The PMV Thread with Pina, Willy, Jimi and Winnie

pigeonwriter wrote:

Charis, thank you very much!
Could it be that it is not so much the grapes themselves which cause the problem but the potential fungicides and insecticides with which they are sprayed in those countries?

Yes...that's correct.

My little PMV gang is doing fine. Pina has gained another 5 gr, did not weigh Jimi because he was on the same weight for the last 3 weeks and Willy has to be re-done tomorrow because he fidgeted so much in the bag that I could not get a real number. I did not want to nerve him more.
All three are doing their wing muscle training and yesterday and today we had a little bit of sunshine and although it is still quite cold I thought our 3 need a bit of sunshine so I took their boxes outside on the balcony and let them have some fresh air and some sunshine for half an hour or so while I sat there on a chair. The other pijjies were very curious to see their fellows and vice versa. I think our little gang enjoyed this very much and I think it helpd with the recovery as well. After that little visit outside they were all so tired that I could put them to sleep very easily.

One young squeaker outside even jumped on the cover of Willy's box and picked on the plastic. How cheeky. Willy could hardly believe this impertinence and cooed loudly. Was very funny.

I am now confronted with a new little "problem" and I am not sure what I should do:
Willy is mating with Pina :eek: :eek: :eek:
She is just 6 months old and I fear that she may be ready to lay eggs. The point is that I am afraid that this might request too much energy from her which she needs for her recovery as she is still stargazing a lot and circling from time to time. On the other hand when I separate her from Willy she is crying for him all the time (he is getting upset as well) and has a lot of stress also.
I have given them both a cardboard box which is on the floor beneath a chair and I put a flat basket into it with lots of stripes of kitchenpaper. They consider this as their nest and love to sit in it often for a long time side by side. It makes them happy and they are busy with one another so that they don't get bored.

Shall I separate them or not? I am not sure what to do
I tend to leave them together because it might help their recovery - at least Willy's because he seems to be quite content without doing too much nonsense. In the early evening they are separated after feeding anyway...

Petra...once Pigeon have made the emotional decision to mate, the hen will still lay eggs even if they are separated. All she needs is to ba able to see or hear her mate. Those of us that have single hens as companions know this to be true.
I would think best to let them be together. They may even recover quicker if they are allowed to do as they want.

Hi Petra...........I am happy to hear that all your little PMV babies are recovering so well. You have done an absolute kock out job of saving them and caring for them.

I would leave Willie and Pina together. Once they have made the emotional connection to be mates there is no stopping the egg laying process. Actually, the two of them being together and connected might aid in their recovery. In any case, I am so happy that all your birds are doing so well.

Louise

Charis and Louise - thank you both. That was my thought also and I am relieved to hear your opinion. I will keep you updated of course!!!

Enjoyed your update, Petra. I'm glad to hear all is going well.
In the event Pina does lay a couple eggs, do you have replacements for them?

Oh yes Cindy - I do. I am taking real eggs, empty them and fill them with plaster. Last week we had 4!!! active nests on our balcony - all of them filled with plaster eggs of course :Yes:
I think here you can talk about real birth control!

That must take a lot of patience, Petra...filling the eggs with plaster. Could you tell us how to do it, step by step. I think it would be a helpful thing for us to know how to do in case we don't have wooden eggs available.

Charis - it's easy and just requires a little bit of caution so that the egg does not break. I try to make a few photos to show what to do in a different thread - okay?

That would be wonderful, Petra.

I think it's time for an update! :Yes:

So many things are happening - so where to start. The easiest -

Jimi - he is truly a little brat but soooooo sweet. Most of the time he sits on his "balcony", a long flat stone which I place on the corner of his box - he loves to sit there and look out of the window.

This photo I already took beginning of Jan where he proved to have an excellent balance again as you can see:



He can perfectly fly in the meanwhile, molests Pina whenever Willy is not near and runs after her, courting, although he pecked at her at the beginning when he was sick. Now the contrary is happening and he is highly interested in her. Oh my....

And you know what happened? The plug he had in his chest - you remember the injury I discovered when I hospitalized him - simply fell off yesterday and when I checked his chest today everything seemed to have healed. I found this ominous thing in his box - nearly missed it but then recognized it from its shape:





I still cannot identify what it really is - there's tiny feathers and something very hard like a very spiky stone - could also be dried blood, probably some dried pus or injury secretion and God knows what else. It is gone and it apparently healed from inside. So it was good not to take him to the vet who possibly would have cut it or what else.

