakeets look like mom at first, you can lift their wings and look for white bars on the bottom of their wings to help determine males from females. The undersides of the wings of adult Splendid males are all black. Youngsters with white bars (or stripes) under their wings are female. However, some have broken white bars and that makes identification trickier since they could be either sex. In my clutches, however, the hens have had solid white bars and the broken white-barred babies grew up to be males that later filled in with black after their first molt.

Close up of healthy feathers on a Rosie Bourke.

Healthy feather development requires adequate nutrition. If there is a disruption in the absorption of nutrients when the feathers are developing, stress bars may appear on the feathers. In this case, feathers may be a normal length, but with a line across them where areas on each of the shafts are empty of the colorful pieces that poke out and lock together. This can be caused by digestive disturbances, pro-longed periods of chilling, or the bird not being fed enough as the feathers were developing. They can appear as dark lines or white lines, depending on the color of the feathers.

If only one or two feathers have these bare areas, they are probably not stress bars. This can happen when a feather sheath isn’t preened off soon enough. What you need to watch for are continuous lines of stress bars.

Yet, a bird with stress bars may since have recovered and be healthy. If it's healthy, replacement feathers won't have the stress bars. If it is a bird you’re considering purchasing, you might want to wait and watch, skip that bird and look for another, or have the bird evaluated by an avian veterinarian before purchasing it.

Molting is caused when feathers are pushed out by new feathers coming in below them. A bird should never have bald spots because of a molt, and most birds molt the same feathers on both sides. The easiest way to recognize a molting bird is the feather sheaths you will see at the wings, tail or head. Lone birds will have more trouble preening these off than if you have a friendly pair. They will help preen areas for each other that they cannot reach, for instance, the top of their heads.

Damaged feathers also occur if birds fly into things, or from over handling. See my articles on safety.

As always, looks at the bird's eyes. They should be shiny and alert. Not half closed or watery. Also, inspect the bird’s vent. If feces have gathered there, the feathers around the vent are wet and/or soiled, that’s a bird to avoid as it may be ill. You don’t want to introduce that bird to your other birds. New birds, even apparently very healthy birds, should be quarantined for ten or more days before introduction to your others. If at any time, one of your birds appears ill, address the problem promptly and keep it separated from your others to avoid spreading the problem.