Why every sick bird is an EMERGENCY

What is the first thing you do after buying a dog? You take it to the vet for vaccinations! Dogs and cats require more routine trips to the vet than birds do, yet most bird owners refuse to take their bird even once when their pet is critically ill. Dogs see the vet to have their teeth cleaned, birds see the vet when they are dying.

BIRDS ARE NOT MAMMALS. People too often see bird illness like their own- just annoying symptoms that aren't very serious. Birds can take injury quite well, but illness is another matter. In the wild an unhealthy bird can attract predators, spread disease and may be driven out of the flock. Because of this they do their very best to hide the fact that they are ill. Experienced breeders will notice illness early, but by the time a pet owner sees their bird is sick, the condition is very serious. Tack onto this the delay an owner makes before bringing the bird to a vet, and you have an animal at death’s door. Even worse, the owner may not seek veterinary care, thinking things will just get better on their own, and the bird winds up dead.

If a bird acts ill:

1. Take it to a vet immediately or it will die.
2. Keep it in a warm, quiet place and isolate it from the rest of your flock.
3. Do NOT try to treat it yourself.

Case Study: Choose Carefully I’ve had a total of four avian vets. All were AAV members but not all of them were good. Don’t get me wrong, they were all qualified, but it takes more than knowledge to make a good vet. I’m telling you right now- the key to a good vet is communication. A qualified vet is nothing without this skill. My first vet was fairly qualified and great at communication. He was good at talking to customers and was also more casual. One time he sat on the floor while he flipped through a book, looking up something. I ended up sitting down next to him. He was easy to talk to. The willingness to chat had a downside though. Once I brought in a very sick quail to be euthanized. The poor girl looked dreadful and I just wanted to end it as soon as possible for her. My vet came in with the shot but instead of administering it right away he struck up a conversation with me, "How’s school?" and all that. I was fidgeting the whole time. I really wanted him to just shut up and give the shot. The bird expired on its own literally an inch before the shot got to her. It was really disconcerting. The chattiness was also detrimental to his business. As the only vet in that practice, he worked constantly and appointments could be very lengthy if he had a lot to say. Eventually he fell ill from stress and overwork and had to hire another vet. After that, I always ended up getting the new guy on my appointments. He was a small animal vet but completely new to birds. My first vet was teaching him but he just wasn’t as good. I also had no rapport with him. I was mildly insulted when he started asking me about the diet and care of my birds (alas, my reputation does not precede me) and I felt like introducing myself, "Hi, my name is Karen Trinkaus. I’ve worked with psittacines for over 10 years, run a website on proper bird care and majored in Avian Sciences for two years at UC Davis." Okay, so he wouldn’t know this, but my chart would still show how long I’d been a customer, and he should be able to get the gist of my knowledge level just by talking to me. I hate when I see bird "old timers" lecturing obviously experienced people on the basics, particularly kids. You can usually tell right away whether people know anything or not. While at UCD I met a 10 year-old who bred and handfed lovebirds. As soon as I heard this I readjusted my manner of speaking to match her level. I had started out talking below her. I mention the expertise thing mainly because of the following case. I brought in a kak purchased from Magnolia Bird Farm (wholesale buyer), which means it could have come from any breeder in the area. Jet seemed to be in great condition when I bought him but had then begun acting ill. I took him to the vet and got the new guy. I told the new guy that kaks are susceptible to aspergillosis, a particularly nasty fungal infection that is hard to diagnose and even harder to treat. He thought it was a bacterial infection and prescribed a pink antibiotic I was unfamiliar with. Jet got much worse in only a few days. I mentioned the aspergillosis thing again. He said the bird probably had an allergic reaction to the first antibiotic and prescribed Baytril (another antibiotic I am familiar with, most vets use it first thing). Weeks went by and Jet continued to worsen until he ended up in a heated plastic hospital container with bad feces, constant sleeping and fluffing up. I kept in touch with the vet but I don’t remember it doing and good. I weighed Jet daily through all this and his weight stayed the same. Odd. Finally, a day or two before he died, the weight plummeted. I called the vet’s office and informed them I’d be dropping off the body for a necropsy. The receptionist told me the necropsy would cost $65. This was ridiculous. My bird had died while under their [poor] care and I have to PAY to find out why? This vet had never charged me for a necropsy before, EVER. He saw them as good practice and educational (for him too). Apparently he no longer did them in-house. Instead he sent them out to the state lab, which did a full necropsy (lab work and dissection). I didn’t even have the option of a simple gross necropsy (dissection only). I was very irritated but left the body anyway. It burned me all day though and I ended up calling the office back to tell them I’d be taking the body elsewhere. I picked it up and took it to another vet I’d used on occasion. I asked the receptionist at the other vet how much they charged for necropsies. "Fifteen dollars, if we charge anything at all." I told her about the $65 at my regular vet. She was astonished. I was going to give her a brief history but instead she just called the other office and had them fax over the file on Jet. I thanked her and left feeling a little better (not much better though, after all I had a dead bird on my hands). Guess what the necropsy results were? MASSIVE ASPERGILLOSIS INFECTION. Big surprise... I switched vets permanently after that. I once tried a new vet out after hearing him give a talk on polyoma at my bird club. This was long before the switch mentioned above (I was still in highschool then). My original vet (the chatty one) was pretty good but not always great at diagnosis. I felt more comfortable bringing him birds when I already knew what was wrong (tumor, infection, etc.). He was the vet I’d first brought Toast to, and the one who failed to notice that her left leg was dislocated as well as splayed. So I tried to test out this other guy using Toast. He was the complete opposite of my original vet. Not very chatty or willing to discuss options. Still, he seemed a bit more competent. I ended up bringing him another kak chick that wasn’t doing so hot. He examined it and started going on about antibiotics. I only had so much cash on me and told him so. I was hoping he’d say they accepted credit cards (my dad had let me borrow his) or maybe knew where an ATM was. Instead he just gave the bird a shot of water to hydrate it and escorted me out of the examining room. At the front desk I asked the receptionist about meds but she said there were none. Confused, I left. I was younger then. Today I probably would have said something. The chick got really bad over the weekend and I ended up paging the vet (he was also large animal and mobile) and leaving frantic voicemails. By the time he called me back the chick had been dead a few hours. I was upset because I felt he’d kicked me out of the office as soon as he thought I didn’t have much money. I had wanted to go with the antibiotics but he had eliminated that as one of my options. This is a case of really bad customer service. He should have discussed all the options, methods of payment and let me decide. Communication, communication, communication. It does take two, but in the cases above the vets were unwilling to listen or talk. A good vet should always be willing to do the following: Listen to the client. Discuss all the possible ailments, diagnostic tests, options for treatment and potential costs before anything is performed. Answer any questions. Don’t be afraid to speak up! It is YOUR pet, YOUR money and YOUR decision. Not everyone can afford the best treatment for their pets and most vets realize this. They should be open to whatever option you decide to take. If you don’t understand what the heck they said, ASK questions. You have a right to know. How can you make a good decision if you don’t know what is wrong with your animal? WHAT is wrong? HOW could it have been prevented? WHAT are your options for treatment? If your vet isn’t chatty you may need to be more forward. Tell them straight up, "I need to know what is going on and [you’re not being very forthcoming/I don’t understand what you said]. I want to help my animal, but in order to do that I need to know what exactly is wrong with it and what my options for treatment are." Call them with progress reports too. The first treatment is often just an educated guess (unless lab work was performed). If the animal is getting worse, CALL!

