- Dec 18, 2013
- 22,301
- 4,212
- Parrots
- Maya (Female Solomon Island eclectus parrot), Jolly (Male Solomon Island eclectus parrot), Bixby (Male, red-sided eclectus. RIP), Suzie (Male cockatiel. RIP)
- Thread Starter
- Thread starter
- #41
Hi, Stephen.
What you described is exactly what happens to Oscar. Curiously, it's always his left leg too. Earlier this year he had a major episode, followed by another one several months later. You may recall me posting about it at the time.
Since then, I've taken him to his vet in Ballarat, and it remains largely a mystery. The vet said that there has been no conclusive scientific research done into toe tapping, and they're still trying to understand it. He seems convinced, though, that it's diet related.
I do know one of the causes for Oscar is bird seed. I've tried giving him bird seed three times, and in each case, after being on it for a week, he's had an episode.
Since his last episode, he has not even toe tapped, but it's winter here in Australia now, and he never toe taps during winter. For some reason, he only ever toe taps during the warmer months.
When Oscar has one of these major seizures, they usually last four nights. After that they settle down to a toe tap for about a week, before he's fine.
It's a very distressing thing to see him go through. He certainly isn't happy, and I doubt he sleeps while it's happening.
Anyway, I hope that Jolly is getting better now.
Thank you very much for putting this reminder of your experience, Keatz. Much appreciated. While I do remember you posting about toe-tapping, I don't recall having read about those kicking spasms. Could you post the link to your thread so that I can re-familiarize myself with Oscar's case?
I really doubt that bird seed is the culprit in this case, as Jolly and Maya are actually eating even less seeds than they were up to a few months ago. (Though there has never been a significant amount of seed in their diet.) But again, I'm definitely not ruling anything out at this stage.
Yes, I spoke in depth with Jolly's CAV about this as well. And like Oscar's, he mentioned that there is much debate right now regarding toe-tapping... and that no one actually knows the answer. He pointed out to me again that many ekkies who had particularly stubborn incidences of TT/WF turned out to be afflicted with the neurological variant of ABV/PDD (which he suspected to be the case with Maya 2+ years back, though she's only had the one bout.) He mentioned other suspected causes as well, like calcium deficiency or some pellets. But in the end there's nothing yet that can be definitively and conclusively named as the cause. Unlike Oscar's vet, however, he leans toward the neurological PDD variant. Especially given the neurological nature of toe-tapping and wing-flipping.
My personal opinion, not that it has much clout when measured against good CAV's, is more in the middle. I believe that ekkies are just more prone to neurological reactions than other species of parrot. So something goes wrong with their diets? They tap/flip. They develop the neurological variant of PDD? They tap/flip. Not much different than a cockatoo's, grey's or ekkie's greater likelihood to pluck than say a macaw or a conure. Some birds, IMHO, just have more of a sensitivity to certain issues. Or perhaps put more accurately, some birds are more likely to physically manifest symptoms of their issues in a particular way than others. Know what I mean?
So in the end, I really don't know if either Jolly or Maya has that PDD variant (I know I keep emphasizing the "variant" part. It's not a love of redundancy on my part, but rather because I want to differentiate that form from the far scarier gastrointestinal version that took my Bixby away from me back in 2015). So all I can do is search out all the likely triggers and try to account for them.
Jolly is down to a very mild and occasional toe-tap as of this morning. And hopefully the toe-tapping is gone by the time I get home. He's stopped gnawing at his feet, so the Gabapentin is definitely doing its job of subduing the nerve discomfort there. And the cut is not showing any signs of infection. I didn't think it would, but the pre-emptive antibiotic treatment certainly didn't hurt. He's gained some weight from all the oatmeal and peanut butter, but he'll burn that off in no time.