Jimi has not shown any symptoms since weeks! now. The only problem is still: he cannot eat by himself but he continues to try. He seems to be able to pick up little pieces of grit though so I think we just need to be patient. Everything else works with him.
Btw - if anyone thinks that pijjies are getting stupid from PMV - that's stupid. They do not lose anything of their skills, memory, awareness (predators f.e. - Jimi warns when he sees a crow through the window far away etc.), communication skills (with his father Pete - who is well aware where Jimi is) etc.etc.
I think Jimi could be released if he could eat by himself. But as long as he cannot eat a release is out of question of course. And as much as I love him I pray for his full recovery so that he can rummage the skies again, look for a mate and live his life. That's what he is made for.

I think I cut this off here - have to go to the kitchen - will continue later or tomorrow....

Petra, the plug looks like a temporary tumor.

Check this out...

https://pij-n-angels.forumotion.net/pigeon-and-dove-illnesses-injuries-their-symptoms-and-treatment-f11/body-tumors-t155.htm

Charis, yes from the photo it looks similar but in reality it isn't as I know how it looked like when the plug was still in the wound. And a tumor does not contain stones I think. I think it was the leftover from the injuries I realized on Jimi last year when he appeared one day on the balcony having dark spots allover his body from a severe fight. I think I wrote about it in a different thread. I suppose that this was the worst injury he originally had, maybe a rupture in his crop that healed by itself. In December when I saw it the first time there was some slightly infected tissue around the wound - it was slightly wet - that I treated with Bach Flower Rescue drops. I think those speeded up the healing process.

I just found the thread: dark spots on the plumage. This happened in Oct - so the time scale would fit!

Thank you Petra. Did you take pictures of him at the time? Would be interesting to me to have a look at them.

pigeonwriter wrote:

Oh yes Cindy - I do. I am taking real eggs, empty them and fill them with plaster.

Last week we had 4!!! active nests on our balcony - all of them filled with plaster eggs of course :Yes:
I think here you can talk about real birth control!

With your artistic gift, if you have any extra eggs you could paint them and sell them.
I know they would be absolutely beautiful. :Yes:

Matilda wrote:

Thank you Petra. Did you take pictures of him at the time? Would be interesting to me to have a look at them.

He did not give me enough time to grab the camera and I doubt whether you would have seen enough on the pics. A couple of days later all the spots were gone.

Appreciate the update, Petra.

I love it when the pijjies lie down on the perches. Jimi's picture is so cute.

Petra...just a thought about helping Jimi eat on his own again. Maybe try the defrosted corn and peas because they are soft and easier to pick up with the beak.
Oh, do I remember you saying they aren't available frozen?

Hmmm - will try this Charis although al of them are not too keen on eating green peas. I really don't know why. I give them all only a few, ~10 before they get the pellets and only in the morning. When I fed green peas in the evening together with the pellets Willy and Pina started to vomit them - only the green peas. Isn't this strange? They did not vomit the pellets. I really wonder what the reason for this is. Jimi has no problem at all.

Yes - I cannot find frozen corn. I will try tomorrow and put them some de-frosted peas into their foodbowl. Let's see what happens. It is quite discouraging sometimes to see them apparently being completely healthy again and then not being able to eat by themselves. I tried it with different feeding times in order to make them getting hungry and they definitely rummage their foodbowls but besides a few accidential hits there is still no success. They all are also pecking from the floor like pijjies do but everything falls off their beak again. At least they try each day and one day it will work again - I am sure - but it would be nice if I could help them. So far nothing I tried worked. I offer them seeds any size, from small millet to dried corn, deep dishes, flat dishes or on the floor but nothing works so far. I also don't have the guts to leave them completely hungry for the whole day. But if there is no progress in the next weeks I might have to try this but I would rather not

Oh Petra...how frustrating.

Charis - no interest in picking up the green peas. But I will not give up!

pigeonwriter wrote:

Charis - no interest in picking up the green peas. But I will not give up!

I'm hoping the interest will pick up real soon.

Do you have your handkerchiefs ready? Here is finally an update on Pina and Willy.

