Now comes the adding of the bees to the 2 birds we have. When she was about a year old and coming into breeding age, we saw our 2nd bird, Holly, a female had been mating with Herbie our 1st bird, a male and was doing nesting behavior. Upon witnessing numerous, rather amusing “Birdie Nights” type activity, (bird mating is rather humorous) her belly began to bulge and it looked like it had an egg. Not knowing what to look for, she looked like she was going through distress because and she was sluggish. In a panic I rushed her to the 24 hour vet since it was a weekend (of course, as always). Luckily the exam was only like $40 and he didn’t see any signs of anything and she was fine by the time we got there. Turns out she had already laid the egg (hence the sluggishness *WBDL) and hid it under the paper shreds she was making the nest out of. Breeding will be covered later but there’s since this involves vets there’s one more story of how we really got bamboozled by a vet. Again, probably not on purpose but it’s still worth mentioning because most of us don’t live in mansions and drive Ferraris. Vets can get tunnel vision just like doctors and everyone else.
It was April and we just got our tax returns and were ready to buy things for our new business. We had a friend over and opened the window since it was about 50 degrees. Warm for us humans in the northern Midwest being cooped up all winter, but not for birds. Birds can handle short burst drafts here and there like opening the front door in January, a room away from where the birds stay but not being that cold, exposed to wind or both and especially for extended periods of time. Again, do onto them as you’d do unto your child. If it gets a child sick it will certainly get your bird sick. Soon after she quickly became sluggish, fluffed out and started pulling feathers from her chest. She would sit with her legs spread wide and breathe heavily, fluffed out and looked miserable. Animals don’t deal with pain like humans but you can tell when an animal is distressed.
We got to our local vet and she said it could be an egg issue even though she wasn’t in the process of nesting at the time. Even though she was acting like she was sick and not any sort of breeding issue. Just for reference, vets don’t generally like to anesthetize birds unless it necessary because it’s hard on them and tricky to do, even for seasoned vets. So if they insist on doing it, they need to convince you of the reason to want to do it AND charge you all that money for it to boot. The vet anesthetized her and took an X-ray which didn’t really show anything. It did show something that may have looked like and egg (tunnel vision) and said that the albumen that makes the stretchy later underneath an egg’s shell may have formed but her body didn’t form the shell for whatever reason be it low calcium etc. She said that might be the reason for the possible opaque circle on the X-ray orrrrr… it could be her intestines.
That’s a pretty vague answer for $150, especially since she looked sick and not something you’d see with an egg forming problem. Again, could simply be an honest mistake. But most doctors are aware of Occam’s Razor where if you hear hoofbeats think horses not zebras. An egg issue vs looking sick and plucking chest feathers. She said that if that’s the case I had to go to the 24 hour vet place to get the egg material extracted through her vent (The Vent is a bird’s universal opening for urine, feces & eggs). At the 24 hour vet they talked us into doing another X-ray, blood test and a myriad of other tests that cost almost $800 and our entire tax return. We paid about 10% of that for the bird herself but she’s part of the family so you do whatever it takes to make your babies feel better. However… after all the testing they gave her a shot of antibiotics and she almost immediately cleared up. We went home and after about a week or so it came back. We went and got another shot. Again, in a 7-9 days it came back. So we went 3 straight weeks giving her the shot for $17 a piece and she finally cleared up. Sometimes you need to do that continuous dose for a few weeks. Similar to how we feel better 3 days into antibiotics but 10 days rid them all AND kill them off so they can’t develop resistance. So yeah, you humans who quite taking antibiotics early… you’ll be the cause of the superbug killing everyone when no antibiotics work. Point being that $51 would have done the trick yet we blew $800 on worthless tests.
The point is… unless it could be something odd like Psittacine Beak & Feather Disease PBFD which they’d be losing their feathers or Aspergillosis which is a bad incurable fungal type infection, my suggestion would be, especially if you think it’s a “cold” type infection from things like drafts or exposure to other things to make it sick and especially if you don’t have much money, simply tell the vet to give the bird a round of antibiotics and see what happens. That will probably fix most issues or at least rule out a “cold” or bacterial infection. If the bird continues to be sick THEN do the other tests. Granted, due to birds hiding sickness well, it may have adverse effects playing the waiting game but you’ll probably notice in a matter of 4-6 hours if the antibiotic is working or not. Now I’m not an avian vet so this is just a suggestion so don’t take my story as gospel. It’s merely my personal story. Aspergillosis according to Wikipedia isn’t contagious but PBFD is. Aspergillosis will skyrocket the bird’s white blood cell count. There are treatments but nothing will cure it so you’ll have to make that call. And no… most… MOST common colds and flu can’t be given to your birds. Avian flu, yes but if you’ve got that then that’s like worrying about gonorrhea when your leg just got shot off.