The First Visit

Ideally, the first visit should take place immediately after purchase, for several reasons. It gives you the chance to get a feel for the vet before really needing one. It gives the vet a chance to see your bird when it is (hopefully) healthy. The bird’s normal weight will be recorded and will help provide a reference point for later exams. The vet can talk to you about basic bird care. Do you know why exotic animal exams generally cost $10 more than cat and dog exams? It is because they typically take longer- the vet may have to spend an hour giving the owner a lecture on the proper diet. You might learn key information on the first visit that will keep your bird healthy and prevent further visits. There’s also the possibility that you bought a sick or unweaned bird. Most breeders are reasonable and give you 24 hours to see a vet and verify the bird’s health. Some places now offer a free vet exam with purchase. If something is wrong you can catch it right away and return the animal.

What to Expect

Most visits include only a physical exam. The vet will weigh your bird and look it over. They may listen to pulse/breathing, check the vent, mouth, etc. Depending on what the problem is they may send you away with medication or recommend that tests be run. Birds, unlike dogs and cats, can be very difficult to diagnose without tests. Vets can usually accurately diagnose cats and dogs just by looking at them or giving them a physical exam. Birds are different. All sick birds look pretty much the same. Unless tests are run, the initial diagnosis a vet makes for a bird is typically an educated guess. This does NOT mean that the vet doesn't know what he/she is doing. In many cases this initial diagnosis is correct. They know we aren't made of money and that most people are unwilling to pay the added cost for cultures or bloodwork. Many won't even bring up the topic during an initial visit. However, if the first treatment fails YOU NEED TO LET THE VET KNOW. It's not as if everything is settled once you leave the practice. Like I said, it is often just an educated guess. If it happens to be wrong how will the vet know unless you say something? Bring the bird back as many times as needed to fix the problem. My current vet has no extra charge for rechecks (additional procedures cost more, but the exam does not).

