Blood Test Access

So I figured it best to just share for everyone to keep in mind when we do recommendations.

I brought Cairo for his first check-up with one of the only two avian vets in the country. This avian vet comes highly recommended.

I asked for a blood test because I wanted to have a baseline for future reference if he got sick. The vet told me a few interesting things:

- No lab in this country does analysis for bird blood, largely due to the small quantity you can take from the bird.

- They used to ship the samples to the US for analysis, but they can't send them anymore over due to shipping reasons.

- They are looking to see if Hong Kong has any similar issues - accepting or shipping - as a potential alternative.

This ultimately means that it's entirely left to anything you can see with your eyes to determine any issue/diagnosis. Luckily this vet was trained overseas, so he totally understands that I would have preferred regular check-ups with blood work to review. But we have to work with what we've got :/

Wow. You can certainly train staff to look at a blood smear...and do a CBC and diff,. The stains aren't expensive, but you do need a microscope. It is amazing what we take for granted in the states

Laurasea said:

Wow. You can certainly train staff to look at a blood smear...and do a CBC and diff,. The stains aren't expensive, but you do need a microscope. It is amazing what we take for granted in the states

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Yeah, I was really surprised too, but the vet said he doesn't do it himself. He's usually quite booked, which makes sense that he doesn't have the time really. And I assume he doesn't have the equipment either, since it sounds like they send the dogs and cats' blood samples to local labs.

And despite the fact that he's one of two avian vets (and the more recommended one), the clinic doesn't have a perch weighing scale. The vet just had to hold Cairo and guestimate he was at a healthy weight (Cairo avoids standing on flat surfaces like the plague). I think I'll work with my partner to build something for our home - I'm going crazy mom with Cairo, worrying over every little thing.

Kinda disappointed, but not surprised. Just means I have to keep a closer eye.

That's very odd, especially if there are local labs that do testing of dog and cat blood. That's means that those local labs have the complete capability to do both blood analysis and microscopy; they'd have to have the equipment to do a CBC, CHEM, DIFF, Liver and Kidney panels, etc., as you don't test bird blood any differently than you do that of a dog, cat, or a human for that matter. I can't imagine that the local labs, since they get paid the same way for a blood test, no matter where it comes from, wouldn't be willing to do the bird testing. They would have to have normal-values for birds programmed into their computers, but that's not difficult.

It almost sounds to me like this vet doesn't feel comfortable doing a blood-draw from the neck of a bird, and that's why they don't do them. Which honestly, if he's not properly trained to do them, is probably better. But it's not anything that cannot be easily taught to a vet that can do draws from dogs, cats, etc.

Ellen has me wondering the same thing...

Is it do-able to see the other vet?

Wow, you're really in a spot. Good luck!

LOL, your vet is not very creative: you can weigh the bird in transport-box, remove the bird, weigh the transport box ... the difference is the weight of the bird!
Easy!


Ship the samples to a laboratory here in the Netherlands.
(you can buy tests here and send them in: https://gendika.com/?lang=en )


Everything gets in here appearently....:
There is another ebola-outbreak :46: going on in the Congo
( https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/17/health/congo-ebola-outbreak-update-bn/index.html )
and we are still importing live bats* etc. from there for the pet-trade!
(*a species who is a suspected reservoir of the disease...)
My country is seriously crazy sometimes!

Hmm, you guys do have me thinking.... I'll call up the other clinic and ask if they do blood tests internally. I didn't bring him to the other vet originally because that one is less known and less experienced (and so much further from our place), but if she's the only other option, it's worth a try!

ChristaNL said:

LOL, your vet is not very creative: you can weigh the bird in transport-box, remove the bird, weigh the transport box ... the difference is the weight of the bird!
Easy!


Ship the samples to a laboratory here in the Netherlands.
(you can buy tests here and send them in: https://gendika.com/?lang=en )

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Yep! When we first entered, the front desk staff asked us to weigh him, thinking he was a cat because his previous family had given us a cat carrier. My partner and I were going to try it, but I don't think their weighing scale did grams. It was only in kg and one decimal.

Thanks for the link! I'll see if I can do one if the other vet doesn't work out.

I don't know where you are but there must be a lab somewhere that can test bird blood values. Check for veternary colleges, zoos, etc. Their veternary staff must have equipment calibrated to test avian blood. My current vet has invested in her own equipment but she has a very large avian practice. Other vets send the blood work to the University of Miami vet school for testing. They do not need that much blood to test.

What ChristaNL says is exactly right. This is what I do at the wildlife center to weigh wild birds. You put a plastic box on the scale, then zero out the weight, put the bird in and weigh. Easy. Or what I do at home is put a plastic PVC perch type arrangement on the scale in the same way as using the box.

Well the fact that this vet that you say is the "well-known" and "experienced" Avian vet in your country, yet they don't know how to weigh a bird, or they don't have a simple digital kitchen scale with a "tare" function that costs about $15 US is not a good sign; the fact that ANY VET, in any specialty, doesn't have an in-house compound microscope is actually scary. They could simply clip a toenail and do microscopy on the blood, feces, etc. So something is very wrong here.

Again, any local lab that does blood tests for dog and cats or any other animals can also test Avian blood, it's simply a matter of using the correct setting on the computer for bird blood. Everything is computerized nowadays when it comes to blood work, very few basic tests are done the old-fashioned ways that we are still taught in school to do, like in microbiology, biochemistry, etc.

Also, many laboratory equipment/supply companies around the world sell very cheap "Test-Kits" using reagents and washes to do tests by-hand using Assay tests, such as ELISA and others. I did this for at the Animal Diagnostics Laboratory at Penn State University before they went computerized, and farmers from all over the state and the country sent us whole-blood, plasma, and serum samples from their animals for specific testing, as back in the late 90's and early 2000's a lot of vet clinics didn't have an in-house computerized system, and they would send samples out to us anyway. So I would be testing an entire flock or herd of hundreds for a specific disease using a cheap ELISA assay kit that cost less than $1 when ordered in bulk, and the average test of 100 samples would take me at most around 3-4 hours to complete from spinning the sample down to pulling the trays out and reading the results. So this is also something that your local vets are aware of...but again, all they really have to do is send it to any local lab that does animal blood work. A CBC is a CBC, a CHEM7 is a CHEM7, a COAG is a COAG, etc.

So I think this vet that you were told is "the best" and is supposedly very well-known for being a great Avian vet...well, not so much...the not weighing the bird/not knowing about the "tare" button is a really bad sign, lol.