On Wednesday (11/1) Dad & Stacey had to take Little Miss back to Neil Forbes (the Avian Vet) to have her bandages off her dislocated toe and her collar removed - or so she thought. Neil wanted to anaethnetise her to remove the bandages so took her upstairs to do this. When she came back down they were surprised to see she still had her collar on. There was good news and bad! The good news was her dislocated toe had healed just fine. The bad news was Oscar had managed to bite another toe on her good foot and the nail was hanging off so, she had this one bandaged up and her collar still on! This is for another 10 days although if she has her way, she'll get the collar off herself - she is not happy!!! Neil said that we should be able to remove the collar ourselves at home when the times comes. While they were going there they decided to take Phoebe along as well. Phoebe had a lump come up on her left leg which looked like a feather cyst but Dad wanted it checked out. He started off by putting Phoebe on our stand, on the front seat in Mum's car (as he had to drive to the vets to meet Stacey). Phoebe was having none of this and climbed straight on to Dad's shoulder. Dad stopped and replaced her on the stand but before the end of the road Phoebe was back on Dad's shoulder again! Dad decided to give in gracefully as it was only a short distance to the Vets and let her stay where she was happy. Stacey drove the rest of the day! When Neil saw Phoebe, he confirmed it was a feather cyst and said he could lance it there and then for us so, he darkened up the room ready to towel her. Once towelled, Phoebe let him know of her disapproval in the only way she knew - by shouting!!! Still he lanced the cyst and it has gone back down nicely now. If it happens again, Stacey should be able to deal with it herself as he taught her what to do.
Also last week Dad sent off Dolly's DNA sample for sexing. Dolly was supposed to be a female and with Dad's usual luck he felt sure she would come back as a Male but, NO! Dolly is indeed a female (that should please Ollie who she shares a cage with!!!).
We have also had a lot of trouble with the large fish tank over the last week. The Nitrates had gotten dangerously high and we lost most of the fish. Over the week we have managed to lower the Nitrates to a normal safe level and we plan to leave this for a week or so and then start re-stocking. While we were testing Nitrates we decided to test the small cold-water tank as well as we had recently added 2 extra fish to this. The Nitrates were at the top end of the range suggesting there were too many fish for the tank. Dad put an ad on Freecycle for a 3 foot tank and got a reply so he and Stacey went to Malmesbury last night to collect it. Now it needs setting up! The 6 ornamental fish and 2 Plecostamus should be fine in a 3 foot tank without the Nitrates going so high. Still, we have a year's worth of testing strips now so it will be tested fortnightly to avoid any future problems.
On Friday Mum & Dad went to Oxford on the bus. They were going to take Syd & me but they had to leave early and it was too cold for us.