Eat Dirt!

Reepi was alive this morning, which we were surprised about from a ‘natural’ point of view. He ate really well today in fact, wolfing down two generous helpings of mackerel so far, and we’ll feed him again after our supper. Nick told Vincent about the bird last night at bible study, and Vincent, who has bred chickens and knows what he’s talking about, didn’t hold out much hope for Reepi. He says that the food goes into a gizzard first, where it gets ground up, and thereafter gets passed into the stomach. But sometimes the food can’t get ground up properly, so it sits in a ball in the gizzard and becomes infected, causing the bird to die. From what Nick described, this is what sounded like the problem. The birds need to have some sort of grit in their food to help the gizzard grind it – you can imagine that a bird eating fish would naturally pick up dirt and bits of bone and hard stuff. The solution was to introduce dirt into Reepi’s diet, so this morning we dug up some dirt from the garden, and rolled a few bits of fish in it. R had no trouble with it at all. He’s still quite floppy although looking much better than he was yesterday. He managed to stand up and walk about a bit today before flopping over, but we’re hoping that with eating better his strength will return.

Caleb just happened to be standing in the wrong place yesterday when Reepi needed the toilet, so he got it on his head. It dripped down from his hair on to his shoulder, and we all thought it was very funny. I got pooed on four times yesterday (once on my bare toes) and again today, because Reepi isn’t his usual self and doesn’t have the strength to find a good position to aim. This morning Aaron found some poo on the diningroom floor under the cage, so he told me about it and that it was still wet. How did he know that, you might wonder? He was sticking his fingers in it. I sent him outside post haste to wash his hands, but he came in again because Nick was outside and Aaron didn’t want his dad finding out what he had done. Shame!