#vet ask

[flock-talk]

Recently I’ve been looking for advice on creating a “hospital cage/tank” for my parrotlet in case of an emergency. (She is totally fine rn! I want to be prepared though, especially as she ages.) Have you ever had to make one of these, and what supplies would you recommend?

I have, and what you put in to it really depends on the severity of the issue you end up dealing with

- the cage itself can be a standard travel carrier but for more severe ailments it may be best to use something softer than metal bars like a fabric carrier or a cardboard box. Even acrylic cages with more solid walls might be advised depending on the issue

- respiratory issues would require a cage with ample airflow, other ailments may benefit more from enclosed walls the bird can safely bump in to and will contain warmth nicely

- some form of viewing window is helpful for being able to keep tabs on them but some illnesses might make the bird feel extremely stressed if exposed. An option to lightly cover viewpoints (but not restrict airflow) such as a light, loose, sheet may work

- something to pad the floors with, typically a towel- just ensure it doesn’t have loops that toes can get caught in. Extremely sick birds may not be able to perch or even hold themselves up. You’ll want a material that will soften any falls, provides easy tractions for them to push themselves along the floor, be comfortable, as well as be able to be shaped in to little ledges the bird can prop themselves up against to stay upright. Ensure you have multiple of these things, cleanliness is very important with sick animals you’ll want to be able to replace objects and clean things as quickly and easily as possible.

-with that you may want a container without climbable walls. Birds often want height to feel safe and will try to climb up cage walls even if they repeatedly fall off. Smooth walls will prevent them from causing further harm. To reduce the stress of being on the floor it can help to keep the cage itself up nice and high.

- for less severe ailments the bird may perch just fine, in those cases you’ll want some plain dowel perches a diameter that your bird can easily hold on to. Usually a width that their foot can grip 3/4 the way around. Dowels are best in this case for the consistent width and stability, although you may want to sand one down to create a small bit of texture in it so they’re less slippery.

- in some cases a heating pad may be recommended to be placed underneath 1/4-1/3 of the carrier. Something to help keep their body warm if they get sick during the cold season but you don’t want excessive heat trapping causing the bird to overheat. You may also want a Bluetooth thermometer to be placed inside the carrier to accurately monitor temp. I use sensorpush, you can set temp ranges on the app and have it send a (loud) push notification to your phone when the temp goes above or below your set temp ranges.

- easily digestible food, if your bird is on pellets they may not want them when they’re sick. Keeping some fattier foods on hand (or keeping tabs on where you can get them) can be helpful in quickly engaging their appetite. This also means some birds won’t remove shells from their seeds when too sick so finding de shelled seeds or even hearty baby formulas/ recovery formulas can go a long way within the first 24hrs of treatment. Getting them eating is a hugely important problem

- types of dishes. Some sick birds don’t have good balance, a deep water bowl can be a drowning hazard. You might want to train your bird to drink out of hamster bottles or explore shallower water dishes, ones that are a bit smaller, or explore different setups in your carrier that could keep the dishes lightly raised just to head height so that falling over in to it would be very difficult to do as well as making mobility to those areas easier/ less of a tripping hazard. You’ll also want dishes that don’t tip over easily. A wet bird is an uncomfortable and more likely to get sicker bird/ potentially go in to shock.

- make sure your bird is comfortable with handling, restraint, being weighed, and taking foods from a syringe. Less stress when an actual sickness hits means more likelihood for recovery. The more elements of treatment you can prepare them for the better.

- have a good gram scale on hand (kitchen scales work, preferably down to one to two decimal points if you have a tiny bird). Birds losing weight is a big bad situation, weighing them regularly can tell you how much they’re eating, and whether or not they’re improving or worsening before symptoms change which can get them better treatment sooner.

- keep a first aid booklet nearby, consult with your vet team on what to do, what to look out for, bird cpr, emergency 24hr vet numbers. Ask them every single question you have before you leave. Take notes, better to be as prepared as possible and know what Bad and Worse look like rather than guessing

- familiarize yourself with crop feeding. If you don’t have a 24hr avian vet and your bird refuses to eat you’ll likely need to force feed them. If that’s needed your vet /should/ take the time to show you how to do it. Make sure you have the needed syringes and nozzles at home and are familiar with how to use everything.

I think that covers just about everything, keep tabs on the notes though if I’m missed something hopefully some folks will add on!

