Quaker Parrot Cracked His Beak!!!

[EllenD]

Honestly this week has been horrific, and I'm designating it the "Week of Bird Horrors 2016". First my green cheek conure, Bowie, somehow crashed into a wall that he has navigated around every day for almost a year, and he broke basically ALL of his outer primary flight feathers on his left wing. They were bent at a 90 degree angle so I had to clip them incredibly short, and now his left wing looks just awful. What's worse is he can't fly now at all and he has been full-flighted along with my other birds forever, with the exception of when I first got him at 9 weeks old when I clipped him to train him. So now he's the grumpiest bird in the world, watching my Quaker, my cockatiel, and even my 4 budgies flying all over the house, while he just sits on top of his cage and screams at me, like it's my fault and I need to fix it right now! Poor little guy, but it could be worse, as I found out last night with an injury my Quaker parrot has and that I need some advice on.

Last night I ran to the convenience store that is 2 blocks from my house. The 3 birds were on their T-stands in the kitchen, waiting for me to cook their dinner. I needed coffee so I ran out to the store and was gone no longer than 10 minutes. When I walked back in the front door my Quaker was on the top of his cage in the living room, eating his pellets and seeds. He was having a normal conversation with my green cheek, then wolf whistling and yelling "SEXY BIRD!" over and over. I cooked their dinner and when I went to get him I was horrified to see he had cracked his beak somehow! I know he wasn't injured before I went to the store because as I was putting my shoes on he jumped off his stand onto the kitchen counter and started screaming "Go Ride!" at me. I put him on my finger and told him no, he wasn't going and I'd be right back, and I gave him a kiss and put him back on his stand.

I'll try to describe this break as accurately as I can, as for some reason my pic won't upload. It's an oval or round crack, almost like one of the other birds clamped down on his beak. There is no piece broken off, hanging, or even loose, just a circular crack that isn't quite an entire connected circle. The crack is flush with his beak, it is not pushed in or pulled out in any way, in fact it's completely even. It's at the top of his beak near his cere, but on the left side of his beak so his nostrils were not effected. His cere doesn't look to be cut at all.

Yesterday when I first came home and saw the crack it had dried blood all along the crack, not much, just enough to coat the edge of the crack. I thought it odd that it dried that quickly as I was only gone for 10 minutes, however I don't believe it's a deep break or crack, but rather a "pressure crack" from a bite (my guess as to what happened). Thank God it is only a crack and not an avulsion or a large break that could have bled profusely while I wasn't home. My birds never fight, but we all know how much that counts for...we never know what can and will happen with our flocks, and this is a great example of why I need to remember that.

Last night after seeing his beak I immediately grabbed the birdie first aid kit and took him to the bathroom, away from the other birds and the dogs. He seemed fine, I was the one who was a total wreck! He was eating his pellets and seeds when I got home, I couldn't believe it because it looked so sore! I had bought an LED headlamp at Walmart in the outdoorsman section where the flashlights are for $1.00...best $1 I have ever spent! I strapped that light around my head, held my poor bird in my hands, and inspected every part of him, even under every single feather, making sure he had no other injuries. He did not. I hate toweling the birds, and I've trained them pretty well to tolerate my hands doing medical and hygiene things, so I held him in one hand and worked with my other hand. I cleaned the crack, all around the crack, his entire beak, and his head all around his cere and where his beak connects to it with Hibiclens. I let that dry, then I put a 5% Lidocaine cream on the crack, the entire side of his beak, and around his cere and face in that area as it was red and a bit swollen. I let that sit for 5 minutes to numb him up really well, and we played a bit while waiting for the Lidocaine to work. Then I dried the excess cream off with sterile gauze, and I then applied prescription Neomycin cream I have left over from a budgie toe-biting incident (ling, long story). I rubbed the antibiotics in very well, all over and around the break, the beak, and his cere and face. He wasn't too angry with me, he never screamed or looked to be in pain while I was treating him, so I was very thankful for this. I took him back downstairs and got out the Metacam my avian vet had prescribed for my yellow-sided green cheek when he bruised his wing. Bowie, the green cheek conure, weighs around 70 grams, while Lita, the Quaker parrot, weighs around 115 grams, so I took the prescribed dose for Bowie, did the math based on Lora's weight, and have him the Metacam. This pissed him off, even though I put it in some orange juice. Why do bird meds taste sooooooo awful?

Since Lita didn't seem to be in any pain at all, wasn't bleeding, and was eating hard food and drinking on his own, I didn't see it necessary to take him to the 24 hour animal hospital last night. They don't have an avian vet, but rather an "exotic" vet on call, who is very good, but would have done what I did at home-Antibiotics, Metacam, and told me to follow-up with his regular avian vet. So I put Lita in his travel carrier last night. I padded the bottom with towels, put water and both pellets/seeds and a bowl of grits, just in case he wanted soft foods instead. He ended up eating all the grits and then started on the pellet/seed mix. He was not happy at all about being separated from the other birds, but I'm so afraid they'll start playing and it will be damaged more than it is, as right now it's not bad. He slept through the night in his travel carrier next to my bed on my nightstand.

