I have a cockatiel and budgie who live together. Normally I'm not huge on mixing species, but they came to me together and are very bonded. The budgie is completely blind and relies somewhat on the cockatiel to navigate the cage.
The two mostly get along well, but because the blind bird startles easily she can be a tad nippy. It's never serious... well, normally! While I was away for the weekend, my pet sitter told me that they got in a fight at the food bowl (there should be two bowls, which I explained, but the sitter put all of the food in on, grrr) and the tiel's eye was injured.
I got back and it was very clear that Ti had chomped Ngala's eye something fierce. Thankfully the eye itself is undamaged; however, the skin around her eye is very bruised and swollen with some minor punctures. I have kept it very clean and the swelling has gone down significantly.
My question, however, is this: should I chalk this up to a freak accident due to a problem with how they were fed, or is this cause for concern? I'd like to think that Ti, being blind, just struck out and grabbed whatever was closest when they fought, not that she deliberately went for the eyes. They seem to be getting along fine, but this situation could have been SO much worse had the actual eye been damaged.
Input? I'm not accustomed to having cage mate issues.
Hope this is the right place for this post, btw.
The two mostly get along well, but because the blind bird startles easily she can be a tad nippy. It's never serious... well, normally! While I was away for the weekend, my pet sitter told me that they got in a fight at the food bowl (there should be two bowls, which I explained, but the sitter put all of the food in on, grrr) and the tiel's eye was injured.
I got back and it was very clear that Ti had chomped Ngala's eye something fierce. Thankfully the eye itself is undamaged; however, the skin around her eye is very bruised and swollen with some minor punctures. I have kept it very clean and the swelling has gone down significantly.
My question, however, is this: should I chalk this up to a freak accident due to a problem with how they were fed, or is this cause for concern? I'd like to think that Ti, being blind, just struck out and grabbed whatever was closest when they fought, not that she deliberately went for the eyes. They seem to be getting along fine, but this situation could have been SO much worse had the actual eye been damaged.
Input? I'm not accustomed to having cage mate issues.
Hope this is the right place for this post, btw.