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Extra hormonal after vacation?

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Re: Extra hormonal after vacation?

Postby Pajarita » Thu Oct 05, 2017 9:48 am

Well, she does need to be exposed to the light at dawn or her internal clock has no way of knowing when the day actually starts - that could be the reason why her endocrine system continues to be out of whack... People usually think that uncovering the cage or turning on the lights when it's day outside and covering the cage or turning the lights off when it's dark means a solar schedule but it doesn't, they need the exposure to twilight at both 'ends' of the daylight period or the endocrine system gets confused.
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
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Location: NW Pa
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Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
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Re: Extra hormonal after vacation?

Postby flappybird » Tue Oct 10, 2017 10:11 am

I thought you might be interested in seeing a (gross) picture of her regurgitation goo. She's been sitting 100% quietly on top of her cage since she at her breakfast ~9:15am (it's 11 now) just regurgitating constantly. The excess just falls out of her mouth. This doesn't happen every day, but it happens maybe every other day on average.

She has a cardboard box on top of her cage as well that she chews on sometimes or goes in to forage for a few seeds I tossed in a couple days ago. I would say maybe that has something to do with it, except her regurgitation happens seemingly regardless of other stimuli.

https://cl.ly/3J2C2t2x361y
https://cl.ly/1D3b1P411C2I

Other, somewhat related question. Is there a reason Luna wants to do nothing else than to forage for food 100% of the time? I don't want to feed her more, but she spends most of the day going down to her poop tray to eat old food, and lately she had started jumping down to the floor and picking dried food off the tray/ legs of her cage. She ignores her toys most of the day in favor of trying to EAT EVERYTHING. She pays attention to her toys mostly when they have something to do with food.
flappybird
Cockatiel
 
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Re: Extra hormonal after vacation?

Postby Pajarita » Thu Oct 12, 2017 10:05 am

Sorry I did not reply yesterday, the shuttle was coming and I couldn't miss it. It looks like any regurgitation but her behavior is worrisome. None of my birds eats after breakfast (they do pick a bit of a favorite thing when it's getting close to noon and before their midday rest but I would not call it a 'meal'). Having said that, I would assume that if she regurgitates so much she is not really getting much food into her stomachs so she must be hungry, poor thing! My African birds are all hormonal right now but although Zoey Senegal would be very happy if one of the males regurgitated for her, none of them do. They are all very nesty, looking into dark cavities and chewing everything in sight - and the hens are pesky about getting scritches all the time but that's about it.
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes

Re: Extra hormonal after vacation?

Postby stevesjk » Fri Oct 13, 2017 11:36 am

If her room turns pitch black at night with no light from street or cars shining in then you dont need to cover her and her schedule will be natural. Be careful though because if there are foxes and other critters running past the window at night your bird will not sleep properly. I always cover.
stevesjk
Conure
 
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Re: Extra hormonal after vacation?

Postby flappybird » Wed Nov 01, 2017 3:24 pm

Pajarita: do you think I should just feed her more and that she will quit eating when she's full? Why would not eating enough make her regurgitate more?
I was always just paranoid about overfeeding since I know usually animals in captivity tend to overeat when given the opportunity.
flappybird
Cockatiel
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
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Types of Birds Owned: Blue Headed Pionus
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Re: Extra hormonal after vacation?

Postby Pajarita » Thu Nov 02, 2017 11:11 am

Animals in captivity don't necessarily have to become fat. None of my birds is overweight (and none of my dogs or my cats, either] and I only ration their dinner [and that means that I give them enough to fill their crop and a little extra], never the food they get in the morning and left for them to continue eating, if they want to, during the day. Obesity is not only a matter of quantity of food, it's a matter of what food you feed and what exercise the bird gets as well as, believe it or not, how healthy the endocrine system is.

The thing about regurgitation is that, because birds have three stomachs [this is not really completely correct, I am simplifying it for the sake of the explanation], if the bird regurgitates all the time, no food is reaching is reaching the other two which are the ones that process the food for absorption in the intestines. When a bird swallows, the food goes into their crop, which is not a stomach per se but more like a pouch extension of the esophagus and where they 'store' the food and where the food gets moist and slightly softened by saliva, mucus and the heat of the body. The food in the crop then goes down to the proventriculus where it gets softened further and the 'breaking down' starts with the addition of gastric juices. Then it goes to the ventriculus, the more muscular of the three where the food becomes a homogeneous, soft mass called the 'chyme' and gets ready to go into the intestines and where the actual absorption of nutrients happens. When a bird regurgitates, it's bringing up food that is in the crop so, if the bird upchucks what is in the crop all the time, very little food will go into the proventriculus, the ventriculus and the intestines so I seriously doubt your bird is overweight. But this is actually very easy to check, all you have to do is weigh her regularly and see what kind of fluctuation there is.

I don't know why your bird regurgitates so much... I don't have a single bird that does it -well, some of them do regurgitate but they do it only during breeding season and only for their mates and they don't do it all the time, either. I'll be honest with you, if this was happening to one of my birds, I would be frantic with worry because this is a completely unnatural and harmful behavior. But I would never restrict food to a bird that has a medical issue like yours. I know that avian vets tend to say regurgitation is normal and it is! But not outside breeding season and not for only birds and not all the time. This never happens in nature so it's not natural and, if it's not natural, it's not 'normal'.

And I know that you said that she is kept at a solar schedule and that her diet is adequate but I still think that there is something not quite right with both or either one because the ONLY reason for a bird to regurgitate is sexual hormones and they are regulated by light and diet. I recently realized that the budgie hens were not coming out of condition because there were still getting a bit of light from a lamp in the street through the closed blinds. It was the merest light but, apparently, it was enough for them because once I started covering their cage, they started going out of condition.
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes

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