Meg&pip
New member
- Aug 29, 2023
- 2
- 10
- Parrots
- Senegal parrot
Around 3-4 years ago I had gotten my hormonal, plucky senegal, Pippy, the hormone implant. She had just reached sexual maturity, which she seemed a bit early for (she is 9 in a month, she was around 5 when implanted). At the time, it was explained to us as a medication for ferrets, but recently has been experimentally used off label on parrots, and showed promise at mitigating plucking and other hormonal behaviors... This is all old news to people at this point I suppose, but at the time, it felt like a major and somewhat risky decision to implant some experimental rice grain meant for ferrets into my tiny senegal's back. But we had previously tried haloperidol (awful) and another medication (something like Prozac I think, also awful), and this was seemingly the last option our vet could offer.
Anyways, we got it done, Pippy screamed the entire time in the back of the clinic as if someone was killing her and came out wide beak panting. We brought her home and plucking and hormonal behaviour has essentially continued since.
However, I do think back now and wonder if it prevented her from egg laying, because only this year has she started to act as if she is building a nest in the places where she usually plays. My husband is extremely against getting her another implant because of how traumatizing the first experience seemed and how little we thought it did... but I'm a bit at a loss now.. we never originally had any return date for another implant like I hear people talk about now; our vet had told us that it is safe to get additional implants without removing the past one, BUT additional implants were for if we felt we needed one after 6 months (how long we were told the implant could work for, but bearing in mind, the implant has only worked at all for SOME birds).
My question is this: Is it likely that the implant actually helped more than I realized and prevented her from laying a single egg all this time? It sounds like more people are talking about implants like they get them on a schedule, do they happen to become more effective after the first implant for some birds? Also, could we have affected her negatively in any way by implanting her at such a young age?
Overall, if this were your own bird, would it feel worth it to give the implant another shot all these years later now that she is exhibiting nesting behaviours?
*so sorry if all this info is out here somewhere, i might be really bad at searching for this stuff.. I'm just struggling this hormone season!! Thank you to ANYONE who reads this!
Anyways, we got it done, Pippy screamed the entire time in the back of the clinic as if someone was killing her and came out wide beak panting. We brought her home and plucking and hormonal behaviour has essentially continued since.
However, I do think back now and wonder if it prevented her from egg laying, because only this year has she started to act as if she is building a nest in the places where she usually plays. My husband is extremely against getting her another implant because of how traumatizing the first experience seemed and how little we thought it did... but I'm a bit at a loss now.. we never originally had any return date for another implant like I hear people talk about now; our vet had told us that it is safe to get additional implants without removing the past one, BUT additional implants were for if we felt we needed one after 6 months (how long we were told the implant could work for, but bearing in mind, the implant has only worked at all for SOME birds).
My question is this: Is it likely that the implant actually helped more than I realized and prevented her from laying a single egg all this time? It sounds like more people are talking about implants like they get them on a schedule, do they happen to become more effective after the first implant for some birds? Also, could we have affected her negatively in any way by implanting her at such a young age?
Overall, if this were your own bird, would it feel worth it to give the implant another shot all these years later now that she is exhibiting nesting behaviours?
*so sorry if all this info is out here somewhere, i might be really bad at searching for this stuff.. I'm just struggling this hormone season!! Thank you to ANYONE who reads this!