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Coco, my green-cheeked conure is very listless today. He was regurgitating much more than normal earlier today. His feathers are all fluffed up and his eyes are more closed than open. He''

Submitted: 582 days and 12 hours ago.

Category: Pet

Value: $15

Status: AWAITING CUSTOMER ACTION

Hi Parrot Lover,
Your Coco is a very sick little bird and needs to be taken to an avian vet immediately! He is showing several signs of illness. Since you do not mention his age, I do not know if the food regurgitation is vomiting or rejection of baby formula, but the fact that his is:
1. Fluffed up, not sitting with feather tight,
2. Listless and not energetic and
3. Sitting with eyes semi-closed or closed (probably sleeping more than normal)
Are three of the major signs of serious illness. The others signs are refusal to eat/drink, labored breathing, runny poops unexplained by diet and staying low in the cage.
Of course, I can't diagnose online, nor could the best vet in the world, since a few tests will be needed to determine the bacteria, fungus, parasite, or other reason for the illness. The right diagnosis is critical in order to get the right medications in the correct amounts. Please do not attempt to give meds yourself from the pet store or from your human medications. Giving the wrong meds in the wrong amounts can do harm instead of good.
To locate a good avian vet near you, visit http://www.aav.org/. You really must get to one today if there is any way possible. Call and let the vet know it is urgent and ask for a work-in appointment.
In the meantime, keep him warm by placing a heating pad over or under a portion of the cage and covering three sides of the cage. Try to keep the temp near 85 degrees.
Be sure he is eating and drinking. If he is not doing either, get some pedialyte and mix it 50/50 with warm water (bottle temperature for baby) and give by eye dropper.
I can not stress how urgent it is to get him to a vet today!! The vet will look for symptoms you may not have listed here such as labored breathing, tick in lungs when breathing, abnormal poops, and can easily run simple tests using swabs of feces and throat and blood work to ensure the right diagnosis.
The links below are for supportive care only until you can get to the vet. Then, follow the vet's orders to the letter. Once your green cheek is well, then learn everything you possibly can about keeping him healthy with a good diet of 35% or less seeds, proper caging, variety of perches, and much more. I strongly suggest reading Winged Wisdom's (www.wingedwisdom.com) and BirdSafe (www.birdsafe.com) to learn all about safety, home hazards, and much more in caring for a conure properly. But right now, he must get to the vet right away.
Caring for Sick Parrot Until Vet Visit: http://www.avianweb.com/sickbirdcare.html
Health Care: http://www.parrothouse.com/hlthcare.html
Winged Wisdom Sick Bird Care: http://birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww15eiv.htm
I hope this helps. I'll be pulling for your little green cheek and saying a birdie-prayer for him. Please be sure the car is the proper temperature before placing him into it -- cooled off if you live in hot area or warmed if you live where it is still cold so he won't get a temperature shock.
If I can help further, please use "reply" after accepting this answer.

Expert:	Nora the Parrot / Pet Advisor
Pos. Feedback:	96.0 %
Accepts:	119
Answered:	4/7/2008

Breeder

over 25 years breeding, taming, training parrots.

Posted by Nora the Parrot / Pet Advisor 580 days and 16 hours ago.

Answer

I'm sorry, I did not realize this was a duplicate post when I responded to your question. I do, however, agree with everything you were told in the post which was not closed. I hope your bird gets better

580 days and 11 hours ago.

Reply

Dear Nora,

It's not a problem at all that you responded to the duplicate post. I'm not entirely sure how it happened. I'm always interested in getting a different perspective. Thank you for taking the time to respond it, the suggestions, and the links. It's good to know that more than one pet expert may be able to help if necessary. As is often the case, the more involved you get in something, the more you realize you still have a lot to learn.

As you learned in the other post, Coco is doing much better now. He's as active and vocal as ever and seeking attention from me. Perhaps I spoiled him with all the cuddling he received when he was ill but that's OK.

I still intend to get him checked out by a vet in the near future just to be safe.

Thanks again fellow parrot lover.

580 days and 6 hours ago.

Reply

Dear Nora,

Perhaps you can help me with another issue since you're listed as a breeder. I'm not necessarily interested in breeding but I have a female cockatiel that I believe had been used for breeding purposes. She was a rescue. I got her from a pet shop that had purchased a number of male cockatiels and she had been the only female in the cage. She had a bad wing and what I call the "off the shoulder" look to her feathers (missing feathers). Shortly after getting her home, she laid an egg on the bottom of her cage which I unfortunately broke when I attempted to examine it. She had obviously been lacking calcium in her diet. I've since rectified this.

Anyways, I've had her for about 3 years now. She has molted several times now. Occasionally I notice new feathers coming out in the neckline area. But more often than not she will pull out these partially opened feathers. Sometimes, I've noticed a little bleeding. Any thoughts or suggestions why she may be doing this and how to prevent or discourage her from doing this would be appreciated. FYI, she is not hand friendly. She will step up if she falls to the floor and needs help getting back to her cage but she dislikes being handled or any help in trying to groom her. She doesn't bathe in her water but tolerates being misted.

