Broken beak(

[Tofer]

Hello everybody!

Our caique has broken its beak. We don't know how exactly it happened. He was flying to sit at the door and in this moment a small girl closed it. The upper part seems to be ok. The lower part lost all its kind of cover part. It went of like a cover. It was bleeding first day and then stopped. There is a small thin part of beak as it were a base of a beak. It has a cleft coming from the middle part to the left. 5 days have passed. the clef looks a little bit bigger than before. It seems the parrot started to clean the beak today and it started to bleed a bit again on the tip of it and then stopped. He eats enough. the beak from the sides looks a bit bigger than on the first day as if it grew a bit. But in the middle part there is still this cleft, which comes to the jaw.
We don't have any good vets working with birds here in Moscow. It's better not to go to this kind horse doctors. So, all we can do is to do everything by ourselves.

Question 1: Our parrot is very brisk and doesn't like, when anybody do something with him. We need to clean his lower part off a special pap, which we've got from parrot nursery. It sticks to the lower part of the beak. Are there any special way to hold the parrot or fix it to be able to make procedures with its beak without harm to its health.

Question 2: Is it possible to repair or glue this cleft? Perhaps there is this kind of material, which usually dantists use when they fill the tooth?

[cml]

I realise that it might be hard to find a vet, but you really ought to see if there is one in the close area (or even further away) because this is a critical health issue that needs specialised medical care. Can you google and see if there is a vet in your area?

As to your questions:

Question 1: Our parrot is very brisk and doesn't like, when anybody do something with him. We need to clean his lower part off a special pap, which we've got from parrot nursery. It sticks to the lower part of the beak. Are there any special way to hold the parrot or fix it to be able to make procedures with its beak without harm to its health.

Sounds like the best course of action here is towelling, see this link for info:
http://trainedparrot.com/toweling/
I realise you might not have time to tame your parrot to this, and you might have to just grab him anyway. This will likely destroy some trust, but that can be regained, the important thing right now is his health.

Question 2: Is it possible to repair or glue this cleft? Perhaps there is this kind of material, which usually dantists use when they fill the tooth?

Dont try this without consulting an avian vet.

But please, if at all possible, contact at an avian vet !

[cml]

Actually I've found two vets in Moscow who are members of The Association of Avian Veterinarians.

Here's a link with contact info and adresses:
http://www.aav.org/search/results.php?filter=city&q=moscow&Submit=Search

Please contact one of them!

[Tofer]

Thank you for your advices. Unfortunately the first specialist is in Russian birds forum black list. The second seems to work in USA not in Moscow.
It is hard to find a human doctor here. Imagine the situation with vets. The owner of the biggest Moscow parrot hatchery told us they had been trying to find a bird doctor for many years, but in the end they failed. All these vets don’t know much about birds, they subscribe antibiotics and other things. There are always two ways of how it goes. The first is the bird dies on the first visit, the second – they kill it slowly with all this medicine.(

Toweling doesn’t work with him. ( He is too brisk.

[Pajarita]

Toweling always work. The trick is to do it correctly which is to wrap their body all the way around, leaving just the head out. You will also have to hold his head because towel or no towel, he will still be able to move it so as not to allow you proper access. Their neck is very delicate so you need to hold his head and not the neck with your index and thumb on each side (where the ears are which would correspond to what we would call the cheeks).

Do NOT attempt to glue it! Vets use wire, not glue. In my personal experience (which doesn't mean this is always the case, just that this is what happened to two different birds that came to me with a split lower beak -I still have one of them), when there is a vertical break that appears to be almost or exactly in the middle, the bone where the beak grows is also split and it will never grow back together. Again, I could be wrong on this and your bird might still grow a normal bottom beak. But, if it is like my birds and it never does, the bird will still be able to eat, only you will have to provide a lot of soft food for him (cooked grains like brown rice, wheat, oats, barley, etc mixed with cooked and chopped vegetables works great). Do not be fooled by the bird been able to eat seeds because he might not be getting enough (both birds that came to me like this were emaciated by the time they brought them to me).

If I were you, I would handfeed him (use a syringe that you would insert on the left side of the beak, pointing to the right side of his 'mouth' just a tiny bit at a time and always keeping the bird upright so he doesn't choke or aspirate food into his lungs) until he can eat the soft food on his own but, if you are using a baby bird handfeeding formula, you need to reduce the amount of protein in it by adding some type of whole grain flour to it. In a pinch, you can use mashed potatoes but whole grain flour is more nutritious.

[charlotte&mango]

Hi, I am a vet student being trained by an avian vet.
I would advise that you do go to a vet, even if not an avian vet. They will be able to stop the bleeding using either silver nitrate solution or ferric. In the case of it being particularly bad they could cauterize. They would also thoroughly clean the area.
My main concern is that it is going to get infected. The area should be cleaned regularly (3x a day, after eating) with cooled boiled water and a sterile swap.