As always call your vet team and ask, if it’s not super busy you can just talk over the phone about setting up a hospital cage at home and they should be able to give you some accurate tips and pointers. You can also ask if your vet provides pet first aid booklets for birds, most don’t have them on hand but if they’re certified through the AAV there is a file for AAV members they /might/ be able to print out for you

[the-dogtors-companion]

Vet Student Needs Help

So.. I’m currently on a gap year and need to do veterinary clinical observations before I attend college this fall and have no idea how to apply(??) or set it up to do this.

[flock-talk]

Do you have any tips for decreasing stress during vet visits? I've looked through a bunch of your tags, but I didn't see anything that seemed related.

I don’t have anything on this topic but it’s so so important! The main thing is building good positive associations with things they’ll be needing to do at the vet so the vet is not the first time they’re experiencing these invasive things. That in of itself reduces a ton of stress.

Handling skills- building positive associations with being restrained, moving wings, touching the feet, checking in the beak and vent

Cooperative care - stepping on a scale willingly, could teach an “open mouth” behaviour (there’s a lot of dog training resources on this one!)(highly recommend just looking in to dog cooperative care and getting some ideas!)

Travel - practice drives, comfort entering and exiting the carrier, the carrier shouldn’t mean vet time all the time

Socialization - comfort with other people, comfort being handled by other people, run mock vet trips with friends

Tools- get a kids doctor set and pretend to listen to the heart rate, look at the eyes and throat, etc. wear a medical mask, put on weird glasses, a doctors jacket, little things like that can all pile on stress if it’s unfamiliar.

“Just visiting” - not now bc covid but prior to covid it’s pretty commonplace for dog owners to bring the dog by, get a treat from the receptionist, sniff around and leave. Same can go for birds! Build comfort with the clinic outside of invasive trips, let the bird take a treat from staff (if they’re not busy), get that good classical conditioning going.

During the visit there’s some other things we can do:

Teach a calming behaviour - there’s loads of new training to literally teach a dog to take a breath to help self regulate and calm down. You could do the same with a bird! Alternatively have an object to chew, that’s a calming outlet for stress energy. Ask for that behaviour when you see excess stress. I like to scatter treats every now and then. Gets the birds minds off their surroundings and involved in foraging, exploring, self regulating.

Communicate with your team - vets don’t want an angry patient just as much as you don’t. If you say “hey I think they need a short break” or “could I help restrain they’re more comfortable that way” most vets are more than willing to work with you.

Advocate for your bird - they can’t speak for themselves so you’re going to have to. If something really seems to be pushing your bird too far or your vet does something that seems unsafe for your bird speak up about it. There’s a ton going on in the average visit it’s not the rudest thing in the world to ask “hey their leg seems a bit twisted could I adjust it?”, vets have a lot to focus on they can’t be expected to do things perfectly every single time.

Vet stress sucks but there’s a ton of things we can do to alleviate parts of it!

[flock-talk]

hey, my birds been plucking off feathers and the vet told me to give her some medication via seringe, but she isnt trained and now shes super scared of me. i cant even raise my hand to grab her bc she just flies away. but the thing is: i actually managed to give her the medication but she just regurgitated? and the only avian vet here is closed tomorrow and the day after?? i dont know what to do? should i make her scared of me but medicated?? sorry about the weird english im kind of terrified rn

unfortunately in these sorts of situations we do have to compromise comfort for health.  If the bird hasn’t had any form of training and the medication is urgent (where you couldn’t spend time accustoming them to syringes and being held) they may need to be towel restrained until the medication period is over.

Ideally we’d do that training beforehand and we want to make these situations as minimally stressful as possible regardless but there’s very little wiggle room with medical treatments when they don’t have that prior training.

What you can try to do is make this less stressful by approaching them slowly, administering the meds calmly and efficiently, and offering plenty of treats and giving them space after the fact. If they’re becoming hard to restrain dimming the lights will help as the bird won’t be able to see very well, that will make restraint quicker so the whole undesirable experience doesn’t last as long for them. In the times where they can/ want to be handled just be slow and try to rebuild some of that trust with gentle interactions and as many positive experiences as possible.

here’s the post on the differences between regurgitating and vomiting:

http://flock-talk.tumblr.com/post/120455597068/does-a-parrot-vomitting-due-to-sickness-appear

if they’re vomiting up the medication I would get to an emergency clinic (they’ll have different hours than regular clinics) who may be able to tell you if it’s just because the bird is sick or if they’re having a poor reaction to the meds.

