Any tips to get Maddox to take his antibiotics easier?

[maddox]

So I have noticed Maddox doing a little bit of sneezing, so I took him to my avian vet today and she said that everything looked great but has some very minor mucus, so she has him on some antibiotics. The delivery is a small syringe administered orally, and Maddox hates it. Does anyone have any tips or suggestions to make this easier?

 

[texsize]

I found mixing small amounts of medicine in a dab of oatmeal usually works.
I usually add a bit of brown sugar to make it more tasty for them.
You know the old saying, a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down.

 

[ravvlet]

Kirby has recently started being a PITA about his heart meds. If you have a Costco near you, they sell these organic muffin things called “Aussie Bites”. They absorb medicine really easily and birds love them. It’s the trick the boarding place I take my birds to uses every time I take him there, so I’m going to be doing it now too, haha.

 

[wrench13]

I mix meds for Salty when needed with a small amount of baby parrot formula. I usually give him some a few times a year, just so he remembers the taste and feeding of it. He gulps the stuff down, no problem.

 

[Josefin]

Ive known that you kind of hold your bird in a Towel gently have your fingers around the neck and give the medecine, ive done it but, most vets do that when they check on parrots. There are very helpful youtoube vids that you can watch! The best thing You can do is to call an online vet for advice about how give your bird the medecine! good luck! But as i said that you can watch some helpful videos how to give your bird medicine!

 

[Stitchthestitch]

We are having to gently towel Albie to give him his meds , hes decides to play silly beggers again and decided hes no longer playing good bird.

We gently burrito him and then gently ease the syringe into his beak and slowly squirt , it can take a couple of attempts to get it all down.


I hope maddox gets well soon!

 

[ravvlet]

Yeah; we towel Kirby sometimes too. This morning he managed to hold the meds in his beak and then dump them out all over his perch when I put him down though, so if you do towel make sure they’re swallowing it; maybe hang on to them for an extra 15-30 seconds 😅

 

[Stitchthestitch]

Yep ,albie tried that trick on us once before we cottoned on , so now we keep him there and rub his beaknto stop him shaking everywhere

 

[maddox]

We are having to gently towel Albie to give him his meds , hes decides to play silly beggers again and decided hes no longer playing good bird.

We gently burrito him and then gently ease the syringe into his beak and slowly squirt , it can take a couple of attempts to get it all down.


I hope maddox gets well soon!

Thanks so much for the advice!

 

[Stitchthestitch]

Im just sorry to hear hes not well and i wish him a speedy recovery

 

[ravvlet]

Yep ,albie tried that trick on us once before we cottoned on , so now we keep him there and rub his beaknto stop him shaking everywhere

Peak naughtiness. The worst bit is Kirby is so much more spunky and happy on his meds, so he gets worse about taking them the better he feels - the minute he misses a day because he spits it out and I don’t want to overdose he’s easier to do the next day. 💀 I feel awful about it.

These are all great tips and I’m writing them down, it seems like you have to rotate your approach if they’re taking maintenance meds like heart meds because they wise up quick!

 

[bonitabird59]

when my old lady bonita was on antibiotics, i did them 2 ways:

-the towel.....-
make a birdy burrito. hold em to ur chest and shoot the meds down. prepare for spraying. 0/10
-the fake treat-
i would meander around the house with the syringe loaded pretending it was the greatest thing in the world. pretend to "keep it away" from ur bird, really get that jealousy going. then offer it like a treat after some tricks. 8/10 worked until she realized the treat tasted icky and was in fact, not a treat.

ive also heard of people using fruit juice to mix meds into but id def ask ur vet if its ok. when bonita was on antiemetics, i mixed them into cherry juice in a spoon and let her drink them. sometimes id put them on some grains of cooked white rice or quinoa. good luck!

 

[maddox]

when my old lady bonita was on antibiotics, i did them 2 ways:

-the towel.....-
make a birdy burrito. hold em to ur chest and shoot the meds down. prepare for spraying. 0/10
-the fake treat-
i would meander around the house with the syringe loaded pretending it was the greatest thing in the world. pretend to "keep it away" from ur bird, really get that jealousy going. then offer it like a treat after some tricks. 8/10 worked until she realized the treat tasted icky and was in fact, not a treat.

ive also heard of people using fruit juice to mix meds into but id def ask ur vet if its ok. when bonita was on antiemetics, i mixed them into cherry juice in a spoon and let her drink them. sometimes id put them on some grains of cooked white rice or quinoa. good luck!

