pudgie budgie

Our pets reflect our lifestyle.
Obesity has been a growing problem in this country and so our pets have also suffered with this as well. I can see a pattern of this observing pet's owners and their lifestyle. If the owner exercises regularly and eats right then their pet usually follows suit. The clients who hire me to walk their dogs on a regular basis have this "be healthy and exercise" mentality.
I just saw this television program over the weekend called "Food Revolution". It was basically about this British chief coming over to this country to change how Americans eat. His first stop was to analyze the school lunches in West Virginia. I was appalled at the crappy processed fatty sugary crap that is fed to kids on a regular basis. It was more appalling how the food administrators in that school were resistant to healthy change (e.g. adding vegetables and fruit to the diet and substituting actual baked chicken instead of those gross processed chicken nuggets.) I've never ate in my grade school's cafeteria. I always brought my lunch so I don't know what the food was like but I do not ever remember other kids eating pizza or drinking soda. .
I'll admit, I like my dunkin donuts, so I am not total "Ms. nutrition". I know I could eat better but I'm never going to start eating yogurt or some kind of "hippy" bread with almond butter.
As far as my pets are concerned, I make sure I give them fresh dandelion greens, collard greens or carrots as a snack. Yes, they do eat seed (high in calories) but they also eat the nutritious high end rice pellets. They are free flight birds so I let them out of their cages on a regular basis to fly around for exercise.
"Betty" (a very large English "rescue' budgie) and "Pinkhead" (young male American budgie) took a liking to each other. As a result, big ol" Betty laid 12 eggs. (Budgies generally only lay 6 at a time). Only one of these eggs hatched. On October 25th 2006 "Twillinger" hatched.
Sadly both Betty and Pinkhead died shortly afterward due to tumors. Twillinger, however, lived on.
Twillinger became "Smitty"'s best pal. (Smitty was a little green budgie found on the beach) They would fly around terrorizing the general population with their hijinks. Twillinger was a pretty big budgie. I mostly attributed to her size to her being part English budgie. Two years later, she was having hard time flying so I took her to the vet.
The normal weight of budgies is 35 grams or less.
When the vet weighed Twillinger she gasped.
Twillinger weighed 72 grams.
She was considered grossly obese.
She was the first bird the vet had ever seen with a double chin.
I was so embarrassed
The vet wanted to put her on a diet. No more veggie bird muffins!
(Meanwhile, her cage-mate Smitty weighed a mere 32 grams.)
The strange part is I never saw Twillinger eat. The only thing I did ever seen her eat is the fresh greens hanging on a clip so I was puzzled to why she was so grossly obese. I would just give her the low fat rice pellets and greens in their cage. I know Smitty raids the other cages for food but I didn't see Twillinger do so.
So I would just observe her.
It turned out that Twillinger didn't eat.
Smitty would gorge himself and then feed her!
So I tried separating them. Smitty would stick his head through the cage bars and continue to feed her. I found this so strange on how he was so bent on feeding her.
I dunno, maybe he likes "his ladies" a little on the pudgie side.