He was up screaming at the crack of dawn, and I immediately got him out and took a look...he's got some bruising on his beak around the crack, but other than that it looks the same. I did the same routine as I did last night, cleaning it, numbing it, put antibiotics on it, and gave him more Metacam. I called my avian vet's office at 9:00 when they opened and explained what had happened and what I did. My avian vet isn't in this week until Thursday (of course), so I spoke to his vet tech. Basically she said I did everything he would have done, and now I need to watch him, make sure he's eating and drinking, and make sure he's not in any worse pain. If he is I can bring him in before Thursday afternoon when his vet is back and can see him to check him out, and they can prescribe a narcotic pain killer if he needs it. She said to keep doing what I'm doing twice a day and call or come in if there are any issues.

There is no other avian vet here within 3-4 hours, but she said I could have him see a regular, general vet to make myself feel better, but that they wouldn't do anything more than I've already done unless his beak was missing a piece or was deformed, or had a gaping hole, then they would put a patch on him. But as it is he's fine and I'm doing the right thing...I guess my question is, does anyone think it's worth me taking him 4 hours to see an avian vet tomorrow afternoon (at this point, I called all around already), just to get him looked at a day earlier? I'm thinking no, because 7-8 hours for him in the car just to make myself feel better seems selfish to me. If anything happens between now and then, or if he seems to be in pain, I'll have him at the hospital in 10 minutes, but he's preening himself right now and just ate a bunch of pellets (I'm cringing every time he uses his beak, uhg!)

Btw, he's almost a year old, a male, blue Quaker parrot (I was told by his breeder he was DNA'd a female, so I named him Lita Ford, after one of my favorite guitar heroes...I had suspicions after hormonal behavior and had him tested-yep, Lita Ford is a boy)...he's never been sick or injured before, was hand-raised and is a sweetheart. I got him at 8 weeks old as his breeder was ill (long story, but he was just weaned and I got him out of there). He's a sweet, super intelligent, super stubborn little boy that is incredibly cute. The older he gets the bigger and more cuddly he gets. He loves scritches, he started talking at around 4 months old and has a large vocabulary, and his favorite food is mashed sweet potato. He is very close to Bowie, my male yellow-sided green cheek. They are almost the same age, Lita is about a month older, and they are always together. I have only had my 4 month old female cockatiel, Duff, for about a month now, and Lita hasn't quite warmed up to her yet, although Bowie has. Lita just ignores her.

I'll appreciate any input on this, I've never had a beak injury in 30 years of owning and breeding birds, so this is new to me. I love my birds and my dogs, I have no children and I'm divorced, so my birds and my dogs are my family. I lost a green cheek conure I was very close to not long ago in a horrible situation that I will never get over, and I cannot lose another baby.

[Pajarita]

Oh, geez, how very nerve wrecking for you! I just had an almost heart attack myself this morning when I couldn't find one of my birds anywhere in the house and I am still upset over it even though I found her in my dressing room (my husband had gone in and forgotten about it so I never thought to check in there and I was screaming like a maniac running around the house calling for her and blaming him because I thought he had let her out the front door by mistake -I have a guy working on the birdroom floor and they had just come back from Home Depot with materials for it)

For what you have told, I really do not see any need for him to see a doctor. As the vet tech said, you did exactly what they would have done and, to tell you the truth, I wouldn't even be doing any more cleaning or putting any more ointment on him or even give him any metacam or antibiotics. In my personal experience, with birds, it's better to let them be and not stress them out with treatments that, in the end, are not really doing anything for what already happened but are aimed at prevention only. Healthy birds that are not stressed out have a pretty strong immune system and medicating them, when it's not absolutely necessary, ends, sometimes, been more a case of the remedy been worse than the disease. I doubt he would get an infection there and I doubt that he is in pain (if he eating hard stuff like pellets and seeds, he doesn't need any pain killer). Mind you, it's not that I don't believe in medication or in prevention, I do! But antibiotics and pain killers need to go through liver and/or kidneys and why mess up with them for a 'just in case' and the bird is doing OK?

The only thing I would recommend is to clip the other wing of the GCC because what the bird has now is what we call an 'unilateral' clip and this is extremely dangerous to birds (they are completely unbalanced by the lack of primaries in only one wing) so he will be better off with both wings clipped. I have a severely handicapped peach front conure which has half a wing on one side and I make sure his other wing is clipped so as to avoid any imbalance (something he doesn't need as he has some sort of neurological problem that makes him very unstable on his feet and a bad toe in one foot so he can't perch very well).

[Wolf]

One other thing that I would suggest is that if you are not there to keep an eye on things that you make sure that they are all caged until you return and can keep a watch on them. I say this as it is normal for many birds to ostracize and pick on any disadvantaged bird in their flock, mostly trying to drive them away to protect the remainder of the flock from possible predators. This may be what happened while you were out for that 10 minutes. Just a thought that I thought might be pertinent and hopefully helpful, better to be safe than sorry.

