Polyuria

[Shani]

Oh, just an update for people following this thread - Barney's continuing to improve. His weight is climbing again, he's eating well, and his poops appear 99% normal.

He had his first bath today It was raining here today, and I heard a splash and saw he was trying to fit into his water bowl for a bath >.> So I got him out, put him on his T stand and gave him a mist with the spray bottle. It was just adorable - he had the best time, and got very very damp. He looked ridiculous.

So we're doing well - I'm trying not to get overly optimistic just yet, because I'm quite paranoid about my little guy, but fingers crossed we're on the way to a full recovery.

[entrancedbymyGCC]

Glad Barney is doing well! I don't know why my post wound up way down in the thread... I posted it well before you had said you were taking him to the vet and before birdvet posted, but I guess it somehow got deferred and didn't show up until it was quite after the fact. Either that or my browser got stuck on an earlier version of the thread.

So did the vet say he had polyuria as a result of the stress of the infection? I may be splitting a hair, but I didn't think bacterial infections directly cause excess urine production. At any rate, I'm glad he's been diagnosed, treated and is feeling better!

[Shani]

Haha, no worries, that happens

The vet said there were a few possibilities:
a: He was drinking an excess amount of water due to the infection which caused the polyuria (the day I took him to the vet he had 5 big drinks of water in a couple of hours, today he's had 1 drink in 4 or so hours as a comparison)
b: The polyuria was just a result of combined stress of the infection + a new cage etc
c: The bacterial infection in his gut spread to his kidneys, giving him a mild bacterial kidney infection (thankfully it was caught before any damage was done to his kidneys if that's the case).

I guess there's still a faint possibility that there could be something more serious going on, although it's unlikely at this point since he's responding well to antibiotics, and his poops are looking much better. I won't know for certain that he's in the clear until he has another vet appointment in a week or so, so I'm going to be watching him like a hawk until he gets a clean bill of health.

[Shani]

I'd just like to update everyone - I took Barney back to the vet today since the polyuria had come back a bit, and would like to officially say (and I quote from the vet), that Barney has a clean bill of health

All serious causes of polyuria have been ruled out through testing/antibiotics. His polyuria is behavioural - he loves water, that's pretty much all there is to it. The vet tested his poop today, and while it's a little strange to hear a bird's poop being referred to as 'perfect' I'm fairly sure that's a good thing!

One other thing, he's going to be a big tiel. He clocked in at 101g this morning - the vet suspects he'll break 110g by the time he's considered an adult bird.

So yeah, thanks for the input everyone, and the kind words directed at Barney. I think I can finally relax now.

[Jenny]

101! that's what Aaron weighs now!!

I haven't been all that thrilled w/my vet, & hearing Barney's weight makes me question her still more. According to my vet, male cockatiels typically don't weigh over about 97g. If a cockatiel runs around 100g, that's an indication that the bird is female. I had read that show cockatiels can be really large, & I remember wondering, when my vet told me that, how reliable that tidbit really was.

[Shani]

101! that's what Aaron weighs now!!

I haven't been all that thrilled w/my vet, & hearing Barney's weight makes me question her still more. According to my vet, male cockatiels typically don't weigh over about 97g. If a cockatiel runs around 100g, that's an indication that the bird is female. I had read that show cockatiels can be really large, & I remember wondering, when my vet told me that, how reliable that tidbit really was.

Yep, 101g That's with a fairly empty crop as well. A few days ago I weighed him just after he'd been gorging himself and he clocked in at 106g. I thought the scale was screwing up so used an old one we had and it showed the same!

I'm with you with what your vet said. That sounds very weird to me. I have found a lot of contradictory information out there about the size of cockatiels, but nothing whatsoever that suggests that a way to tell the sex of a cockatiel is by weight. That just doesn't sound right to me at all.

http://toetallybirds.webs.com/cockatielinfo.htm this is the website of the breeder I got Barney from. She lists the weights of adult cockatiels between 80 - 100g, whilst lutinos and some other mutations can often be lighter.
http://toetallybirds.webs.com/ourbreedingbirds.htm If you scroll down to Pair 4, you can see a picture of Barney's parents, Motley and Calico As you can see Barney's dad looks like a large bird. Also, if you take a peek at pair two (Aidie and Crystal), you can see that Aidie seems even larger O_o. A clear pied hen Aidie and Crystal had (named Daisy because she was bright yellow), weighed in at a whopping 104g when she was 7 weeks old! As a comparison, Barney was 93g at that age.

http://www.exoticpetvet.net/avian/budgietiel.html has the weight as 75 - 125g
http://www.cockatiel.org/tips/weights.html has the weight of adults as 90 - 110g
http://www.avianweb.com/cockatielinfo.htm78 - 125g.

It varies a lot as you can see. From things I've read - normal greys and pieds tend to be on the heavier side - I suspect it's because pied is such a long established mutation, and lutinos tend to be on the smaller side (probably due to the inbreeding in early lutino lines). Show cockatiels are often pretty large (110 - 125g), but that's probably since they've been bred for the larger size.

[Jenny]

those weight ranges are interesting. & this is comforting info for me - Aaron's weight is pretty consistent, but I was worrying a bit that he had gotten too heavy.

& Barney's breeder has a great website!

[Shani]

She does doesn't she?

But yeah - I personally love the larger cockatiels. My friend has a little cinnamon girl that's barely scraping in at 75g, and she feels so light and fragile compared to mine

Barney has some nice mass to him when he's perching on your finger, and doesn't feel so fragile when it's cuddle time (he loves hand over back, snuggled into face cuddles, not just head scritches). He just seems... what's the word... robust, that's it. That could also be due to the fact that his feathers are very dense, kinda. I think that's a pied thing more than anything - I read somewhere that pied cockatiels often have more closely packed feathers or something )I'll try and find the source on that).

[entrancedbymyGCC]

Barney is making Scooter feel like the skinny nerd getting sand kicked on him at the beach! I think of him as being a little BIGGER than a 'tiel, but he's a very steady 68g with an empty crop!

[Shani]

Barney is making Scooter feel like the skinny nerd getting sand kicked on him at the beach! I think of him as being a little BIGGER than a 'tiel, but he's a very steady 68g with an empty crop!

Aww, poor Scooter! That's so strange - I was of the impression that GCCs were bigger than tiels as well from the few I've seen, but I guess not. My theory is that GCCs are 99% tail