Lab work is always better when performed before any medications have been given. If a bird has been on antibiotics or other meds this can mess up the results. If you want the vet to do labwork before any medications are prescribed, ask for it!

Common Procedures:
• Antibiotics kill bacteria. Each antibiotic attacks only certain types. Most vets start out with a wide spectrum (common/general types) and move on to something more specific if that doesn’t work. Antibiotics do NOT work against fungi or viruses and should only be used under veterinarian supervision.
• Anti fungals kill fungi. Antibiotics can promote the growth of fungi so many vets will prescribe this along with antibiotic treatments. If you have reason to believe that your bird has a fungal infection, demand that your vet provide an antifungal in addition to an antibiotic.
• Lactobacillus (it may be called something else) is "friendly bacteria." We need bacteria to live. Much of our digestion is aided by beneficial bacteria in our intestines. This bacteria also helps by giving bad species little or no room to colonize. If a bird is on long or harsh antibiotic treatments a vet will usually prescribe this to increase the good bacterial population.
• Blood Panels are more for detecting if their is a problem. They don’t help much with diagnosis but a vet can look at a panel and see if anything is amiss. Certain problems will affect different parts of a blood panel. This procedure is best for annual exams and cases where the bird has been treated but nothing seems to be working (the panel may point the vet in another direction).
• X rays are used to see abnormalities that might show up: masses, fractures, ingested metals, tumors, etc.
• Cultures are used to determine what exact species is the culprit of an infection. Like I stated before, antibiotics each treat a specific range of bacteria. A culture will help the vet narrow down which bacterial/fungal species needs to be dealt with.

Case Study: Observation & Communication On February 16th I had a double vet appointment. My panther chameleon, Zap, had become ill and was no longer eating. I’d made the appointment a week in advance. Unfortunately, my poor chameleon had gotten much sicker since then. I also wanted to get my yellowfronted kak hen checked out. I pay attention to my animals, not just interacting with them but observing them. I told the vet everything I could about Zap’s condition. I’d bought him in May 2001 (age in relation to size) as a captive bred baby (no parasites). His last shed, about a month prior, didn’t seem to go well (possibly the problem). He shed his tail but I found no evidence of anything else shedding. His appetite had decreased steadily until the past week when he stopped eating completely, even his favorite, waxworms. I could not figure out if he had stopped eating because he was picky (many chameleons do) or because he felt sick. I hadn’t weighed him but could feel a difference in weight (which must be considerable for me to even notice without a scale). His grip was weaker and often his feet didn’t even hold the perch completely. When he slept, he was no longer a compact little body, tail curled tightly like a whip. His tail was half-curled and drooping. He was very lethargic, hanging out by the drip bottle all day, and sleeping in longer in the morning. Before he’d always started moving about as soon as the lights came on. Now he would sit and sleep. I’d touch him and instead of opening his eyes he’d turn a color I’d never seen previously, dark smokey green/black and yellow, and puff up. Chameleons communicate through color (the camouflage thing is a myth) and it is often a good indication of health. He was still bright green most of the time; black would be a very unhealthy color (dead chameleons turn black/drab). She asked if he’d turned black and I told her he hadn’t. His left eye also seemed to have a problem. When he wasn’t keeping it closed completely he was flexing/blinking it (normally both eyes are wide open and moving constantly). I also gave her quite a bit of info on my female kak. I’d purchased her two years prior with her mate, who has always been healthy. She’d been scalped a year and a half ago by something, probably a rat or another bird. She was blind in one eye, partly bald and always looked awful. She was an aviary bird. Every so often she’d start looking sick so I’d bring her in, weigh her, and keep her in until she put on a few grams and looked better. This was probably the third time I’d done this. She’d always been a lightweight. Currently she weighed in at 45 grams (female kaks normally weigh around 55). I’d only been able to get her up to 47 previously. Sometimes her breathing seemed off and her tail had a tendency to droop. The vet asked about the possibility of worms. I told her my birds live on concrete floors but that she could have been kept in a dirt aviary before I’d purchased her. However, her mate had always been in excellent health. I told the vet my main concern was aspergillosis, because I’d had four kaks die total, three from aspergillosis and one from pneumonia. I wanted to know if it would even show on a blood panel. She took my concern seriously (in fact, she was the vet who'd necropsied the kak mentioned in the last Case Study) and said that it would indeed effect the results. I do have a point here. Can you give your vet such detailed information on your pet? Symptoms, history and recent vs. previous behavior can all be important factors when trying to determine or rule out a diagnosis. You are the one who lives with the animal. You are the one who must bring the vet up to date, and how well you communicate can affect how good the treatment is. By the way, it can also affect your bill! Your observations may rule out the need to test for certain ailments and prevent the animal from being treated for something it doesn’t have. Back to the visit...thought I’d leave you hanging didn’t you? My vet said that chameleons are very difficult to diagnose. She opened his mouth, which seemed fine, but couldn’t get a good look at the eyeball from inside (he was instinctively covering it with his tongue, chameleon heads are pretty much all eye and tongue). He might have an infection in the eye. What else was wrong was hard to say. Blood work? No, chameleons don’t do needles well, she informed me. Hopefully it was just an infection. She gave me eye ointment and Baytril (antibiotic). I’d also have to force feed him, something I was nervous about because he seemed so delicate. I had blood work done on the kak. The results would come back in a day. She also took a fecal sample to possibly test on Monday if the blood work didn’t tell us anything. The tests came back fine, except for very low levels of calcium (weird). I told them to go ahead with the fecal (it was only $20 more), which basically showed that there were no parasites. They gave me a calcium solution and I went home relieved about the kak.

