When A Tiny Boo-Boo Turns Into A Bloodbath

I have everything under control at the moment, so don't worry. I just wanted to share my stressful day with you guys. Spoiler alert: she DOESN'T die!

Okay, so yesterday Trixie got an ouchie (probably a bite) on her bad toe. Prior to adopting her, she lost part of her toe due to an injury. Anyways, the bite she received yesterday would've definitely hurt (she was bleeding a bit), but it was nothing life threatening. Ouchies of this kind only happen once or twice a year around here, but they aren't anything I can't handle. I watched her for quite a while and she was fine, so I went in the pool to rinse off as I'd just spent forever cleaning the artificial turf I bought for them.

Fast forward MAYBE an hour, and I check on her again. When I walked in the aviary there were puddles of blood. There's so much blood that I actually spot Ju licking some of it off a branch. I finally spot her and she's holding her foot up. Her entire foot is covered in blood. While I was away, she'd picked at her toe and made a superficial injury into something life threatening. It's like if a toddler tried to fix a skinned knee by using an electric sander on it.

I then spend the next several minutes with my dad trying to catch her. Honestly, there's blood everywhere. She must've lost almost 2ml. We finally catch her and I covered her foot in the emergency cornstarch I keep next to the aviary. It turns red. I put more on, and she soaks through it again. I spend a couple of minutes putting more and more cornstarch on her toe. It finally seems to be slowing down, so we start giving her Pedialyte with a syringe. Next thing I know there's a bit of blood on my dad's hand. Some of the Pedialyte got on her toe so she started to bleed again. I know I'm starting repeat myself here, but I cover her foot in cornstarch yet again, then stick her in a small cage while I get her a couple of dishes of food and Pedialyte. I mean, it's not unusual for it to take a few attempts to get a bird to stop bleeding.

Honestly, she lost a lot of blood, but at least she had finally stopped bleeding. But then I saw that her rope perch was turning red, and her tummy's soaked in blood. I quickly grab her and stick her foot right in the container of cornstarch. But it won't stop. My hand's dripping with blood, and I've even smeared it on her head. She was so pale. Each time she struggled, she tore her injury open. She has this cut right between her toes, so every time she moves her toes, she starts gushing blood like a hemophiliac.

I totally lost it at this point and just started bawling my eyes out. There was just so much blood pouring out of her. I ran upstairs to get my dad (I'm an adult but I can't control myself when things go wrong with my kiddies). He rushed to help me and saw the blood dripping everywhere and the cornstarch all over the room. Somehow the bleeding stopped during my nervous breakdown and he told me I should just hold her and try to keep her comfortable until she passed.

I held her, pressed against my chest for almost an hour, telling her to be brave and to just keep breathing, praying for her not to die. You can just imagine the mess I was. Then my dad came down again and we had her drink some more Pedialyte, then I pressed her against me again to keep her warm. After a few minutes she started fussing in my hand and was putting her beak on my fingers, "threatening" me (she's one of the only birds I've ever had who's never bit me). Then she started chirping and refused to lay back down, so I put her in the tiny cage and she started preening and plucking herself as usual. She clearly wasn't dying so I brought her cage upstairs with me.

For the next two hours I had to watch her like a hawk to make sure she didn't pick at her ouchie again. Man, the little troublemaker just kept sticking her toe back in her mouth and I'd have to give her heck to get her to stop.

This. This is why my life is so freaking stressful. I feel I shouldn't have to tell the kids this, but DON'T MAKE OUCHIES BIGGER. My gosh, to play it safe I'm putting an e-collar on the next bird who gets a bump or scrape. Man, I should've realized that the little plucker would turn a tiny nick into a huge gash. Man, there was so much blood that I thought she had tried to gnaw her toe off! Luckily the toe is still intact.

Glad things finely worked out and the bleeding stopped.

As an FYI: Take a look in the Amazon Forum at the top where the Sticky Threads are. Find the Thread Titled: I Love Amazons - ... it is a huge Thread that has over 30 segments as part of it. At or very near the end of the Thread is a segment that covers Emergency /First Aid Kit. Please take the time to review the complete kit and take special note of the area that lists the different products that can be used to stop bleeding. As you have found, Corn Starch is a product that works well with light /slow bleeders.

Yeah, turns out cornstarch doesn't work when the blood is spurting everywhere. Thanks, I'll definitely read that sticky.

Same thing happenend to me when one CAG bit the other: cornstarch did absolutely nothing, so I ran to the nearest place where they have a part-time vet and talked them into giving me something to stop the bleeding - I must have looked panicky enough so 'no, we don't sell this stuff' ever came up.


A birdy first-aid-kit is a good thing to have (you made a good start with the starch and the (?) Pedialyte, but you need more ...at least Amazon will deliver quick-stop at your house, I am out of luck!)



But really...why do you have so many bleeding incidents?
I've had an aviary for many years and apart from psycho-budgy murdering a broody canary and rehoming canary suffering from an inflamed foot, no bloodspatters.
Is it too small for all your birds to get out of each others way?
Not enough perches?
What is going on there?

It is not normal for birds to mutilate each other in that degree, or are there hotspots where they injure themselves?

You're extremely lucky that she lived, as Budgies don't have that much blood to lose. You need to keep a close eye on her for the next couple of days, and I'd actually keep giving her the Pedialyte several times a day to replace the fluids she lost. She probably won't be feeling very well for the next few days, and she needs lots of fluids, food, and rest.

Please go out and buy some some blood-clotting aids, because as you see, cornstarch works wonders on bleeding toenails that are clipped too short and little scrapes, but it does nothing for rapid bleeding...If one of your birds happens to break a blood-feather and you don't have something like Qwik-Stop or another blood-clotting agent, the bird will bleed to death within a matter of minutes, specifically smaller parrots like Budgies. You can buy both powder and liquid Qwik-Stop at any Petco or Petsmart, and also at any Tractor Supply, who also carries more heavy-duty blood-clotting agents for poultry birds, like chickens, etc. that work extremely quickly.

I'm not going to get into this again, but it is quite alarming the number of little incidents like this that happen to your birds; it seems that most of them happen simply because your birds are allowed to be out of their cages together unsupervised (or maybe when they are supervised, it only takes a millisecond for a lethal-bite to happen). It really does sound like most of these accidents/injuries to your birds, some of which have been very serious, like the one bird losing his leg muscle/tissue from his lower leg, could be prevented for the most-part if you would just make some simple changes to how you allow your birds to interact with each other. People who own multiple pet birds are always going to have to deal with the possibility of these things happening, it's just part of the responsibility you take-on when you decide to bring-home more than one bird. There are certain birds that are never alright with each other, there are some birds that are usually alright with each other but have their moments; in either case, you just simply cannot take a chance and risk them being allowed to be out of their cages together. This incident, though seemingly small, could have easily killed your Budgie, you got lucky again. But the next time may be the time that one of your birds bleeds to death, or loses an eye, or gets a bite to the head instead of the toe, or a bite to the abdomen, etc. I'm just suggesting that you take a step-back and look at your housing/cohabitation situation as a whole, think about the individual situations when these accidents have occurred, as well as WHY they have occurred, and then make changes and implement new "rules" accordingly.

Sounds terrifying! It's rare for a bird to bleed, but when they do they loose it fast.

In the future, get styptic powder. Corn starch might work for a nail that's been clipped a tiny bit too short or something, but any injury that has significant blood loss requires something stronger and faster acting. The stinging the bird experiences is far better than them continuing to loose blood. No bird home shouldn't have a jar of styptic powder for first aid.