Cocky Bennett

[Pajarita]

These are a couple of old articles but I thought you would like to hear about Cocky Bennett, a lesser sulfur that lived to be 120 years old even though they thought he had PBFD. He was taken out of the wild when he was a baby and that, most likely, and the fact that he lived in captivity in the same country he was born in (think natural diet!) is what made his longevity possible. Now, personally, if I couldn't find a way to trim his beak or make his life better, I would have put that poor bird down way before he got to that venerable age... but that's me.

https://earthlingnature.wordpress.com/2 ... ld-legend/

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/anima ... 1jkz2.html

[liz]

It is a shame that he was allowed to get into that condition. He would have had a better quality of life if it had been trimmed. I guess in the early 1900s they just did not know. How on earth did he eat?

I go by quality of life whether a critter needs a mercy death. I had an 18 year old cat who I had to give interferon from a very young age and all her life. She was feeble with arthritis and slept a lot. It was awful to think what had happened to my special kitty but she seemed to accept and work with her crippled body. She could smell chicken from the other side of the house and always came to me for her share. In the evening when I finally sat down to watch TV she would come to me and sit on my lap or hang on my left shoulder for attention. Her purr let me know that she was still enjoying her life. She had been very selective in her choice of food in the last years. It was not until she grew a tumor in her mouth that I had to make a decision. She was too old to survive surgery and as fast as it was growing her life would have been miserable.

It breaks my heart that it was left this way but if it had joy still in it's life I would not have put it down.

[Pajarita]

He was fed a soft mash. I can't help but feel that they kept him alive just to show him as a curiosity but not because they cared about his quality of life...

[liz]

He was fed a soft mash. I can't help but feel that they kept him alive just to show him as a curiosity but not because they cared about his quality of life...

Me too.