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Written by Lainey Alexander
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Yesterday I came home from grocery shopping to find that one of my flock of gouldian finches was really sick. He lives in a 25 foot flight with many other gouldians, so they are in constant motion. He was completely fluffed up with his head tucked in even though all the other birds were flying back and forth around him. When I caught him, he was very weak and his eyes were barely open. In the fifteen years that I have been breeding gouldians, I have never seen one bounce back once they are this far gone (until I learned about the therapeutic EOs!).
I placed him in a small cage with a heat lamp over his head and I hung up several millet sprays all around him. He could barely eat the millet he was so puffy and weak. The heat did not help with the puffiness, which is a really bad sign. I placed a diffuser about two feet away from his head and filled it with the antibiotic formula thieves. I let this run for a couple of hours. He got steadily worse, and just sat still with his head tucked in. I was really upset about this but I figured he must have a tumor or something, that there was no way to save him, so I turned off the diffuser and decided to take a bath. As I was heading up stairs, it occurred to me to diffuse another antibiotic formula: purification. I didn't think it would work since the thieves had no effect, and I thought perhaps the strong odors of lemongrass and tea tree in the formula might push him over the edge. But for some reason, I wanted to give it one last try. I turned the diffuser on, went to the bath, obsessed the whole time about whether I should get out and check on him, decided not to, and an hour later I came back downstairs. I looked on the floor of the gould's sick cage to see if he was dead, but not finding him there, I realized he was eating and flying around! I kept the diffuser running on him for about nine more hours using purification, and when I got up this morning, he was back to normal. I can't even believe this one! Lainey
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