Help please!!

[Laurasea]

I would find a veterinary college and go there. If the past vets you visited weren't comfortable talking a blood sample I wouldn't force them. But a fecal exam ??? Heck even an x-ray..I hope you get help. How's the burdie doing?

 

[EllenD]

I would absolutely get him an e-collar if he's still picking at the incision sites, or if they haven't yet healed...Is he on any after-surgery Antibiotics to prevent infection while his toe heals? This is obviously another reason to put a collar on him, to prevent infection...How is the site healing? Any redness, swelling, or discharge from the wound?

As far as his weight goes...Do you have a digital kitchen scale to weigh him on every day? I'm thinking that unfortunately you may need to start to take matters into your own hands here if you don't have a CAV or Avian Specialist near you who is willing to do anything except euthanize this poor little guy, who seems to want to live. At only 64 grams, this Quaker wants to live if he's still kickin' and has made it through surgery at that weight...That in and of itself is amazing to me...

So i'd start by getting him an e-collar, and making sure that you have a simple digital kitchen scale, and that you start weighing him on it every single day, at the same time each day (first thing in the morning before he eats his breakfast is best), and writing down the date, time, and weight each day in a notebook. Time to start tracking this yourself if they don't care...

Is he eating a good amount of his Harrison's pellets every day? How much do you actually give him? Does he finish the entire amount of pellets you give him each time, or is he usually leaving some? If he's eating a good amount of pellets every day (I suggest ALWAYS making sure there are pellets in his bowl all day long, every day for the foreseeable future, until his weight gets up to normal), then he obviously has some type of digestive or metabolic issue going on, because Harrison's is a very good pellet, and he should be gaining weight IF he's eating a normal amount of them every day, plus some fresh veggies and fruit...Have you ever fed him a seed-mix? The reason I'm asking is because in this situation, it's probably a good idea to add a healthy, low-fat seed-mix to his regular diet...Not to take away anything else that he's already eating every day, but simply adding a bowl of a seed-mix that contains no sunflower seeds, no nuts/peanuts, and no corn...There are several of these you can buy, just look for "Sunflower Seed Free"...While you want him to gain weight, you don't want him to develop Fatty Liver Disease in the process...

I'd also think about buying a baby bird hand-feeding formula, and not actually hand-feeding him it or even mixing it up, but sprinkling it on/into his pellets/seed-mix once a day not only to give him some added calories/protein, but more-so to give him some added Digestive-Enzymes and Probiotics, which are added to most-all baby-bird hand-feeding formulas. Many times when a bird is eating normally and they cannot gain weight, it's because their bodies are not manufacturing the proper amount of Digestive Enzymes, and this will make it impossible for his body to break-down the food that he eats, or to properly digest it, and then his body obviously cannot absorb much nutrition from the food at all...This would be easily diagnosed by doing blood-work, and the treatment for it is to simply add Digestive Enzymes and usually a daily Probiotic to his morning food...It won't hurt him even if it isn't his issue, but you'll be able to tell pretty quickly if it is if you're tracking his weight as mentioned every single day...

I would also highly recommend that you start giving him a Probiotic supplement once every single day...I don't know what you have access to in England, here we have several, one called "BeneBac", and another called "Qwiko Avian Probiotics", and we also have a ton of daily human Probiotic supplements available to us here as well, which can also be given to birds....There is actually a daily Probiotic supplement available here to us at any Walmart store and elsewhere, made by a company called Spring Valley, who is a major manufacturer of vitamin and dietary supplements for humans...They make a human supplement here called Spring Valley "Probiotic Multi-Enzyme Digestive Formula", which is a combination of both a strong Probiotic supplement AND a added natural Digestive Enzymes for people who have the same issue that your Quaker has,
including Lipase, Amylase, Pepsin, Cellulase, Pancreatin, etc. If you lived here in the US I would tell you to run to a Walmart and buy a bottle of this, a bottle of 200 tablets costs only $6 here...I have had to add this particular supplement to the diet of a Bearded Dragon and to the diet of a Love Bird here at the Rescue I work at, who had exactly the same issue your Quaker has, they wouldn't gain weight even though they ate normally...I would crush one tablet each morning and simply sprinkle the powder on the Love Bird's pellets and throughout his seed-mix (easier with the Bearded Dragon, I would just dust his live insects in it, lol)...This almost immediately turned them both around, and our Certified Vets did a blood-test to confirm that they both had an issue with their Pancreas in which it was not secreting proper amounts of Digestive Enzymes...Now, the treatment of buying actual prescription Digestive Enzymes is horribly expensive (many times dogs have this issue as well, and without adding Digestive Enzymes to their food every day they waste away to nothing). But simply adding this supplement worked wonders...So if you have anything like this available to you in England, or you can order them online, I'd highly suggest that as well...

You have to start trying something on your own, because this little guy isn't seemingly in pain, or unhappy, and he doesn't want to die or he would have already gone, so he's a fighter and he needs some help, and these Vets have given-up on him for whatever reason...So nothing wrong with "Going-Rogue" at this point with safe, natural supplements and dietary changes/enhancements...

 

[Redden88]

Hello everyone thank you all so much for your recommendations and help.

Sonny is getting there slowly regarding his toe the wound itself is looking pretty good.

On to the next problem in the last two weeks he has started plucking feathers from both legs to the point one looks really sore.

Studying his behaviour these last two weeks I'm not sure if he may have mites or a liver or kidney issue he gets really restless on a night and is definitely not getting his sleep.

Back to the vets on Thursday where I will be demanding blood work as his little toe definitely seems to a little part of a big problem.

 

[EllenD]

Is his toe healed up as of now? Any signs of infection like redness/swelling? An infection can definitely cause added issues, as can a GI Tract infection, in fact that's probably the most common cause of plucking right around the vent and down the legs, either a GI Tract infection (bacterial or fungal) or a Kidney Infection (not kidney disease, but an actual Kidney Infection like people get).

***So I would take a fresh Fecal sample with you and ask them to run cultures/gram-stain on it, because this could also contribute to why he's not gaining any weight..If he has something like Giardia or certain types of worms or other parasites, they actually "steal" the nutrition the bird eats and this causes weight loss despite them eating normally...So a Fecal Test is a must, along with an x-ray and routine blood-work, however he may not weight enough for them to safely be able to take blood from him, 64 grams is quite small for a Quaker. But I'd definitely request it and see what they say, because it doesn't take much blood to just run the basic stuff to test his liver and kidney functions, along with a CBC. But you definitely want a Fecal and an x-ray...nice thing about taking an x-ray on a Quaker, they get the entire body in one shot, and they can see everything, his liver and kidneys, pancreas, spleen, lungs, GI Tract, etc.

Keep us posted on how he's doing. I know this will sound weird, but I'm actually quite happy that he's plucking his feathers on his legs, because this combined with him not gaining weight despite eating normally may very well indicate that he has some type of GI infection or parasite/worm that is robbing his nutrition from him...That would be an easy fix...