One of the most frustrating situations I encounter as an avian veterinarian is seeing a bird suffer from a preventable disease. This is especially frustrating if the bird is young or just recently acquired. Too often, bird owners invest a great deal of time and money purchasing a new bird but then never take it to the vet to ensure its health.
An experienced avian veterinarian will perform a thorough search of your pet bird and should make you feel comfortable. |
Birds, perhaps even more so than cats and dogs, need regular veterinary examinations. Unlike cats and dogs, which are petted and handled on a regular basis, many birds are not directly handled by their owners, and they often conceal disease until they are very sick. An experienced veterinarian should teach owners preventative health care, starting at the very first veterinary visit.
Diet
One topic an experienced avian vet should spend a significant amount of time discussing is a pet bird's diet. The vet and owner should talk about not only what the bird eats but how often it is fed.
In general, I recommend feeding most healthy parrots one of the commercially available pellet diets along with a small amount of vegetables and fruits, particularly the orange. red and yellow produce, which is high in beta-carotene, the precursor to vitamin A, and essential to a pet bird’s diet.
If the pet bird is eating predominantly seeds, the vet may want to start vitamin supplementation directly on moist table food, to which the vitamins will stick (rather than in the water, where vitamins can degrade, or on the seeds, from which pet birds remove the outer hull).
Vitamin supplementation might be discontinued once the bird begins consuming large amounts of pellets. If a pet bird is to be gradually transitioned to eating pellets, the vet should spend some time advising the owner how to accomplish this.
After discussing diet and environment, the vet should observe the bird in its cage before handling it, noting its activity level, body language and droppings. By looking at the bird in the cage, the vet might be able to tell whether it is eating (from the presence of chewed up food and droppings), how the bird feels (whether it is active and vocalizing or fluffed up and quiet), and how well socialized it is (if it screams and attacks when the cage is approached or if it vocalizes calmly and appears curious).
Handling
The vet should confidently attempt to pick up the bird for examination. Some vets prefer to have the bird come out of the cage first and “step up” on to a hand, before they gently try to restrain it, while other vets try to “catch” the bird in its cage. To a great extent, the method of restraint a vet employs depends on the bird’s temperament and degree to which it is used to being handled.
Some pet birds are handled often by their owners and are not bothered by being gently wrapped in a towel. Other birds are never handled and become aggressive and upset by toweling. In either case, an experienced avian vet should approach the bird slowly and patiently, speaking gently and quietly.
Sometimes, owners can help the vet in trying to calm their pet as it is wrapped slowly in a towel. Other times, birds are more upset when their owners are involved in restraint and, as such, the vet might ask the owner to step away from the bird as the vet towels it. If this is the case, the owner should not be offended. Most of the time, unless a bird is trained to accept physical examination, some degree of gentle restraint is necessary for the vet to fully examine the bird and to ensure that neither the bird nor the vet gets hurt in the process.
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