Took Senegal to vet now unsure

[JaydeParrot]

I took my sennie Hide to the vets because he's had bad feathers for over 3 to 4 months. I took his mate Cain aswell as I figured I might aswell get them both seen to at the same time.

The vets wouldn't let me be in the same room while the birds were checked up so I had to wait in the waiting room. I'd asked for my sennies to be microchipped, they apparently didn't take the handling/microchipping well because I could hear Hide screaming, like a nervous parent I had to grip the seat and fight the urge not to run in and see what was happening.

The vet brought the birds back and said that Hide was in good health and seemed to have been chewing his feathers and that it could be due to behavioural or hormonal problems, or irritation from badly previously clipped feathers. I was told the chewing could be due to medical problems and to check would need anaethetic, blood test, endoscopy, x-ray and feather removal, the price made me feel faint, no hate comments please, I told them that from a cold hearted financial perspective I couldn't do that without being in money troubles.

The vet then said they could do all that without endoscopy or x-rays, the price was miles better, but the vet said that they'd probably want to run a second blood test at a later date. 2 blood tests= A LOT OF MONEY!!!!!

I wasn't fond of the vet place anyway so I said I'd think about it and left.

Without asking, the vet also filed the nails on both birds, I'd wanted the nails filed but the job the vet did was awful. I've had a completly unqualified parrot enthuiast do my bird's nails and they were brilliant afterwards. This qualified vet did my bird's nails and my birds have had trouble gripping for the rest of the day, both fell off my shoulder while I was standing still (they've never done this before), I managed to catch Hide and Cain can fly so she saved herself, Hide also fell off his favourite perch and landed heavily on the floor of his cage.

I'm going to try and fix Hide's problem myself, I'm going to give him more stuff to chew, a warmish bath/shower once a week and gently pull at his chewed feathers each day as the vet said they may not be heavy enough to fall out on their own.

Does anyone know of any other ways non-vet to help a bird with chewed feathers?

[marie83]

I would seriously think about changing vets if possible. I would not have a bird chipped without a whiff of gas if I chose to have one done, even the newer microchips are so large for such a tiny creature that its going to be very painful, cause a lot of stress and one mistake with a struggling bird could caue injury ir occasionally death.

as for the bloods you could pay an experienced avian vet to draw the blood and send the samples off yourself which would work out much cheaper (avianbiotec are one company that will do this if you have a lab in your country ). Again this should be done with a whiff of gas for safety, the amount of gas needed is unlikely to harm a healthy bird and is far less risky than drawing blood without. How long have you had the birds now? I believe it has been quite a while- in which case unless you have doubts about their health, have been exposed to newer birds or have only had them a very short time the retesting shouldnt be necessary imo unless the tests are for something which is hard to diagnose. So when you say he has bad feathers, how do you mean ?

[JaydeParrot]

Thanks for replying, . Hide's chewed the insides of his wing feathers so that only three primaries reamin on the right wing. He's also got bald patches under each wing but they are begininning to regrow feathers, he's got very a small amount of feather loss on his stomach. I've been told all the missing feathers have been chewed off.

[marie83]

Thanks for replying, . Hide's chewed the insides of his wing feathers so that only three primaries reamin on the right wing. He's also got bald patches under each wing but they are begininning to regrow feathers, he's got very a small amount of feather loss on his stomach. I've been told all the missing feathers have been chewed off.

Urgh I had that problem with mine only without the chewing of the flight feathers and mine was pulling them out rather than chewing- really long thread on the health and nutrition board if your interested. I hope you can resolve the issue as its vry stressful. Have you evaluated environmental factors yet such as light schedule, diet, humidity etc?

[JaydeParrot]

Will re-think environmental issues, do you know if bathing a bird in warmish water is good for the feathers? I figured it might make them softer and easier to pull/fall out. The vet reckoned the feathers wouldn't fall out on their own, making feather re-growth difficult.

Do you remember what the thread on the health and nutrition board was called?

[marie83]

Cool water is better for the skin as warmer water is more drying. I think the thread is on page 5 now titled not again. Whilst we never reached a diagnosis and my birds had other symptoms it might help you with ideas on what to test for.

I have to disagree about the feathers not being able to fall out on their own- they can although there is always an underlying cause if that happens- it happened to my tiel. The only way to know for sure how the feathers are coming out is by getting the lost ones under a microscope and checking for damage to them (unless the damage is very obvious on close inspection or you actually see the bird pulling or chewing them. The smaller the bird and feathers the harder it is to check without a microscope.

