Friday, September 25, 2009

Nipping Eye Problems in the Bud

German Roller before intervention


Same bird after intervention one week later!

Birds can hide illness until the illness is obvious and extremely difficult to cure. Being sensitive to subtle hints of eye problems can be a heads-up that with intervention can prevent a serious full blown infection. (Click on photos and see the subtle clues.)

Note the slight loss of feathers around the eye and the dull out of sorts (failure to thrive) attitude in the before picture and contrast that to the full feathered eye and lively enthusiastic attitude seen in the after photo. Just noticing these subtle changes and taking action at this point makes the treatment far easier.

This bird was separated out from the others in its flight to reduce its stress. Since the problem was detected early, beside decreasing its housing stress, the only other change was that it was started on Bird of Paradise from Wall Seed vitamin wheat germ oil coated canary mix (316 263-0850). That's is all it needed to fix the problem in just a week because of the early detection!

Had no intervention been taken, a full blown case of eye infection, possibly leading to respiratory illness, would likely result and require seeing a vet and getting antibiotic eye drops.

Critical Concept: A stitch in time saves nine!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Linda, I had a similar experience last week. Noticed one youngster in flight a little too fluffed up.
I caged it up seperately and fed it richly. It regained its vitality and is now holding its own in the flight.

Linda Hogan said...

It is amazing how caging a bird up separately will really facilitate its getting well!

I have always theorized that just like us with our "normal skin mites" there are "normal mites" on a bird that when a bird is under stress, the normal mites proliferate out of control and set up irritation that allows worse bugs to take over.

Reduce the stress and the bird returns to normal if you nip it in the bud!