pet connection

After all these years, Larry Bird has developed a strange fascination with Bella. He’s always watching her, and frequently jumps off his cage to walk over to her, then tries to bite her. He did this the other day while I was on the phone. I kept a close eye on him to make sure he didn’t try to play bitey-face, and when I was done with the call picked him up to return him to his perch. That’s when I noticed the blood dripping onto the floor. I guessed he had broken a blood feather when he jumped down, but I didn’t know what to do for it (Larry is my most trouble-free pet), so off we went to Serrano Animal and Bird Hospital. (For once, a pet emergency was during the day. Hallelujah!)

When birds molt–lose their old feathers–the new feathers coming in have a blood supply that provides nutrients while the feather is growing. The developing feathers can be fragile, so a broken blood feather is a common problem in pet birds. Larry’s veterinarian, Scott Weldy, says cockatiels are especially prone to broken blood feathers, but they can happen to any bird. Common precipitating events are flying into a wall, window or ceiling fan or, as in Larry’s case, taking a Geronimo leap off a cage.

So that I could avoid an emergency veterinary visit in case this happens again, Dr. Weldy showed me how to grasp the blood feather at its base and gently pull it until it pops out of the socket that it’s growing out of on the wing.

“If you jerk it out you’ll hurt the wing,” he says, “but if you put a little pressure on it for a moment or two, usually that will stop the bleeding. That traumatizes the feather follicle the least and will stimulate a new feather to be grown in place of the one that was just pulled out. If you keep a little gentle pressure on it, usually within five minutes they will stop bleeding and they’ll do fine.”

Be careful not to apply too much pressure. If the blood isn’t able to circulate, it can’t bring new clotting factors and platelets to the wounded area to stop the bleeding.

Larry had splattered quite a bit of blood on the inside of his crate during the five-minute ride to the clinic, so just to be on the safe side, Dr. Weldy gave him some fluids.

“It’s an easy preventive measure,” he says. “It’s not necessary in all cases. Usually when I see birds that have blood all over the place or if their skin looks dry and tacky to me–it should be supple–I’ll give fluids.”

As long as we were talking, I thought I might as well ask about other types of bird injuries. Traumas such as flying into frying pans, toilets, mirrors and ceiling fans are the most common incidents Dr. Weldy sees. Besides feather injuries, cockatiels are also prone to egg-laying problems and what Dr. Weldy calls “split butt.” That’s when a usually young cockatiel jumps off his cage and touches down on his tail, hyperextending it and splitting the skin open. Because there are two large muscles on the rear end, it can look as if the bird has a large tumor.

“People say ‘My bird is bleeding from his rear end and he’s got this big tumor there,’ and when you look at it, it’s just that the skin got split,” Dr. Weldy says. “It’s fairly easy to fix and it has a really good success rate. I just put a little local anesthetic on it and suture them back up.”

Larger or heavier birds such as African greys and Amazon parrots are more likely to split the skin on the chest when they hit the ground. Those injuries are a pain to repair because birds tend to pick at the sutures.

“Can you put little e-collars on them?” I asked.

I was joking, but apparently they exist. Dr. Weldy likes to use plumbers pipe insulation wrapped with tape to make a foam tube collar, which keeps the bird from bending his neck down but still allows him to turn his head and see clearly. It’s a trick he picked up from Bay Area avian specialist Brian Speer, coauthor with our own Gina Spadafori of Birds for Dummies, probably something I should read.

With the words, “He’s a nice bird” ringing in my ears, I took Larry home, and he is back to staring at Bella while she eats or sleeps beneath his cage. What an odd couple.

Image: bloodfeathers, from the Quaker Parakeet Society website.

Share & Enjoy

Facebook	Twitter	Google Buzz	Digg
Technorati	StumbleUpon	Delicious	Email