$2,500 surgery for broken wing

[Pajarita]

This is an article about a vet operating on a snowy plover's (tiny little thing - about 6 inches long from beak to tip of tail) broken wing which is very encouraging because they are so very hard to fix... I wish they had given more information or that we got updates to see if it actually worked.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/art ... 304391.php

[cstone01]

Probably 15 years ago my Cockatiel broke her leg, the vet bill ended up being more than $3000 on my little $65 bird. She recovered well but it was a long process, they had me keep her in a fish tank for almost six months I think? (A pretty small fish tank at that). She had a cast nearly as big as her. A couple months in she started laying eggs- we didn’t know she was female until then. The vet said it was because I was giving her calcium supplements three times a day from a syringe but I’m sure that wrapping her up in a towel every day to give her her medicine didn’t help with the hormones, plus she was living in a fish tank!

When my dad found out the cost I remember him telling my mom “you could have bought her a damn flock of birds” lol. I was surprised by how well she recovered, birds always seem relatively fragile to me. I think they said the reason the surgery was so expensive was because anesthesia is very challenging on little birds. This is why we are trying out the pet insurance now. Considering it was so long ago I’m sure surgery on little birds has come along way.

[Pajarita]

Yes, it used to cost an arm and a leg to get anything done to a bird. But, like anything else, as time goes by and things become more common (more birds, more avian vets, better knowledge and technology, etc), the prices come down. The interesting part about this article is that although legs are relatively easy to fix in birds, wings are not. They are a doozy to fix! So much so that even soft tissue damage can render a wing useless... very delicate things, wings.