Young indian ring neck sick- help

[annabella]

Hi my name is anna.
My partner ant n i have a young indian ring neck. She started off a beautiful bird, very tame, talkative n cheeky.
But now the last mth or so she has changed for the worst.
We've taken her to our bird vets and have spent $530 on her for blood tests, urnine tests, x-rays etc. Vets have been totally useless.
They have no idea whats wrong with jewles. All the tests didn't show anything wrong with our jewles.
They want us to spend another $500 or so to do more tests- anotha blood test for metal poisoning, sum injection for $30.
Its doing our heads in, we're not willing to spend more $$ for these tests, dubious they will come up with anything.
Basically jewles has become (symptoms)- off balance, weak, gets this momentary paralysation so she pitches forward when she's on the perch or bottom of cage.
Increased heart rate due to this. Doesn't talk anymore. Won't birdbath in the shower with us anymore. Help!! Advice is much appreciated
she has a gr8 diet- fruit, small parrot seed mix, grevillea flowers- natural wildflower. We were told 2 lessen her sunflower ration- which we have done.

Anna

 

[MikeyTN]

Welcome to the forum!!! Sorry to hear about your baby....

Where are you gathering the flowers???? You must watch where you gather them cause of pesticides. Or flowers that may be poisonous.

For the time being keep the seeds but please do lessen the sunflower seeds to just a few per day. Please do give details on what exactly your feeding her???

Sorry to say but you need to find a different avian vet to get a second opinion and do more testing.

 

[annabella]

Thanx MikeyTN.
We feed her a small bird seed mix from woolies. We give her the occasioanl seed bell with a mix of dried fruits and seed.
She gets a small slice off apple or pear or a cherry or corn kernal every day, like 1 bit of these fruit every day.
Always has fresh water.
The grevillea Im growing in my garden.
I don't use pesticides in my garden household as Im against chemicals but i guess i do use a granular fertilizer on base of plants in garden & water them asap to stop fert from burning my plants.
Also use seasol watered on base of plants.

 

[crimson]

welcome to the forum. It's unfortunate you are joining us on such sad circumstances

First of all, it sounds like your bird has some toxicity issues, although I am no vet, but those symptoms you describe sound very similar to what happened to my Safari, me Senegal.

you need to get another vet ASAP!...I understand yours is 'trying' to find out what is wrong, you see the difference between a good vet and a GREAT vet, is the great ones KNOW the causes after ruling out possibilities.

doing a blood test for metal poisoning is costly, due to it being sent out and tested. most vets do not do it 'in house' and send it off to a lab.
I had it done on my Safari, who also had metal toxicity.....but he was too far gone and died later on.

if you go under my profile name 'crimson' and look under my 'thread started by crimson' I posted one on Safari back in November. It's a long post, but has valuable information for those who may have similar symptoms on toxicity.

I'm sure you are fed up with the vet system, I was too at one point, it's heart wrenching to see your bird suffer and they 'don't have the answers', meanwhile your $$$$ are going out the window. I was very lucky and blessed to have an exotic vet only 45 minutes away, they are the best around, they isolated Safari's issue after a quick exam, with an xray which showed he had consumed some type of metal, 6 fragments to be exact.
they injected him with a metal binding solution, along with barium so he could pass it, but later died in the vets care....he was just too far gone.(btw, he showed NO OBVIOUS SYMPTOMS the day before, that is how sudden it was)

that's just a brief story of what happened.

please keep us updated, if I can help I surely will!

 

[Betrisher]

Hey annabella!

Yes, as I read your post I immediately thought of Beth's (crimson) experience with Safari. I think your bird might have ingested something toxic and whatever it is has caused these symptoms. Has your bird been x-rayed? In Safari's case, there were pieces of metal clearly visible on the x-rays and these turned out to be the cause of death. Some metals are very toxic to birds and they often will not show symptoms until they are gravely sick. You need to find out which vet is the best avian specialist in your area and get in to see him as quickly as you can. In the meanwhile, do check up on Beth's threads (crimson) because they contain lots of useful information.

Best of luck to you and please do let us know how your bird gets on!

 

[MikeyTN]

I thought of something she had eaten too thus why I ask what's her diet exactly. Please do have her tested to find out exactly what's wrong with her. Crimson went through it with Safari. Let us know the outcome.

 

[annabella]

Cheers for ur replies i'll do my best to give as much info as we can but this is all so over whelming and stresful and some important info may have escaped us as the vets shot a fair few possible causes at us to keep track of so everything was a little hard to sink in so sorry in advance.

yeah we r frustrated i should also say the vets rnt useless i know they r doing their best and if it came down to it $$$$ spent it wouldnt b an issue but we r just hoping we dont have to do unessasary tests if we can help it, fingers crossed. Unfortunatly these vets r the only actual bird specialist vet that we know around Perth so we dont have alot of options to get a 2nd opinion just yet.

Some more info on the symtoms my partner has suggested to say as he read this and it wasnt enough info. Basically appart from wat was mentioned i must say the strange thing here is it seems like she has her good and bad days, symtoms mentioned r happening only on her bad days, seems like it come in cycles of around every 2 somtimes 3 days until she has her next bad day. We have noticed at times wen she has this paralysation attack its like she has no control of her feet and has no strength in her legs. Somtimes we have seen recently she can throw her head back aswell as if she cant support it properly its really worrying wen she does this. On her good days tho she can hold onto ur finger with strength as if nothing has happened and b well balanced tho she still wont talk or b her normal self even on these good days. She wont even hold things with her feet like normal birds she wont even eat with the aid of her feet either so she mustnt trust her own balance i dont think.