[Pajarita]

Birds don't need anesthesia for a vet to draw blood. It's actually very easy and quick because all they need to do is towel the bird and expose the right jugular which is clearly visible (it's a huge, dark vein that almost sticks out on the right side of the bird's neck) under the almost transparent skin of the neck. But sending a blood sample to an online lab doesn't work for diagnosis, it only works for disease testing or DNA sexing. You might find one that would be willing to take a private person as a client but what would you order (there are lots of different tests) and, once you get the results, who would read them, determine which levels are not good, add 2 + 2, make the diagnosis and prescribe the medicine?

Now, personally, I would not allow any vet to examine any of my animals without me been present so that vet would not work for me. As to the X-rays, endoscopy and blood work... well, in truth, there are many cases when all of these are necessary to figure out why a bird plucks but you can start with a CBC and a full body XRay. They are not going to give you the whole picture but they will tell you if there is a bacterial infection, inflammation, huge amount of stress, anemia, starvation, dehydration or any large tumors. But that's about it. And none of these problems usually cause plucking, except for the huge amount of stress but the stress that is usually reflected in CBCs values is the physical kind...

Now, the barbered feathers will fall but you will have to wait until molt for that to happen. I think the vet was thinking of pulling the broken shafts out so a new feather could grow in its place but, personally, I think this to be a waste of time and unnecessary stress for the bird as the first thing that needs to be done is solve the barbering/plucking because what good is a new feather if the bird is going to chew it off?

Could the bird have giardia? Because the plucking under the wings is typical of giardiasis. But it could also be psychological which, in my personal experience, is always the most likely cause.

Are they kept at a solar schedule?
Are they allowed to fly daily?
How many hours of out-of-cage time a day?
How much one-on-one time?
Has anything changed in the household recently? A new pet? A child? A significant other? New schedule? New house? Diet?

[marie83]

Birds don't need anesthesia for a vet to draw blood. It's actually very easy and quick because all they need to do is towel the bird and expose the right jugular which is clearly visible (it's a huge, dark vein that almost sticks out on the right side of the bird's neck) under the almost transparent skin of the neck.

Technically you are right, they do not "need" anaesthesia for a blood draw but personally I wouldn't allow it with one of my birds as it is less risky with a brief whiff of gas and tbh the vets I've spoken to won't draw it either without it (at least on the smaller birds). I know mine doesn't add on the cost for such a small amount of isoflurane but I can't speak for all vets on that so some may be financially driven.

As for the labs some over here will do this privately and much more cheaply- the vet is not redundant though, you still need to go back for the read on results depending on what was tested for (if not a straight out negative/positive) or meds if needed but it does reduce costs. Again though you need to know what the vet originally wanted to test for and why- something which is very easy to find out if not already known.

That said I do agree that the environmental issues need looking at but the last statistics I saw showed that up to 70% of plucking cases were caused by medical or nutritional issues. I'm not knocking your experience pajarita as the statistics may have changed again since I found that out and results from these types of research are always flawed anyhow.

[Pajarita]

Well, the thing is that 'environmental' (when I say 'environmental' I am talking about 'husbandry' meaning all the conditions that surround the bird - and I explain why below) issues all end up been medical, same as dietary. When one talks about the reasons why a parrot plucks, one mentions giardia, sexual frustration, diet, dry skin, lack of exercise, etc. All of these are medical (overly enlarged gonads, fatty liver, dry skin, atrophied muscles, shrunken tendons, pain, disease, etc) but they are all a product of inappropriate husbandry and they all end up having a behavioral effect on the bird.

The point I am trying to make is that when you talk about an undomesticated species that is kept under completely unnatural conditions, there is no line that divides one thing from the other because everything is connected and 99.99% of the problems end up been caused by us.

One could say that a biting, screaming, plucking parrot has a behavioral problem, a psychological problem or a medical problem and all of these are correct because overly large gonads are a medical condition but it's not genetic, bacterial, fungal, parasitical or anything but something we created. When you keep a parrot at a human light schedule with regular artificial lights, free-feed high protein all year round, not allow it to exercise (clipped or caged for hours and hours), not allow it to interact with a flock (and no, as much as we like to call ourselves 'their flock', we are not) and leave it by himself all day long the parrot ends up acting up (behavioral problem) and, eventually, it will get sick (because a malfunctioning endocrine system and stress always cause the immune system to become depressed) but it's not because the parrot suddenly developed a neurological or medical condition that was inevitable, it's because we screwed up (our husbandry 'makes' the entire 'environment' the bird lives in).

Plucking hardly ever happens in the wild and, when it does, it's always because of a medical condition (usually parasites but it happens to passerines, mostly) but, in captivity, what might end up as a medical condition came to be because we control EVERYTHING: diet, housing, light schedule and quality, exercise, emotional support, breeding, etc. and we do it wrong. And these medical conditions that were created by us 'show up' as behavioral problems because the 'symptoms' (plucking, biting, screaming, self-mutilating, etc) are stereotypies or aberrant behaviors.