[flock-talk]

If I see tail bobbing and bring my bean to the vet, what will they do? Listen their lungs or draw blood? I'm just nervous for my little girl.

Really depends on what the vet thinks is wrong.  Initially it should just be a physical exam and some swabs, the vet will restrain the bird and look in their nares and their throat, they’ll be checking out the choanal slit to see if anything’s gone awry down there that would tell them what’s wrong.  If they can’t see anything responsible for the bobbing they will likely do a swab of the throat to collect a bunch of bacteria to find out what may have infected the bird to cause this respiratory distress.  That’s typically all they’ll do unless there’s strong signs of something else being wrong, other potential things are radiographs, a flush, and/or a blood count again depending on what the vet thinks has caused the problem.

[flock-talk]

my bird untamed bird forces himself to puke when i give it its medication is there a way to make it not

I would contact your veterinarian, the vomiting could be due to other reasons (i.e a poor reaction to medication or severe health issues) that may require the bird to be force fed or given medications through an injection.  If it turns out to just be them regurgitating for taste reasons I would ask the vet if the meds can be mixed with any food and perhaps try mixing it with mashed sweet potato (most birds will down the stuff) to mask the flavour.  Definitely don’t try to do anything without consulting the vet first. If things are still not working try to hold the head tilted up for a little while after the meds are swallowed to ensure they go down all the way and offer something delicious right after, if they still vomit try to capture their attention in some way that isn’t a negative interaction.

[flock-talk]

I'm planning to do an annual vet visit for Luna later on. Not sure it will be by next month or should wait till spring time when it gets a little warmer to take her out by cage, but wondering is blood work safe to do for small birds like her? Want to see how well she has been doing for a year now

They don’t take a ton of blood, typically they just trim one nail and hold a hematocrit tube up to it to catch the blood. How much blood is drawn is dependent on the specific bird as it’s measured from their body weight, for parrotlets the safe amount to be drawn is around .2-.3cc, an avian veterinarian will prioritize testing and generally have a wait period between draws to ensure too much blood isn’t taken.  So long as your vet is properly trained there should not be any problems, most tests require much less than .5cc so their safe blood draw amounts aren’t a huge hinderance in tests.

Obviously being such a tiny amount can be risky but a reputable, certified avian veterinarian should have the experience necessary to handle these situations.  Consult with your vet, if they feel the process is risky they may advise against it, ask for all the information regarding the process and decide whether or not you feel it is best for your bird.

[flock-talk]

Quaker going to the vet anon: hello again! We got a cat travel carrier for when George goes to the vet on Monday, how can I train him to go into the cage freely? I've been holding up the carrier to his cage and talking to him so he'd get a bit (1)

(2) closer to it on his own. Would putting some of his favorite foods inside encourage him to check it out? And once we go to the vet would it be a good idea to put one of his favorite toys in it with him? Thanks!

Favourite foods would certainly help, talking to them, putting a favourite toy, keeping it in close proximity so long as they’re comfy, playing games around it, as well as target training or station training. 

One way to get them in may be to have a special treat dish that always has one treat in it and teach them to walk to the dish to get the treat by slowly moving it farther and farther away until you can put the dish anywhere and they’ll run right over to it even if there’s nothing in the dish, you could then put the dish inside the cage to have them run in for it (just make sure you do this a few times, not closing the door behind them all the time otherwise they may have negative experiences thinking they’ll always get locked in).

The other would be training them to touch a target stick with their beak then using that to guide them in to the travel cage (http://flock-talk.tumblr.com/tagged/target+training  how to on the second post).

Last method off the top of my head depends on the style of the cage, if it has a door that swings outwards you could put a perch on the door and train them to stand on the perch when you point at it then just closing them in as long as they’re comfortable.  You would do a similar technique as you would for target training (linked above) just with their feet on a perch rather than a beak to a stick.

Typically you don’t want much of anything in the cage when you go to the vet, if the vet has to chase the bird around the cage to restrain them perches and toys get in the way and can end up stressing the bird out more than necessary. You might have one small thing against a wall if you feel it would comfort them but otherwise it’s not super necessary.  Remember that anything hanging will also swing around during the car ride which can end up knocking them off of perches or stressing them out as well.