FoxersArtist
07-07-2009, 06:10 PM
Nibbles is a brand new bird that was surrendered to our rescue yesterday evening along with 9 others. I will post more on the others in the rescue section, but want to ask for prayers for little nibbles, a 10 year old cockatiel that came along with the group. Nibbles was not doing too badly last night when he arrived but was a little bit on the thin side. This morning I got up to check on all the new residents who had all lived in an environment not conducive to good health. Nibbles was swaying on his perch and looking woozy so I took him out. He was weak, fluffed, and sleepy. I noticed that he had not eaten last night and that his poops were black. I immediately tube fed him a special formula for ill birds and put him in the incubator to wait and see if that would bring him back to life. No luck. 30 minutes later he was still droopy so I rushed him to the vet.
The vet looked him over and we discussed some of the obvious signs of illness. Among those symptoms are that Nibbles does not grow his flight feathers normally and has short flights on both wings. Because some of the other birds in the house had grossly malformed beaks, we will do testing for PBFD. Because Nibbles did not respond to the tube feeding, we know that he is not just stressed from the move. There is something else going on that is killing him but we don't know what. The vet put him in a nebulizer and added some steroids to the treatment. She started him on antibiotics right away. She said he was too weak to draw blood right now and she was sure that giving him IV fluids would kill him. She said that all we can do is hope that he stabilizes enough to run some other tests or get fluids into him. She said that she does not think that Nibbles will make it and I gave her the ok to do a necropsy if he doesn't. We are anxiously waiting for an update.
We also took one of the others to the vet this morning along with Nibbles - a 30 year old Patagonian Conure named Sheba. Sheba is thin and had some discharge around her nose. To us, it looked like Sheba's pupil was missing entirely (but not the rest of the eye) and the vet explained that the lense of Sheba's eye had been jarred loose and was floating around in the eye, making the pupil look hazey. Sheba is dangerously mal-nourished and the vet decided to give her a vitamin shot in hopes that it would help perk her up a it. She was especially low in protien and is sporting lots of black spots on her feathers. The vet suspects infection as well and already prescribed an antibiotic, but we will know for sure when her CBC comes back Thursday. Sheba has spent some time in a heated tank and some time on the bottom of her new cage. Her feet are twisted, probably from old age and she has too much weakness in the feet to climb or move around a lot. She had deep bruising on her side that the vet was concerned about and said that it was due to an injury that probably occured several weeks ago. The amount of bleeding under the skin was another indicator of very low vitamin levels.
Please keep both Sheba & especially Nibbles in your prayers. We really hope the little guy pulls through.
Nibbles, this morning:
http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa154/Foxersartist/Fosters/Nibbles.jpg
Sheba:
http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa154/Foxersartist/Fosters/Sheba-1.jpg
Sheba's Eye:
http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa154/Foxersartist/Fosters/ShebasEye.jpg
-Anna
The vet looked him over and we discussed some of the obvious signs of illness. Among those symptoms are that Nibbles does not grow his flight feathers normally and has short flights on both wings. Because some of the other birds in the house had grossly malformed beaks, we will do testing for PBFD. Because Nibbles did not respond to the tube feeding, we know that he is not just stressed from the move. There is something else going on that is killing him but we don't know what. The vet put him in a nebulizer and added some steroids to the treatment. She started him on antibiotics right away. She said he was too weak to draw blood right now and she was sure that giving him IV fluids would kill him. She said that all we can do is hope that he stabilizes enough to run some other tests or get fluids into him. She said that she does not think that Nibbles will make it and I gave her the ok to do a necropsy if he doesn't. We are anxiously waiting for an update.
We also took one of the others to the vet this morning along with Nibbles - a 30 year old Patagonian Conure named Sheba. Sheba is thin and had some discharge around her nose. To us, it looked like Sheba's pupil was missing entirely (but not the rest of the eye) and the vet explained that the lense of Sheba's eye had been jarred loose and was floating around in the eye, making the pupil look hazey. Sheba is dangerously mal-nourished and the vet decided to give her a vitamin shot in hopes that it would help perk her up a it. She was especially low in protien and is sporting lots of black spots on her feathers. The vet suspects infection as well and already prescribed an antibiotic, but we will know for sure when her CBC comes back Thursday. Sheba has spent some time in a heated tank and some time on the bottom of her new cage. Her feet are twisted, probably from old age and she has too much weakness in the feet to climb or move around a lot. She had deep bruising on her side that the vet was concerned about and said that it was due to an injury that probably occured several weeks ago. The amount of bleeding under the skin was another indicator of very low vitamin levels.
Please keep both Sheba & especially Nibbles in your prayers. We really hope the little guy pulls through.
Nibbles, this morning:
http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa154/Foxersartist/Fosters/Nibbles.jpg
Sheba:
http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa154/Foxersartist/Fosters/Sheba-1.jpg
Sheba's Eye:
http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa154/Foxersartist/Fosters/ShebasEye.jpg
-Anna