budgie experts please!

My 8 year old hen Yellow has weird hard growths each side of her beak. Her little boyfriend Cloud has been preening at them.

Nothing new has been introduced to her cage, so mites are extremely unlikely. They has natural perches and cuttlefish which she does gnaw on.

She is a very, VERY difficult bird to handle, so I did catch her and poke at the growths, they are solid and grey. They look like scalyface but there is no way scalyface got into my cage as nothing has got into their cage besides seed in the last year.

I am wary of bringing her to a vet because the last three vets I (or my mother) brought birds to have killed the birds through rough handling. She's an 8 year old lutino bird, in brilliant health, has a little boyfriend in her cage too, and still completely alert to her name being called, and playing like she always does.

Any advice?

ferretone

There are vets who are excellent with exotics, and lots of others who really ought to keep their paws off them, as they don't have a clue! I see you are in Dublin, so you wouldn't even have to travel very far to get to one of the good ones. Nutgrove are excellent, and so is Bairbre O'Malley in Bray. I really would try to get her to a good exotic vet, rather than trying to sort it over an internet forum. Best of luck with that.

Bray is a trek for me, but I will do it if Yellow needs it. She will be traumatised by the trip really, so I was hoping someone who also owned birds might be able to tell me if this is a normal event for an elderly bird, or something that needs vet attention. Small bird owners in general don't always seek vet attention because the bird gets so stressed on the trip to and from.

Just looking at her beak again tonight (catching her is hard enough, examining her is a real feat!) she has a crack along her beak and two softish, pale growths each side of her beak. This suggests a vitamin or mineral deficiency, as she is getting older now chances are the diet she has been on is not giving her enough to maintain her health. I am going to give them a budgie tonic and see if her beak health improves, and try to switch them over to pelleted foods. She is not in any way inconvenienced by these little growths so no reason to stress her out with public transport and vets just yet. The two young male birds (2 years old) in her cage are looking great.

scwazrh

I'm by no means a budgie expert but i have bred them for the last 15 years.Its also extremely hard to know what the problem is without a photo but here are my suggestions anyway.

I'm not sure of the cause but I would suggest to mist spray a few times a day . If the bird is in an aviary, move it to a cage and add in a sand perch.Make sure there is a normal perch as well but the sand perch will give something to rub against if it wants to.Add in a pot of grit , make sure its harsh grit and not soft sand / cuttle fish mix. Also give it a good size bath area and a mixture of apple and pear branches . I don't know why but the apple tree branches seem to get budgies gnawing and rubbing away.A large cuttlefish bone is important as well.

A lot of people say that a captive budgie will live to 14 - 15 yrs of age , and i'm sure plenty do , but in my experience after 6 or 7 yrs in cage / aviary problems start developing .