Thanks!

 

[maddox]

Im just sorry to hear hes not well and i wish him a speedy recovery

I really appreciate that. He is alright, he is eating and behaving as usual just a little sneezy and the vet said that with the antibiotics he should be over it in the next 3-5 days

 

[maddox]

when my old lady bonita was on antibiotics, i did them 2 ways:

-the towel.....-
make a birdy burrito. hold em to ur chest and shoot the meds down. prepare for spraying. 0/10
-the fake treat-
i would meander around the house with the syringe loaded pretending it was the greatest thing in the world. pretend to "keep it away" from ur bird, really get that jealousy going. then offer it like a treat after some tricks. 8/10 worked until she realized the treat tasted icky and was in fact, not a treat.

ive also heard of people using fruit juice to mix meds into but id def ask ur vet if its ok. when bonita was on antiemetics, i mixed them into cherry juice in a spoon and let her drink them. sometimes id put them on some grains of cooked white rice or quinoa. good luck!

So this has actually worked! I kind of let him explore the syringe with his beak first then take it away. Now I have gotten to the point where he just bites the tip and I am able to deliver the meds

 

[ravvlet]

That’s awesome!!

Today I mixed some of Kirby’s enalapril with applesauce and toweled him to give it, but it was a little too thick for the syringe and was real hard to get into a wiggly bird! The rest I put on an Aussie bites muffin (a small piece of one anyway). He seemed to be less mad about it, so I guess the applesauce was a win. I tried to get him to eat a muffin with it on there out of my hand sans applesauce but he refused. Pain in the butt little old man.

I may go back to putting it on the pellets but maybe giving it to him before any other food including his veggies. I used to put it on top of his chop and he’d eat those first, until last week.

He has also decided he doesn’t like mini sweet peppers all of a sudden?!

 

[Kentuckienne]

Someone earlier suggested mixing meds with NON-ALCOHOLIC pina colada mix and giving it in a spoon. I think it was in the Rickeybird thread. I ordered a bottle of the stuff just to have on hand.

 

[Kentuckienne]

Post in thread 'The Rickeybird Scrapbook, 1984 - Updates'
https://www.parrotforums.com/threads/the-rickeybird-scrapbook-1984-updates.62811/post-1025417

 

[Bigmickref1]

when my old lady bonita was on antibiotics, i did them 2 ways:

-the towel.....-
make a birdy burrito. hold em to ur chest and shoot the meds down. prepare for spraying. 0/10
-the fake treat-
i would meander around the house with the syringe loaded pretending it was the greatest thing in the world. pretend to "keep it away" from ur bird, really get that jealousy going. then offer it like a treat after some tricks. 8/10 worked until she realized the treat tasted icky and was in fact, not a treat.

ive also heard of people using fruit juice to mix meds into but id def ask ur vet if its ok. when bonita was on antiemetics, i mixed them into cherry juice in a spoon and let her drink them. sometimes id put them on some grains of cooked white rice or quinoa. good luck!

I use a small amount of porridge and she takes it fine

 

[Botsari]

It helps a lot, in my experience, to try to make sure whatever delivery method you use is something the bird actively looks forward to. The cookie or other absorbent cakelike treat is a classic one. However you may need to feed it somewhere where you can monitor that he did not drop half the dose, and that he eats all the crumbs. But one that works for me that is mixed in with the repertoire is a few drops of apple juice or grape juice in a spoon. I have one bird that is just crazy for apple juice and will dash towards me if I come over with a spoon in my hand. He will literally lick the spoon clean. It is easy to monitor full consumption that way. Any aversion to the spoon-as-foreign-object goes away pretty quickly once they learn about the juice.

Goes without saying you shouldn't indulge them with the juice - just think of it as the bare minimum sugar to "make the medicine go down". Anyway, depending on how complex and long term the bird's medication regime is it can be a tremendous relief to have one or two painless methods where you would literally have to fight with them to prevent them from taking it. If you have to grab the bird or do anything that they don't particularly like, of course, it tends to get worse over time as they learn to anticipate and attempt to avoid the situation. That might be OK for a short-term course, but will become a maddening part(s) of you day for longer periods. I recently had to give one of mine meds three times a day, and especially at bedtime motivating him with food could be tough.