Paying for Vet Care

Vet care can be darned expensive. A basic exam costs about $30-40. Meds are usually under $15. Plan on having to cover both of these expenses. Lab work (blood panel, cultures) is $60 or more. Surgery can cost several hundred dollars. A gross necropsy (dissection only) should be free or at least under $15. Biopsies and other lab work for a necropsy will cost extra. After hours/emergency care also costs extra, if it is offered. Back when I attended UCD and utilized their clinic, an emergency appointment was $90 instead of the usual $35. It was worth it just for the peace of mind. Fretting over your pet as it slips farther and farther away is no way to spend a weekend.

Keep in mind these are general prices based on my own experience. So how does one pay for all of this?

Having worked in banking, it is not without much trepidation that I suggest this next bit. With the exception of the elderly, Americans are the worst savers on the planet. Still, I’m going to suggest it anyway: open a savings account solely for veterinary expenses. Put money into it with every paycheck. Heck, just put $20 in a month! That’s not much- probably the cost of your internet service provider. Try to save up a few hundred for emergencies.

Ways to Prevent Undesirable Spending
• Don’t get an ATM card.
• Get a savings account, not checking.
• When you open the account, request that the following remarks be added to the account file: Account for veterinary expenses only. Tellers please guilt trip customer for other withdrawals, per customer request.
• Have direct deposit take $10 out of every paycheck and add it to this account. You won’t miss it if you don’t see it.
• No direct deposit? Ask your bank if it can set the account up for an automatic transfer from your checking every month.
• No automatic transfer? Write a check from your regular account and deposit it into the savings every month. Do it consistently until it becomes habit. I do this with every paycheck (for my savings and ROTH IRA).
• Make the account require two signatures. You won’t be able to withdraw money without both signers being present at the bank.

Pet insurance is available for birds. As a breeder, insurance is impossible for me (coverage is per bird). I don’t know how good it is, but it is worth looking into if you only have a few pets. Also ask your vet office ahead of time if it offers payment plans.

Preventative Medicine and Detecting Early Signs of Illness

The best preventative medicine is quality care. A good diet is extremely important to keeping your bird healthy. There is absolutely no excuse for feeding your bird a seed only diet. "But they won’t eat anything else" is nonsense.

Buy a gram scale and weigh your bird monthly or even weekly. Weight loss is a good indication of illness and will show up before most other symptoms. Some fluctuation is normal but the weight should not be steadily going down. Drastic changes in weight suggest a serious problem. However, not all sick birds lose weight so don’t rely on this alone. If a bird acts sick and the weight is fine you still need to see a vet. The bird may have a mass/growth that makes it seem heavier when it is in fact losing weight (recall the Case Study above where a bird with aspergillosis did not lose weight until a few days before death).

If you only have a few pets take them in for annual vet exams. You’ll want a physical, weights taken and a blood panel done.

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