Now you might say he looks just like Rufus, how do you tell the difference? We were worried about the same thing until we got him home. He's slightly bigger than Rufus at the moment and Rufus is a bit darker.
The easiest way to tell them apart at the moment though is when it comes to feeding time. Rufus is really easy to feed as he will lap from a teaspoon. All we have to do is trickle his formula into the spoon and he'll drink it up. It's a lot tidier that way, although you do have to wipe his chin afterwards.
Rusty on the other hand, will only drink from the teat and he's easily distracted. You pretty much have to restrain him, then drizzle the formula on his lips. Invariably, some of it misses and you end up with milk everywhere. Rusty is eating some solids though. He ate most of the leaf shoots Donna put in with them last night.
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I haven't mentioned Lucky for a while. As you can see from the picture below he's pretty much over his dermatitis, it's now just a case of waiting for the fur to grow back, oh and his whiskers.
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Unfortunately, the magpie we rescued the other day didn't make it. Looking at him afterwards it was obvious he never had a chance. He had a really bad case of gapeworm. I've mentioned gapeworm before in this blog, it's a parasite that infects the throats of birds. When it gets bad it prevents the bird swallowing and therefore it starves or chokes to death.
It's treatable with Ivermectin, but in this case the bird was too far gone to be helped by the time it came into care. It's probably why the bird was out of its nest and not being helped by the parents in the first place.
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