Sick Bird Update

Well, bet you were wondering what topic we were going to cover...it isn't what I had planned for tonight, so you are going to have to wait another day or so... It has been a little challenging around here and got a little more challenging this evening. As you may remember, I had a sick bird on my hands. She had a pretty major stroke the beginning of September and lost the use of her feet (She is a Double-Yellow Head Amazon Parrot). Brings to mind the Monty Python jokes about the Parrot...but we won't go there tonight. Tonight is the Sick Bird Update.

Anyway, the bird still doesn't have the use of her feet, one is curled up, the other is open out, but there is blood flow to the feet, her toe nails have been growing at an amazing rate. I have been giving her our Stem cell enhancer products to hopefully help her to recover, and she is finally putting weight back on. So the good news is that my bird is ever so slowly healing, still can't walk, just pulls herself around. Her attitude is good, and with a parrot, you can tell a good attitude from a bad one. She sings, and does a little dance with her head (it used to be a whole body dance, but under the circumstances, all she can do is move her head around like Stevie Wonder...) and she is eating everything that is put in front of her.

The downside is that her toenails are growing at an amazing rate. The problem with that is that I have been keeping terry towels in her cage, so she has something clean and soft to move around on. Because her toenails have been growing, she is starting to get the nails tangled in the terry nap of the towels. I have been stalling cutting her nails because I wanted her to get just a little bit stronger before I stress her out cutting nails. (I don't know any animal that LIKES it's nails trimmed). Last thing I want to do is to stress her out and literally give her a heart attack. Anyway, since her nails are now so long, she is getting tangled quite a bit.

Tonight, when I come home, I first notice that there is dark stuff on her foot. Initially I thought she got poop on her foot, then I noticed her one toe nail is twisted at an odd angle. Taking a closer look at her foot, that dark stuff was not poo, but some blood (not much thankfully). So, in the sink she goes for her bath (she hates it because she sits in the water instead of having it sprinkled - I need to soak her butt for obvious reasons...) and I soak her foot as clean as I can.

What appears to have happened while I was gone was that since she cannot feel her feet, she somehow got her toenail tangled in the towel and practically ripped the whole nail out of her foot. Makes you kinda cringe...makes me still pucker... So I have spent most of this evening trying to get the bird cleaned up and somehow protect that toe from further damage. I have also removed all terry towels from her cage and have now covered it in newspaper and shredded newspaper. It is dirtier for her, but she won't get her nails stuck anymore...hopefully.

Usually a bath really tires her out, so at least she wasn't moving around too much. The problem is now that the nail is so damaged and loose, any movement whatsoever is causing her some bleeding. She does not appear to notice, which is good news, but I don't want her banging that toe around any more than necessary. So, out came the gauze pads and tape, and the Bitter Apple (a spray-on product that tastes bad so the birds won't chew what is sprayed). I managed to wrap a sort of bandage around her one toe (am considering wrapping both toes together next time...very hard to wrap one toe of a bird..) and tape it on tight enough that it won't fall off.

So far, so good, she is sitting in the cage with the big white bandage over one toe. She has not YET chewed on the bandage, which was sprayed liberally with Bitter Apple, so hopefully tomorrow she will continue to leave that bandage alone. I immobilized the whole toe and nail, hoping that it will do what it needs to do, either fall off naturally, or heal back to the toe.... She will be getting a stronger dose of our stem cell enhancer product so that her body has more adult stem cells wandering around to help her body to renew itself... and hopefully she will do a lot of resting tomorrow.

The upshot of this diatribe is that I did not get all my research completed for my "other" much-anticipated blog topic, so you will all have to wait a tad longer. With luck, the bird will be hale and hardy within the next few days (she gets really tired for about 2 days after a bath) so she should be able to spend the time healing and not picking at her bandage. I will let you know how things fare down the road... So goes our sick bird update... I think I should have been a vet...

Until tomorrow...