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Budgie has something on his cere! Does anyone know what this is?!

1945 Views 5 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  StarlingWings, 
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Hi all,

I'll start by mentioning that I'm obsessed with my feather babies and any abnormality sends me into a spiral of panic.

Anyway, I was out for just a few hours, and I came home to find my lil boy Petrie has what can only be described as a pin feather coming out from his left nostril in his cere (he was in his cage while I was out, so he definitely didn't fly into anything).His nostril looks like part of it just fell off...its huge compared to the right nostril.

I've never seen this on him or any of my other feather babies in my 10 years of having budgies, and am freaking out. Petrie appears to be behaving super normal, he has been a little fluffed this week because as you can see he is going through a bad molt... but he's eating, playing, singing, flying, etc.

The emergency vet in my area has no certified avian vets, so I'm waiting until tomorrow to take him to the normal avian vet. I just was hoping to be reassured that whatever this thing is, he is in no immediate danger.

Thanks to anyone who can help me!

Alba

p.s. now that I've been staring at it for like an hour it actually looks like maybe part of his cere that normally covers that red thing fell off... so my title may be slightly misleading

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Goldenwing
I am no expert, but it looks to me like he bruised his nose. The biggest immediate concern I see would be if he is bleeding. Even a small amount of blood loss in a bird is dangerous because they are so small. My best advice is to keep monitoring him, keep him a comfortable temperature (not too cold) and if you are very concerned, you could give him some guardian angel or pedialyte. https://www.talkbudgies.com/article...uardian-angel-pedialyte-pedialyte-recipe.html

Good luck!
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Thanks Goldenwing! I checked and it doesn't seem like there's active bleeding, just whatever flap/pin feather-like thing is sticking out of his (missing?) cere is pretty pink/red. He is currently munching on some carrot and acting totally normal... but the cere area doesn't look much better :(.
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JRS
It’s great that you’ll be taking Petrie to your avian vet.

Whilst it’s reassuring that he is behaving normally, we don’t know if this lesion has occurred due to disease (though I think unlikely), from an accident or from an intentional injury.
Could there be a bit of a love triangle going on there? Is there any possibility that this could be a result of another bird attacking him?

When you are at home, try to be in view of the cage and observe the current dynamics in there. It might be wise, (until you feel that you have adequately assessed the interactions and reassured yourself), that you temporarily place Petrie in a separate cage when you cannot be there to directly supervise; just in case this injury was inflicted by another bird.

Good luck at the vets tomorrow, please keep us updated.
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Thanks JRS!

Quick update: I woke up this morning to find that Petrie's cere looked SO MUCH better!!! The part that seemed missing is now a dark brown, and maybe on its way to becoming part of the cere again. I will likely take him and my other bird to the vet anyway because they are overdue for a check up and I want to find a good vet for future occurrences.

I was thinking about your theory JRS, because this is the second time I've come home to find Petrie injured (after just being in his cage). A few months ago he had a small scratch right over his eyelid! He shares a cage (which is almost a small aviary... it's like 2 ft x 2.5 ft by 3ft tall) with just one other bird, little Caesar (pictured next to him). Caesar is definitely the alpha bird, but they are generally pretty loving and playful with one another. I often work from home on the weekends and my desk is right next to their cage and play area and I've never observed physical fights... though I have seen each bird "air bite" in the direction of the other when they are feeling crabby. They verbally squabble at night occasionally over who gets the favorite sleeping spot... but never seen a physical attack, just one bird gets up and leaves after the others constantly warning chirps.

I feel like I'm living the budgie equivalent of The Good Son of something. Maybe little Caesar when I'm out of the house is an absolute nightmare to Petrie :confused1:

My other leading theory is that Petrie accidentally scratches himself. His talons grow super fast, and while I trim them as much as I can, I can't keep up with their growth so they're pretty sharp. Maybe he was scratching his nose and scratched too hard? Hopefully the vet will share shed some light on what may have happened.

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StarlingWings
His cere certainly looks much better!

If your two boys are good friends and you're not observing any serious aggression while they're home, I'm sure it's more likely that he scratched himself accidentally or something.

Hopefully the vet can shed more light on the cause, but I'm glad he's healing up already :D
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