Last Updated on by Mitch Rezman
Jon is seeking advice for his Mexican Red-headed (aka Red-lored) Amazon
Need suggestions to have him consume small doses of meds as I can administer them by syringe but need to leave him for a while and need a way for a sitter to administer them.
Putting in food doesn’t work well as he may eat some or none of the portions with the meds.
He is 47 and needs his arthritis medication 2x/a day.
Dear Jon
Your options are pretty clear.
You or someone else has to grab the bird, restrain and dose as needed.
Either do it yourself, ask someone else to do it, or take your bird to the vet for dosing daily or board the bird at the vet clinic and let them do it.
No, it isn’t fun and neither you nor the bird will be happy. But it has to be done.
Wow, she actually PRECEEDED me with a “Dear Jon” not to be daunted here’s one of my stories.
A couple of young gentlemen came into Windy City Parrot (whilst still in Chicago) seeking general counsel for their Quaker parrot.
(if this blog post were ever to become a screenplay)
Cut to the next scene with the rescue of a very fluffy blue Quaker Parrot named Chili.
How Did Another Rescue Bird Find Us?
He stops tapping, tilts back in the giant office chair, missing the left wrist rest, and drops both his arms loosely while exhaling.
Now randomly scanning the world map neatly tacked to the angled ceiling riser, when words spoken to no one floated out “if I only knew then what I know now about Monk parakeets.
(Fade to the author doing a poor imitation of Earnest Hemingway in the 21st century)
After these two dumbasses explained to me all the research they did on the species and that they were here to supplement the environment with all the toys and accessories they had been reading about.
Full transparency: “We profit from providing real-world solutions to pet bird care”. There I said it
This is where I get to feel good about bashing certain customers.
“So”, I inhaled slightly, where is your little Peanut today”?
“At the vet,” replied one of them who went on to VOLUNTEER the flighted feather bundle had flown into a mirror and slid off the sharp edge of a glass table, which cut him.”
That may not have been the exact scenario described but the calm professional that I went on to ask “and you did what next”, slowly shifting my gaze first to one, then the other.
I forgot which one said, “we panicked.”
Feeling the ground beginning to shake my next question was, “for how long”
I heard a dying angle scream “a minute or two”
“You saw it bleeding but you didn’t try to wrap it with a towel, throw a towel over it anything to slow the bleeding, and calm the bird?”
“We didn’t want to upset the bird”
I’ll let that sink in.
BTW, a bird like a Quaker can afford to lose up to 25% or 30% of its total blood, which of course is dictated by the nature of the wound and the stability of the bird
I related that as a 4-year-old, I stepped into my uncle Morry’s size giant shoes after a Passover dinner and immediately tripped forward into the edge of the living room glass table and started bleeding profusely on the light-colored shag carpeting.
In the mid-twentieth century Chicago, neighborhoods were populated with scores of ethnic families filled with growing children, thus it was not extraordinary that doctor Mike was summoned, the family and neighborhood pediatrician who lived across the street.
The story handed down to me was that 2 quick sutures closed the wound as the good doctor related that it would be more painful to numb the area with a sharp syringe filled with numbing goo.
We spent the next hour collecting cage-scaping accessories for inside and out of the Quakers bird cage with the expectations of some recovery time and then onto full recovery still fully flighted which meant the pair would agree to:
Reflective and clear surfaces like window glass must be obfuscated with florals or stained glass.
How
Take prophylactic measures like foam padding the sharp-edged glass table or introduce a table made of a material indigenous to South America the continent with its preponderance of hookbills and WOOD!
I don’t have to Google (verb) “glass blowers in the rainforest” to know there are none.
I suppose you do now, let me know in the comments below.
Circling back to some sort of point here’s some information on how to “restrain” a parrot, parakeet, or hookbill.
My “dear Jon” read
This method will be useful for humane restraint Jon,
Pet animals covered in feathers are far more complicated to care for than pet animals covered in fur.
Written by Mitch Rezman and Catherine Tobsing
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6 Nov 2022Some birds are easy to dose, others not-so-much. I have a thirty five year old double yellow who just stopped feeding herself a year ago. Vets can’t find a reason, so I feed her. Three times a day, around forty cc\s total for the day. I have3 gotten to where she tolerates the process with me, well. Last New Years Day I fell and broke my femur. Nine days in the hospital. They even snuck her in a couple of times for me to feed her. I have a best friend who is a thirty year wild-life rehabber. She certainly knows how to feed a bird, but it was so hard for my girl, and it took a couple of months to get the easy relationship back between us when I got home.
I tell new bird people one of the best things you can do for your animal is to teach them to eat yogurt or apple sauce on a spoon, medicine blends right in. They don’t even know they are taking it. Just like a toddler. I have a thirty five year old Congo gray who has been getting his meds that way for years. Of course he doesn’t know that, and he is so happy when he gets his treat!