So we took both birds today for a a half day of testing and examination. As they do all tests on site (apart from a few they send away for particularly specialist or complicated things) so they said as we having two birds checked we may as well wait around while the other getting checked and they'd run the tests through urgently.
Edmund had his baseline bloods taken, felt so bad because even though the vet was really slow and calming about it he got so upset. He recovered pretty quick though and has been bouncing around. He relooked at the xray and got his mole torch out and magnifying glass and looked at it. He said he couldn't see any microfractures or any damaged. He then got Edmund out and observed him walking, landing and gripping. They have a special walk in aviary room where they do flying and tests on the birds to observe as much as possible their behaviour. The vet said there's nothing wrong with it and most likely it was just bruised and even that has cleared up now. He did various poop tests which all came back clean. So he concluded its most likely a problem with the break in routine and the moulting and the injury. He said he should be fine from now on and as he's gone completely back to normal not to worry. We waiting for the vitamin levels and endochrine to come back but he doubts they'll have anything as he shows no signs of the vitamin deficiencies and he's way too young for endochrine issues and they aren't anything that could be contagious or passed onto George anyway. He weighed 92g today which is about right as he was between 90-93g
George did not have bloods as the vet looked at the paperwork from the breeder's avian vet and said that everything was covered and testing him again would be counter productive as it was only 4 weeks ago and as he is healthy on all other tests, feacal, oral, feather and physical there's really no indication for him to do it and it would cause a baby bird like him a lot of stress. As we saw the parent birds too and have the paperwork to prove it he said it's really not a great plan. He will of course perform the test at his 12 months like Edmund has just had and if he gets sick at any point up until that. He weighed 88g which is quite big but he's certainly not fat, then again his dad was really big!
Obviously we will be performing follow up faecal samples that we send off around 3 months time. It's included as part of the service that we can send them off to their lab though we prefer to drop them off and they do tests on them. I asked him how much he could tell from these tests and he said that you can tell about gasto-intestinal problems, parasites, worms, internal illnesses, infections caused in internal organs but bacterial flora and gives an indication of how could the diet is for the particular bird! Basically it can tell you a lot about the inside of the bird, no so much viruses but both birds have been screened for these today or recently.
I did check about his long down feathers and he said as both birds were screened for PBFD and the like and there was nothing on the feather sample he would support Marie83 observation that this is due to the lutino parentage and he has seen this many times in lutino parented chicks.
Overall we've got two lovely healthy birdies
We can gradually start introducing them now.