[EllenD]

Thank you both for your replies, I haven't been able to get back on here to post since the "day from bird hell" last week, lol. I'm laughing now but I certainly was not laughing when this stuff happened. Lita is doing just fine, in fact he never once showed any concern or that he was in any pain at all from his beak, it was me that needed the drugs! Xanex would have done me good ladt week! I didn't take Lita to the emergency vet that day, but did get him to his regular avian vet just to make myself feel better. The day after the accident happened his beak was horribly bruised (and he is quite large for a Quaker parrot and has a very large beak, and the entire beak turned purple), but he still continued to eat his hard food with no problems. I can't believe he was able to chew up pellets as bruised as his beak was but he was a trooper. I did stop all meds the next day because he didn't at all seem in pain, the only thing I continued was the neomycin cream on the actual crack in his beak that bled twice a day. The vet said he's a lucky bird because the crack stops just below where his beak attaches to his skull, and if it had been higher we would have had serious problems. He said I did absolutely everything he would have done, and told me with beak breaks that bleed he worries about necrosis and the bird losing the beak, just like a fingernail that won't grow back because the nail bed gets infected or damaged. So he told me to keep using the prescription antibiotics on the crack twice a day and to watch it to make sure it's healing, and that there's no more bleeding or any discharge or swelling. He said after the crack seals back up eventually it will grow out, though he may have a bit of a depression in his beak forever. It's pretty flush, so I don't think it will be bad. Emergency diverted...Lita didn't even know he had an emergency, lol.

Just to clarify, I immediately clipped Bowie's other wing to match the one he bent into a right angle (uhg), though I of course didn't clip them quite as short, just the outer 4 primary's. I've been clipping my bird's toenails, wings, and dremeling their beaks (rarely needed) since I was a kid and my mom taught me. She bred English budgies and cockatiels for years and years, as did my grandmother, so we have always done our own maintenance and hygiene stuff. I knew immediately that the other wing had to match and that they needed to be symmetrical. To be honest the chunk Bowie has out of his left wing looks worse than Lita's beak injury! This has been our major issue since that day, not the beak, but the fact that Bowie can't fly anymore because he did that and as a result I had to clip both his wings. He hasn't been clipped since I first few months after I brought him home. The only time I clip any of my bird's wings is when I first get them so that I can train them to do the basic commands like stepping up, stepping down, "shoulder" (self explanatory, but helpful if I want them to get away from something immediately that they've gotten into), and basic recall-getting them to come to me immediately when I call them, no matter where they are or where I am in the house. I find if I train them to do this when they can't fly but they have to walk instead, it works all the better when they can fly. And of course earning their trust goes along with the training. Once they've learned these basic commands and bonded with me I let their wings grow back in and training them while they're flighted at this point is easy.

Also, I don't generally EVER let my birds out alone together, though the green cheek, the Quaker, and the cockatiel are always out 100% of the time when I'm home and inside. When im outside doing yard work or washing the car I'll put the cockatiel and the Quaker on their aviator harnesses and they have a great time in the yard, and the green cheek sits next to them in his "outside cage" as he absolutely refuses to let a harness be in the same room as he is. I had no trouble at all training the other two parrots and even the budgies are coming along with their harness training. But Bowie just will not have any of it, and then he looks at Lita and Duff outside on their harnesses like he's angry because he's in a cage. I get frustrated just thinking about his almost 2 years of "training" with that damn harness...uhg. Anyway, yeah I don't typically let them out alone, too many things can go very wrong. In fact them fighting is the least likely accident one of them could have. I do however let my 5 budgies out alone, but not with the big birds obviously. The budgies are easy, they're my easy children, lol. No problems, no worries, they listen almost always, they don't get into things, they don't break things.

All-in-all it was a good week, no one was seriously hurt, no one died, the house didn't burn down...now we just need to get Bowie's wings to grow back in before he kills me in my sleep. Those are seriously the looks he's giving me. Yeah, it's my fault he did a divebomb behind the entertainment center. Oh my, he's so cranky. He tries to follow the other 2 to their T-stands but obviously cannot since they are 5 feet tall, and this has completely messed up his morning pooping and breakfast routine. He doesn't want me to pick him up and put him on his stand (or anywhere else) and since he's a green cheek and like a little monkey with feathers, he tries to climb straight up the PVC, but just keeps sliding down. So I wrapped his entire stand in vet wrap instead of just the perching places, and this helped, he can climb up it and get on top. But he still has to walk downstairs in the morning from my bedroom (they have sleeping cages in my bedroom, even the spoiled budgies), and he literally screams at me if I try to pick him up. So i have to make sure I let my dogs outside first, then go back upstairs and let the birds out (I had visions of my dogs trampling Bowie as they thunder down the stairs). So the Quaker, the cockatiel, and all 5 budgies fly downstairs to their stands immediately and wait for their breakfast, while Bowie literally hops or jumps or whatever it is he's doing out of my bedroom, down the hall, down the stairs (very interesting to watch) across the kitchen, then has to wiggle up the stand... it's hysterical and exhausting to watch. I'm going to video it tomorrow because you wouldn't believe it unless you saw it, I'm sure. I'll make sure I try to help him so you can see his reaction, it's hilarious. I'll post a link to it tomorrow...birds, lol.