Posted by Patricia 580 days and 5 hours ago.

Answer

Hello again. She is not on line right now and in any case, you don't need a breeder to answer this for you. I'm not surprised she is not hand friendly. Actually it's more surprising that she will step up for you at all, having been a breeder before. Birds are usually breeders or they are pets and rarely are they both. There is more than one reason a bird will pluck at it's feathers. Two basic reason are a health issue or a behavior issue. Any other reason is an offshoot of one of those. If she has had a check up with a good Avian vet in the last 6 months to a year and gotten a clean bill of health, then it's probably a behavior issue. That could be the frustration of no longer having her mate and no longer being a breeder. They form very tight bonds with their mates and if someone just decided to arbitrarily split them up, that was borderline cruelty. If something happened to her mate, then of course it was unavoidable but in either case, she went through a mourning period and could have started the picking because of that. The difficulty with feather picking is once it's started, it often becomes a habit and even when the base cause has been corrected, the behavior goes on. I would suggest, at the least, a well bird check up. I would also have them look at the same time, for any evidence of feathers cysts or malformed feathers, which of course she will pluck at. If those causes are eliminated as possibilities, then it's a behavior issue and that's much harder to stop. If she tolerates the misting, try adding some 100% pure aloe juice, straight from the plant, into the bath water. No over the counter products. Cut an arm from a plant, slit it open and mix the gooey center in. If using a mister, you can put very hot water in it. A lot hotter than you think because as it mists out it cools dramatically. Of course always test it on your hand first but I think you'll find the hotter the water, the better the aloe will mix in and it will then come out as a nice warm mist. Soak her really good with it, at least a couple times a week. It can do wonder for skin and feather condition. You can even massage it into dry scaly toes and feet. This goes for Coco and all birds as well. Other ways to approach it is to distract her every time you see her picking a feather. Don't make a big deal of it because that will encourage rather than discourage her. Just speak to her or anything that takes her mind off it for the moment. You can also make sure she has a variety of shredder type toys. Anything that acts as a distraction. However, the bottom line is you may never get her to totally stop if it's now a habit for her. It's like a human who bites their fingernails. Easy to start, very hard to stop. Let me know if you have further questions and I hope little Coco is still feeling better. Patricia

580 days and 4 hours ago.

Reply

Thanks for answering Patricia. Coco is still feeling better. Julie, my cockatiel loves just about any kind of toy that she can shred.

What exactly are feather cysts?
Are you suggesting that the aloe mixture or straight aloe be rubbed on scaly toes and feet?

Posted by Patricia 580 days and 4 hours ago.

Answer

You are very welcome. I'm just sorry there was the confusion above and you ended up paying a second time on basically the same question. You really did not have to do that. Anyway, on the aloe, just use it straight from the plant for dry toes, feet and legs. I get my clean fingers all gooey with it and rub it in. Most of mine really enjoy it. It's good for dry scaly beaks also but you have to be very careful with that, having only a teeny amount on your finger tips and be sure not to get any in a nostril or ran eye. A feather cyst is basically the same thing as an ingrown hair on a human. The feather does not properly emerge from the follicle, sometimes trying to curl around and they can be very painful. We most often see them on Canarys but no bird can be assumed to be totally immune. I have a link to the information but unfortunately, I'm having some computer difficulties right now and can't get to those links with this browser. But if you will go to google and put in "feather cysts", you will probably have several articles come up that will be very informative. Good for Julie if she enjoys shredding other things. That may keeping her from plucking worse than she does. And you don't always have to spend the mortgage payment on expensive things from the pet store. There are some inexpensive ways to keep her in shredders. A healthy one for her is plain, no icing, shredded wheat. Other things are rolls of adding machine tape, hung from cage bars with either 100% cotton twine or vegetable tanned leather strips. You can also take a roll of plain white paper towels, cut it into shorter rolls and hang like the adding machine tape. She might also like strips of 100% cotton material, washed with no fabric softener. and braided or hung from perches and cage bars. I'll be off here in the next few minutes but of course will be back tomorrow so if there is anything else, just let me know. Patricia

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Coco, my green-cheeked conure is very listless today. He was regurgitating much more than normal earlier today. His feathers are all fluffed up and his eyes are more closed than open. He''

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Answer

I'm sorry, I did not realize this was a duplicate post when I responded to your question. I do, however, agree with everything you were told in the post which was not closed. I hope your bird gets better

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Answer

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Thanks for answering Patricia. Coco is still feeling better. Julie, my cockatiel loves just about any kind of toy that she can shred. What exactly are feather cysts? Are you suggesting that the aloe mixture or straight aloe be rubbed on scaly toes and feet?

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Related Pet Questions

Thanks for answering Patricia. Coco is still feeling better. Julie, my cockatiel loves just about any kind of toy that she can shred.

What exactly are feather cysts?
Are you suggesting that the aloe mixture or straight aloe be rubbed on scaly toes and feet?