Trying to Save a Feral Pigeon

Last Updated on October 1, 2023 by Mitch Rezman

Mitch,

Thanks. I will confirm with Dr. Sakas just to get his thoughts. After I sent the email, I re-read the excerpt from your original email and did notice that you had mentioned 6-12 hours for the crop to empty. I must have had brain lock, so I apologize 🙂

On a separate but related matter, I was wondering earlier how long it would take for a bird’s crop to empty and was going to ask Dr. Sakas, which, with everything going on, I had forgotten to do. Last month, we were rehabbing a feral Pigeon, who we named Streak. I am including a picture of her below.

In the picture above, she was standing in her water bowl (I guess to cool off her feet). She was ill, but you could hardly tell from the picture above. It is a long story, but she died (after 10 days in our care) before we could release her back into the wild. In addition to having three different infections, she had kidney and cardiovascular issues which contributed to her demise.

She walked into our house through the kitchen door that I had held open while she was standing on our back porch and would not leave. The picture above was taken the morning after she walked into our house. We took her to Dr. Sakas and even though she had eaten breakfast in the morning and was munching on her food continuously when we took her to the vet that afternoon, Dr. Sakas said that her crop was empty. So her system was not processing food very well at all. She had parasitic, bacterial, and fungal infections and passed whole seed in her droppings so she would not have lasted much longer in the wild.

Thanks for your help.

Grace C