Catlady53
Member
I’m new to this site and basically new to the proper care of parrots. I have a white fronted amazon who is roughly 42 years old. His name is Pretty Bird and he was given to me by my brother who traveled a great deal and could not take care of him. At that time, about 41 years ago, I was told that he only eats sunflower seeds. I bought him his seed diet from neighborhood pet store. I now realize all these years later how much harm I caused my sweet parrot. In the 41 years I owned him he saw a vet only four times, two of those times are recent. The lapse in vet visits stemmed mainly from not being able to find an avian vet, the first vet we saw no longer was practicing. The vet I took him to this past February basically just said he looked ok for a 40 year old parrot, did not even weigh him, and I basically was not satisfied with exam, so I just recently found a new vet a couple hours away from our home. This vet weighed him, he is underweight. On exam of his mouth, he noted and explained to me what Choanal papillae is and told me Pretty Bird does not have the little papillae normally seen. He said this is usually seen in parrots on seed diets and that sometimes the papillae are blunted but Pretty Bird does not have any, it is smooth. He gave him a shot of vitamin A and other vitamins. I noticed he is sneezing a lot today and scratching his head a lot. He also is opening his mouth while stretching his head up, which I though was adjusting his crop but now I’m not so sure. I also noticed his feathers seem to be turning black more so than they were. I have been literally scanning internet and looking up as much info as I can to see how bad things are for my sweet baby bird. My nerves are shot and I can’t quit crying because I am thinking things are quite worse than I thought. All the vet told me to do was to get him on a better diet. Do you think the vitamin shot could have anything to do with him sneezing and scratching himself all day. Also, the absence of Choanal papillae, Is there anything I could do about this. I’m sorry for rambling but I don’t know what else to do. Can someone comment or give me some hope.