With all the tests the vets did, while Jewles was under anaesthetic we also got them to do a blood test 2 check the sex of her at the same time and they rang yesterday to tell us Jewles is actually a male!!! YAY...... now we have toget used to calling her a he LOL lucky we gave him a kinda unisex name LOL. We were also told it could b possibly mayb b an egg is trying to pass but we can now rule that out.

They did do x rays and basically they said all her organs ect... looked the correct size, kydneys, liver ect....were functioning fine and there was no other obvious abnormalties seen. Xrays were taken to check her bones from a calcium deficiency but tests came back that calcium levels were fine and xrays showed no bad signs of bone decay. They then asked if she had been injuired recently, the only thing we can think of here is in the past she has tried to jump from her inside cage and landed onto the floor from table height that mayb she was hurting from this? but again xrays showed nothing. The vet did say he had a slight elivated heart rate which could have just been from stress or mayb from being injuired as she explained wen birds get injuires that they elivate their own heart rate to repair the injuiry. She did say tho it wasnt a high elivation it was just slightly above normal and wasnt a high risk of concern.

we read ur post crimson and we r sorry to read wat u went through its not a nice feeling wen ur bird is sick and u cant do anything, but from ur x rays it was obvious u could see the problem thankfully and i could b safe to say the vets would have picked that up but i will ask again just to double check wen we see the vets again. Our vets seem to think if it is metal poisoning it could b in her blood which the real expensive testing is needed for that?

We have 2 cages- one small indoor 1-powdercoated & new, the large one is outdoors we bought private 2nd hand which the vet did say this cage could b the cause because its galvinised and could b the possible cause as birds tend to chew on these type of cages?

my partner has just told me the $35 injection was for somthing (at the time we didnt know the sex and neither did the vet) but we cant remember exactly wat it is the vet said but its somthing that can push on the birds ovaries or gonads and this injection would sort that problem out with in 10 days but the vet said normally if this was the case she would have picked up the problem in the x rays as all his organs ect..... were all in proportian in size and nothing was out of ordinary so she was stumped and could only really think mayb its the metal poinsioning doing it? but she would still like to try this test even since its also a cheap test.

we have not changed our life style in any way that we can think appart from the outside weather getting hotter now (40*+ at times) but we have been keeping her inside wen the weather gets over 30*. Jewles's routeen has never changed since we got him and there is nothing that we can think of that could b the cause of this. He does have some toys but he rarely plays with them at all and usually shys away from them, he has always done that and seems to b more attached to just being in our company, its strange we have never seen or had such a quiet tame bird, so its sad to not hear him speak and whistle to himself anymore .

any other insight or suggestions would b great cheers

 

[annabella]

I thought of something she had eaten too thus why I ask what's her diet exactly. Please do have her tested to find out exactly what's wrong with her. Crimson went through it with Safari. Let us know the outcome.

sorry i missed this question i cant tell u exactly wats in the seed mix but heres a photo. I throw the original box out and put it in a massive glass pickles jar lol so i cant check exactly.



as for vegies- we give him Corn kernals and peas mainly as these r the only vegies he really likes that we give him but he has been known to pinch raw garlic and onions out of the chooks scrap bucket lol.

fruits- apples, pears, grapes, cherries, these r his 4 main favourite fruits it seems he is a bit of a fussy eater with fruit and vegies.

 

[chippy]

Honestly, her diet sounds ok... not great. I would consider adding parrot pellets into the diet and reducing the seed mix until there are more pellets than seeds, making some parrot muffins and be very careful that the bird is not eating any fruit seeds...they can be toxic.

Onions are also toxic to birds, as are
Avocado
Caffeine
Chocolate
Dairy Products
Mushrooms
and I believe garlic is bad too...
there are more...but I am sick and having trouble thinking of them...

[FONT=&quot]Parrot Muffins Recipe [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
2 very ripe bananas
1 jar of vegetable baby food
2 tbsp organic virgin coconut oil
2 tbsp red palm oil
1 egg (with crushed shell)
2 tbsp honey
1/2 cup water
1 cup pellets
2 cups corn meal
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tap baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp chili powder

Preheat oven to 350
In a large bowl:
Mash bananas
Add baby food, oils, egg and water and honey. Blend with mixer until smooth
Powderize (not a real word) egg shell, and pellets in a blender
Slowly add dry ingredients while mixing

Grease mini muffin tin, fill each cup about 2/3 full and bake for 15-20 min or until toothpick comes out clean
(You can also make in a shallow cake pan and cut into squares)[/FONT]

 

[Betrisher]

Now that's an idea! When you feed apples, pears and other fruits, are you taking care to remove the seeds? I know apple and pear seeds are definitely toxic to birds as are the kernels of peaches and apricots. Avocado is toxic as well. Since you say the attacks are sporadic, I'm just wondering whether it could be something you're feeding your bird occasionally (ie. not every day)? I've heard various people report birds falling ill after eating onion or garlic as well.

The symptoms you are describing are more neurological than anything else - that suggests it's a brain-chemistry problem, which is a typical response to metal toxicity and also to ingesting stone fruit kernels (which contain cyanide). You could always ask your vet to check online with other, more specialised avian vets to get a better handle on what's going on. The best avian vet I've heard of is a Dr Ross Perry in Sydney. You could google him for a number and/or an email address? You can also check him out on YouTube - he appears to be much more savvy about birds than any vet I've encountered so far.