Oi Sille...
I was afraid he would not just 'warm up and bounce back' (one can always hope of course) but I did not expect you to go through another night of hands-on again.
Do you think he might have the equivalent of 'an upset stomach'/'indigestion' because of all the extra-rich-(baby) food? (on top of all the getting warm and breathing again issues).
Keeping my fingers (&toes) crossed on you finding a CAV today.
My experience once a bird is that close to death, their system has stopped working all together and a lot of the birds I have seen in this state, may survive the initial trauma, but die because their system just doesn't kick start again.
It is my experience that the warmth of the hand rearing formula and the probiotics in it helps start the system again. The carbo vitalis also helps doing that.
My birds gets to have baby food once in a while during the breeding season, as the probiotics are good for them and this never gives them an upset stomach.
I have saved anything from ducks attacked by mink, chickens, where the electricity went (and the heating bulb as a consequence) to parakeets attacked by a rat by giving baby formula with good result. However I have never had a bird survive, who had stopped breathing before. The 2 times before, they died anyway and only lived for 15 minutes after being revived.
I would also not expect 10 ml of baby formula to give him problems for 5 hours.
Once a bird gets this cold (he was really cold, as in I thought he was dead) the muscles fill up with lactic acid and I would expect the internal organs does something similar. Once the bird regains it's normal functions I would expect these toxins to be flushed through his already overworked system and could potentially kill him.
I was aware this could happen, as this happens to humans recovering from hypothermia. I actually saw the same sort of symptoms humans go through in James. I did however not know what to expect from his digestive system, as that is very different from humans. I tried to "listen" to what he wanted and he really liked getting a lot of liquid, so I would boil water and let it cool to about 40 degrees Celsius. This would help him heat up, but not burn his crop.
As what I saw in the other end was quite dry, I expect he also got dehydrated by being stuck and as mentioned even though he ate, it didn't seem to pass through the crop- only the liquid.
I can't figure out if what he has been pooping all night is what he ate before he got stuck and that has had problems passing. There just doesn't seem to have gone any solids from his crop through and he has pooped about 15 times from 9 o'clock yesterday morning till about 11 today (so 26 hours) and all of them were about 2-5 times the size his normal dropping. Thinking about it, 15 doesn't sound like much for a large macaw. Maybe he had such hard time passing it so one poop basically was 2-5 poops in one- ohh I don't know.
All I know is, I would always give baby formula in a crisis in the future. It's warm, it has probiotics, it's 80% liquid, it's easily absorbed energy and it tastes good enough, that most of the birds wants it when ill.
At any rate James' crop has shrunk quite a lot, which means his system is starting to take in nourishment and that's what matters
