Well this is somewhat unrelated, but does anyone have a good idea for washing up a little budgie without causing a ton of stress to him?
I can't always get all his meds in. Sometimes he turns his head, other times he will shake his head and send most of the medicine flying. In any case, I think he's getting enough into him, but he ends up with a lot of it on him as well. The antibiotics were mixed into this super-sticky raspberry syrup. It hardens and basically glues his little feathers together. Cheeky does her best to try to clean him up, she really tries (to the point where it looks like it must be painful, but the little budgie doesn't mind - he just loves that she's paying attention to him) but she can't make much headway. Today, she spent almost an hour trying to preen him, and I figured a bath after that might help - but it didn't. All it did was apparently distribute the syrup more evenly, instead of just around his face, so now his feathers are a matted up mess everywhere. And he constantly smells like raspberry syrup.
I think the only way to clean him up would be to forcibly bathe him, so that his body is actually submerged, but that would be too stressful. I've just been sticking to encouraging voluntary bathing, but that just doesn't seem to be enough. He is the most pathetic looking little bird, I just feel so terrible for him.