Which diagnostics do you have done?

[entrancedbymyGCC]

Scotty had his vet visit yesterday. He was a VERY well-behaved boy! He now has a fan club. The vet had actually seen a couple of Capes before, though not many, and professed no interest in trimming his beak, so we were all on the same page there. We also discussed flight and to my surprise she is cautiously in favor of it where the home situation can be made safe enough. I asked if she saw more accidents in flighted than unflighted birds and she thought about it and said that what she really sees is more accidents in small birds, period. So I've put that in my pipe to smoke for a while. I still have concerns that we could make our house adequately safe.

She said he looks really good with no apparent issues. He's on the thin side at 294g so we should keep an eye on his weight and eating and drinking. She's doing a fecal and took swabs of his cloaca and chonana. We decided not to do bloodwork at this time. She doesn't push the bloodwork on the first visit because she feels it's a bit traumatic for them. It does mean we probably can't return him if he gets sick in a couple of weeks... but at this point it would be highly unlikely we'd do so anyway. And they seem so careful at that store, I'd be really surprised if he was exposed to any of the serious illnesses. I guess I, too, was somewhat influenced by the tale of the Quaker, but also by the vet's ambivalence. We did the same set of diagnostics with Scooter on his first visit for the same reason.

I'm always slightly worried because she's not Avian Certified. I guess with all my degrees, I do set some store by extra letters. But I think she seems quite fine and she handles the birds with confidence and compassion. Would you find the fact that she didn't strongly advise doing bloodwork worrying? She did say "I'm a vet, I'm a vampire, I love blood, but it is kind of traumatic for them so I'm not going to push it."

She also suggested we put music or other sound on during the day when we are away, since he is used to being in a busy store with a big flock, she felt that would make him more comfortable.

[Michael]

All of this sounds spot on to me. He probably lost some weight since arriving to you. Watch he puts 20g back on within a month.

Rather than music though, I would suggest putting on a mix of words instead. What I did was went on youtube and downloaded clips of other parrots saying things I liked and mixed them onto a single 15 minute track with long pauses between so that it is repetitive but not obnoxious. Then I set up playlists on an ipod to play this at varying intervals and pauses in the day through speakers. I will confess having little or no success getting my parrot to talk this way but I think it has more to do with the species than the method. At least I know if she is listening and learns those words, it will be far less annoying than the other sounds she manages to pick up.

[bmsweb]

She also suggested we put music or other sound on during the day when we are away, since he is used to being in a busy store with a big flock, she felt that would make him more comfortable.

I've had this suggested to me on a number of occasions, but I just let our birds talk to each other. My Cockatiel is in another room away from the Green Cheeks but they still talk and interact with each other.

As far as flight goes, our first Budgie died due to a flight accident, but he was insane in terms of the speeds he would fly at around our house. We only had the little fella for just under 3 years If there was a door open with a 2" gap our budgie would fly through at full speed and just withdraw his wings at the last second.

Now our bigger birds like the Cockatiel or even the Conures seem fly around a lot more safely. The conures have a lot more flight control than our Cockatiel.

[birdvet]

Hey. I'm an avian vet and that list of diagnostics is my usual that I will perform on any bird that walks through my door. I don't push for blood tests if a bird looks healthy to me and if the crop and faecal test come back negative (the blood test does, however, give extra info and is what I call my gold standard health check. I do understand that many people can't afford to do this as part of a general health screen. Vets don't do blood tests as routine on health checks for other species so its perfectly fine IMHO to skip this step. The people who mainly get the blood test done are breeders and animals in quarantine before being introduced into zoo collections etc.)

I do, however, also suggest beak and feather disease and polyoma (especially for younger birds) tests unless you get your birds from a breeder who tests for these diseases. It's also an idea to get them checked for chlamydia as not all birds show signs, especially if the bird is from a breeder or pet store as these places can harbour both chlamydia as well as PBFD.

Don't worry about your vet's lack of credentials, I can tell you that I didn't change anything I do in practice from July 30th on to July 31st which is the day I heard I'd passed my exams. The only thing that changed (about 3 weeks later I should add ) was I remembered to change my email signature and add the extra letters. As long as your vet sees lots of birds and participates in continuing education, and is hopefully a member of the AAV (AAV.org) than that is all fine .