But first a few photos:








How sugar sweet is this?
Well - Pina laid an egg in the night from Saturday to Sunday in her box. She completely ignored it as if it did not belong to her. So I took it away. The next day she was behaving as usual, cuddling with Willy and I thought this was it. No - it wasn't. Tuesday afternoon I found a second egg in the box when I took her out to let her run around as usual before supper. Again she ignored it. I tried it with a plaster egg in their "nest" below the chair but again no interest.
I assume that her mother instinct is simply not developed yet although they were heavily mating and "building nest" beneath the chair and were often sitting in it. I suppose she is much too young to be a mother. She is just 6 months old and a few days.

Now they continue to be a couple and often are cuddling in a corner of our appartment and sometimes in the nest.
I am somewhat lost what to do. If she does not feel like sitting on eggs does the egg laying cycle become shorter then? My worry is that this is taking too much energy from her body given that she still has PMV symptoms in addition although she seems to be very strong and healthy despite her illness. Btw - she weighed 415 gr on Sunday - 15 gr more than Willy!!! :eek:
But this may be due to the eggs. It will be interesting to see how much she has next Sunday.

Yesterday she started to jump out of her box (which is on the sofa) by herself and "jump" down to the floor - looks rather like a little crawling bat (we call her Little Batty at the moment) but at least she is getting more and more independent. Her flight reflex is also coming back and I think it is only a matter of a few weeks that she also can fly again. I am optimistic. If only her beak would work again!!! But I believe that this will function again one day - suddenly - from one day to the next.

Now to Willy. First of all he really costs me nerves :eek: . Not only that he is awfully fidgety when he is fed but he really loves to play with me and to mock me. He is a real little sh..head. But I love him so and he is incredible intelligent. Not only that he can fly again like a racer, he is a true circus artist.You cannot imagine where he can land in the meanwhile and how skillful he can manoeuver here in our little appartment. A rather large bird such as him in such a small room. Amazing. He has become very skillful in finding places where he could crawl into, be it into the boxes under my working table where he just has 10 cm space. I slowly doubt that he is a bird - he's rather behaving like a cat - very funny. This makes it sometimes an adventure to find him at all and causes me nearly a heart attack each time.

But what's most astonishing is, at 5°clock in the afternoon, when it's time for supper, he flies on my working table, looks at me as if he wants to say: hey - is my supper ready?
Then he "plays" with me, flying on the closet or on the bookshelf where he knows that I have difficulties to catch him and finally he flies to his box and jumps into it!!!! so that I can take him and put him into his batman cape to be fed. What do you say now? Unbelievable? But it is true!

And we have a new cardboard box pigeon on the closet (you remember the pics of Pina and Peppi sitting on my closet in this box and Willy flying on my closet to throw them out of there?). His memory is truly excellent and he found this place immediately again:






Btw - the batman cape is a cotton towel, folded once and then sewn together, with some push-buttons to close and open quickly and an opening where his little head is coming through but no more. This way the bird is properly held by his shoulder and cannot escape. I invented this because I did not like that I (my patner) had to hold a fidgety bird so firm. This way you can simply hold him upright by his feet and it is easy to feed him without any pressure on his crop. I try to make a photo soon so that you can see what I am talking about.

Sometimes I play with Willy the "bad spider" game where I move my fingers towards him like a spider and he likes to "beat" me with his wings. He has quite a wing slap in the meanwhile so that it really bangs. He could easily fly away but he loves to play with me. Isn't that sweet too?

Also Willy has no symptoms any more even when I have to chase him - besides that he cannot eat alone. All three of them - which I find strange. But maybe this is only a conspiracy, a trick to get through this awful winter in a comfortable way???? We'll see what happens when spring is here...

Petra...Most Pigeons do ignore their first egg until the second one arrives and then the couple tends to both with great attention. If they start incubating the first egg before the second one is laid one chick will hatch a couple of days earlier reducing the chances of the second chick's survival.

I am very careful to replace the eggs after both have been laid. I warm the pretend eggs and put my habnd with the warmed eggs in it under whichever Pigeon is tending the real eggs. the I drop the eggs and pick up the real ones so they don't see me make the switch. Often if they see the switch, they won't incubate the eggs.

My experience from our balcony pijjies is that they all were incubating from the very first moment but left the first egg alone more often during the day. Latest after 2 days the second was laid and then they incubated with great care. I switch the eggs the same way as you do.

Pina did not do anything at all with the egg although I left it in the box. Next time I will leave them both in the box - maybe it will work then. Maybe I could leave the box open so that Willy could jump into it as well now that Pina is able to leave the box by herself. We will see.