Criss the crossbeak

[MetroMutt]

This is Criss, Criss came to the farm I volunteer at about 4 months ago with his twin sister; they both had cross beaks so I named them Criss and Cross! Since day one they had always been very sweet and curious, the cage they were in was poorly designed so when they whenever you opened the cage they would get too excited and fall out! At the beginning of summer Cross sadly passed away due to the first heatwave we had this year, her beak cross was worse then Criss's so we think she wasn't able to drink enough so the sudden heat spike was too much for her.

Since Criss is alone now he's been one of me and my mom's favorite 2 chickens at the farm, the ones who like to be handled! Whenever we get a chance we try to bring Criss out to see the rest of the farm and the public, this last time when I was holding Criss he decided to climb up onto my shoulder too! For maybe an hour I had him out and I kept offering food and water to him!

When he was on my shoulder he loved to try and eat my face, it was like whackamole but with me opening and closing my eyes; luckily Criss has awful aim.

For a long while I believed Criss was a rooster since he had a more developed spur then his sister, the day I took this picture I was proved wrong though; I checked the nest box and whatdyknow a cute blue green egg! I'm very happy Criss turned out to be a girl, this means after we get her checked by a vet to make sure everything is ok I can adopt Criss!

(In the picture her mouth is open since it was over 90 degrees, I offered her cold water alot though and she did drink enough as you can see with her wet neck feathers lol)

 

[N F C]

Criss sounds like a real sweetheart, glad you'll be able to adopt her (and congrats on the egg)!

 

[RoosterHuggerLiz]

Congratulations! I remember my first scissor beak, he had a mild case but he was a big old baby, he used to like to stand on the sidewalk and he would sharpen his beak on there constantly, I remember how bad it was when I first got him but as he got older he just kept sharpening his beak on the sidewalk until it had eventually straightened out, if you're lucky Criss might just do that as well, but if anything you could always talk to a vet about clipping it! It looks like a painful procedure and if you don't know what you're doing it can be for the bird but other than that it's just like clipping your fingernails. Another scissor beak I had, his name was kramer, had a severe cross beak and when I say severe I mean severe, he couldn't eat anything at all unless he was being hand-fed and when he came to me I knew that I couldn't do that so what I did was I regularly clipped his beak until was even enough for him to eat. But Criss doesn't look that bad so you guys should be just fine!!