Redloredamazon1
New member
- Jun 28, 2024
- 1
- 0
- Parrots
- Red lored amazon
mine was spitting and it would end up like a line I don’t know what it is if anybody has recommendations on what to do it was like a string of spit but it was clearWelcome to the community!!! And thank you for providing this guy a loving, responsible home...
It's a really good idea to first find the closest Certified Avian Vet (CAV) or Avian Specialist Vet to you (try to avoid "Exotics" Vets because they have no special/extra education or experience with any species of animals/birds, they are simply General Vets who have graduated from Veterinary Medical School and passed their Board-Exams for their state, and who have lots of experience in Dog and Cat medicine and that's it, just like a "General" Vet, the only difference (in the US at least) is that "Exotics" Vets are simply willing to see all types of animals/birds, while General Vets are not, they only see dogs and cats...There is an excellent search-link all through the forum in tons of posts, the best one I've seen, for finding the nearest CAV or Avian Specialist Vet to you by Zip Code, Town/City, State, Country, etc. It's a world-wide search, and it only gives you CAVs and Avian Specialists (there are some Exotics Vets who are ALSO CAVs/Avian Specialists, they're rare but they do exist as well, and they are also listed by this search tool)...I'll see if I can find the link and copy/paste it below in this thread for you...That's step #1...
The reason you want to take your Amazon to specifically a CAV/Avian Specialist Vet only is because it's probably been quite a while since he's had a full Wellness-Exam that includes not only a full visual/physical exam, but also a Fecal Gram-Stain/Microscopy, which is done in the office on the spot, and then a Fecal Culture&Sensitivity, which they send out to the lab they use, and then also full, routine Blood-Work (FYI, a bird should NEVER be given any type of sedation or anesthesia to have blood drawn from their neck, and when you call to make the appointment for his Wellness-Exam you need to first ask them if their Avian Vet uses any type of sedation or anesthesia to do the blood-draw from the neck, and if they say yes, that they use ANYTHING just to do a simple blood-draw, then you want to move on to the next Avian Vet and not take your Amazon there. This is a huge RED-FLAG that tells you that basically that Vet is not comfortable handling/working with birds at all, and more-importantly they are not at all confident in their Avian-Medicine skills/education, nor have they done many blood-draws from birds at all, and you need to run far, far away! A blood-draw from a bird's neck is a very simple, extremely common procedure that is no different than us having blood taken from our arm to run blood-work; birds have 2 Jugular-Veins in their neck, and blood can be drawn from either of them (one is usually more prominent than the other, and that's the one they use), and the entire process from start to finish takes all of a minute or two...Putting birds under any type of sedation or anesthesia is risky, and where they typically have issues is when they are coming-out/waking-up, and that's when they typically stop breathing if they do...It's much less-common today, as the drugs we use are much safer and tailored for use with birds, but you still don't want your bird to be sedated or put under any type of anesthesia when it's not necessary, and like I said, the larger issue with having blood-drawn from a bird if they say they always use sedation/anesthesia is that the Vet just isn't a competent Avian Vet, nor do they probably know much about Avian-medicine in-general...
Make sure you take a fresh Fecal-sample/droppings from your bird to your appointment so they can run the Fecal-Testing...You can either collect a fresh dropping from the morning of the appointment, or from the day before, as long as it's no older than 24-hours. Just put it in a plastic baggie or container and put it in the fridge until you leave for his appointment. Typically a Wellness-Exam only includes the full visual and physical exam, the 2 different Fecal-tests (one in the office on the spot, the Gram-Stain, and then they send out the other to their outside-lab, the Culture & Sensitivity), and then the routine Blood-Testing, which includes a full CBC panel, Chem7 panel, Coag panel, a Nutritional panel/profile, and a full Liver and Kidney panel. This will give you a pretty good picture of his overall-health and well-being...However, there may be some additional, individual tests that you want to add to the regular, routine Blood-Work, such as a DNA-test for gender, if you were not given a DNA-certificate along with him, as unless the first-owner had a DNA-test done then you don't know his sex (I don't believe Red-Lored Amazons are sexually-dimorphic, meaning that you can tell the males from the females from visual differences between the two; I'm pretty sure they are sexually-monomorphic, meaning that the males and females look exactly the same, and the only way to know their sex for sure is to have a DNA-test done, either by using blood or by plucking a few fresh feathers from their chest.
I don't know how old your Amazon is supposed to be, based on what you were told by the prior-owner, but I''m assuming that your bird is an adult bird who has already gone through puberty and is already sexually-mature, so the reason that you always want to know the sex of your parrot with 100% certainty is because if you have a female bird, you need to know and be aware of the potential for the laying of infertile-eggs, which can lead to egg-binding, which is pretty much 100% fatal without immediate medical attention. Also, you need to know how to stop your bird from continuing to lay infertile-eggs over and over and over again once they start, as without the proper know-how on that it's not unusual for females to become chronic-layers once they start...So unless you got a DNA-certificate along with your bird, I would highly suggest you add a DNA-test to the regular, routine Blood-Work, since they're already doing a blood-draw (Was this man the bird's First-owner, or just his last owner?
***The other test some people like to do during a routine Wellness-Exam is a regular, plain-film X-Ray. The reason for this is because #1) Most people take their parrots for a full Wellness-Exam as I described above only once a year, so they figure they should just get it all done during that one trip to their CAV; and then more-importantly is #2) Because when you have a regular X-Ray taken of your bird, you get the entire body, from head to toe, and this is an excellent way (and really the only way) to catch abnormal growths ANYWHERE in the bird's body, specifically Tumors, and then so you can start treating them or have them removed in the early stages...This is a personal choice, but the reason I mention it is because I think it's important that you're aware of 2 things: #1) They DO have to use sedation to take an X-Ray of a bird, that's really the ONLY TIME they should be using sedation/anesthesia on a bird other than during a surgical-procedure...But they should still only be using an EXTREMELY-SHORT-ACTING-SEDATION/ANESTHESIA ONLY when they are taking an X-Ray, either Isoflurene Gas (most common), OR Intra-Nasal Liquid Sedation. That's it, those are the ONLY TWO types of sedation/anesthesia a CAV should use when taking an X-Ray, because both are extremely short-acting and last just long enough to take the X-Ray, and they both leave their systems/bodies fully, 100% gone within 10 minutes or less after the bird wakes-up, unlike other types of IV sedation/anesthesia...and then the other thing that you need to be aware of as a parrot owner, if you don't already know this, is that ALL BIRDS, both wild and captive-bred/pet birds, possess a natural, innate survival-instinct to hide any and all outward signs and symptoms of illness and pain for as long as they possibly can, and they are EXTREMELY GOOD AT IT, OFTEN HIDING THE FACT THAT THEY'RE SICK FROM THEIR OWNERS FOR MANY MONTHS! So for this reason it's extremely important, usually it's the difference between Life-or-Death, that we as their owners IMMEDIATELY get our pet birds to a CAV at the very first sign we see that they might be sick or in-pain. And I'm not exaggerating here, the #1 reason that most captive/pet birds die of very simple, very treatable/curable illnesses is because we as their owners have no idea they are at all sick, and by the time we first notice that our birds are sick, even if we get them to the Avian Vet within hours of us first noticing that something is wrong, it's often still too late to save them. So this is something that you need to be aware of and that you know that you cannot be too cautious or careful when it comes to any signs that something is not right with your bird...BTW, this is a protective-mechanism that all birds just innately/naturally do in-order to not only protect themselves from predators, but even more-so to protect their entire Flocks, who are made predatory-targets when even one bird in the Flock appears sick or weak...
