Ask An Expert: Dr. Brian Speer, DVM

Recently my 20 year old cockatiel does not want to fly. I leave the cage door open when I am at home, and he used to come out and fly around. I try to encourage him to fly but with no success. At a check up recently my avian vet said he was a bit overweight - he only weighs 4ozs. I am trying to reduce his weight and have cut out the usual cockatiel mix with sunflower seed, oats, etc., I have been giving him canary seed along with budgie seed, I buy the packet of budgie seed for the added vitamins. He doesn`t always take the apple,carrot,brocolli I put in his cage but will always take a cornflake, I only give him one a day. I checked his weight and he is still the same. What is best to do so that he gets some exercise?

I have two male Goliath Palm Cockatoos 2.5 years old and one male Hyacinth 8 years old along with three female Hyacinths each 4.5 years old. All have a very low lymphocyte count under 1. Tested in November , December and now January . Their Avian Vet is Dr Elliot at the Onderstepoort veterinary research University in Pretoria South Africa. Everything else in the CBC is normal along with eating , flying , playing. All virus tests come back negative. Their weights has been constant for at least 12 months. Their day consists of being woken up in their bird room and given fresh fruit and veg. They then go outside to a 188 sqm flight for the day. they have mixed nuts ( checked ) and palm nuts along with Kaytee chunky. At 16h00 they come in to the house for time with me. At 18h00 they go into their stainless steel sleep cages inside and have a hot soft food mix (Harrisons , Purity baby food, Coconut , Walnut oil , mashed banana . Kaytee macaw hand rearing ) before getting Mac nuts ( checked ) and Palm nuts. Lights out around 19h30. Do you have any suggestions as to cause or what can be done to raise the Lymphocytes ?
Many thanks
Trevor

My 13 year-old Yellow-naped Amazon recently began behaving strangely. He constantly shakes himself then grams at his tail, as though he has a bad itch. Also, he will not go into his cage at night (he’s out all day). If we put him in, he starts shaking and climbs down to the floor of the cage and says there so now we leave the cage door open and have a night light for him. We brought him to our vet three days ago and he could find nothing wrong. Do you think this is something psychological?

I am worried about one of my cockatiels in the aviary, He is 9 years old and a few days ago I noticed him bobbing his head up and down like he was trying to regurgitate food but nothing comes out. He then seems to chew as if he has something in his mouth. He doesn`t look ill and is not off his food. Would you have any idea what would make him do this?

My question is; how can I stop my cockatiel from pulling out his feathers? He is 20 years of age and it started a few years ago with him pulling some feathers from his back and eating at the tip of the feather. I`ve taken him to the vet but he could not give any explanation why he is doing this. Is there anything I can do?

One of my cockatiels was getting a lot of sinus infections which didn`t clear up properly after repeated medication.My vet advised I could put the medicine on his food, as it was difficult to administer as he kept spitting it out. Unfortunately the prescribed medicine didn`t take the sinus infection away so my vet advised a nasal flush. After the flush the vet showed me a small `bone like` mass which had come out with the flush. He didn`t seem to know what it was and let me take my cockatiel home. After I got him home I noticed he couldn`t stand properly and wasn`t interested in his food. Next day he was the same so I phoned the vet and he advised I should feed him baby food with a syringe. He still wasn`t improving, so when I told the vet he advised leaving him at the surgery. I had only left
him for a day when the vet phoned to say he had died. I feel so upset by all the stress he must have suffered and not knowing what the `bone like` mass was. I wonder if you would have any idea what this could have been? I would be glad of your opinion.

My question, I am worried about my older cockatiel who is 20 years old. His breathing movement seems to be more noticeable than my 9 year old cockatiel. Is this normal as the bird gets older? He is eating well and doesn`t get out of breath flying around. It is mostly late afternoon early evening when he has a sleep that I notice this.

My Question:
I have an eight month old Quaker named Oscar. I named her Oscar because it suited her personality - I had her DNA’d and it turns out Oscar is a girl. There are a series of things which kind of all started in mid July.

Her cage was originally in an open area between the kitchen, living room and dining room. Part of the back of the cage was covered with a blanket, but she could see from the top portion (it is a dome top cage). I felt her cage should be positioned better and wanted it so that one side of the cage was against the wall so I moved her between two other parrots (a female Pionus and male Senegal). That did not seem to work very well because I noticed she started plucking her chest area so I immediately moved her cage back to where it was originally. The plucking stopped temporarily but after a few weeks, she started again, but only the left side of her body around the wing area. The plucking was getting worse and worse so I brought her to an avian vet. One additional thing that Oscar was doing was she was crying out in what I would assume to be pain, and either plucking a feather out or biting whatever was closest in frustration and then lifted her left foot up as if to alleviate pain.

My vet looked her over and because of some other signs of plucking on her left wing shoulder area, and the wildlife we have around our place/deck (squirrels, chipmunks, bluejays) plus the fact that we bring her outside with us, she asked that I do a mite/lice treatment and come back the following week. So, I went home, did the treatment, thorough cleaning of the cage etc. None of my other parrots show any signs of mites or plucking. A week later, on the follow up appointment, the area which she was plucking was getting a bit better. However she was still doing the crying out and then the lifting of the leg. I must say that the frequency had decreased somewhat. The Vet did an x-ray of Oscar, showed me her body parts etc. What she was looking for was any possible visual abnormality of the ovary – thinking she might have a cyst or something. The ovary was fine and there were no signs of lung infection etc. She said there was nothing in the x-ray that would be considered abnormal or out of the ordinary. She suggested that I put a collar on Oscar in order to prevent the plucking just for a month to allow the area in which she plucked to grow back. My husband and I decided that we did not want to collar the parrot for plucking since she would get extremely upset when she wore the collar. Oscar is still doing the cry and lifting her left leg and she is still doing a bit of plucking in the area.

I am not totally concerned about the plucking, but I am concerned about the fact that it seems to be located in one general spot as well as she does the cry and then lift her left foot. It has been about two weeks since the Vet appointment and the plucking has not increase nor has it decrease. However, tonight after dinner I had her out and noticed that her left foot was dis-coloured, it was almost as if someone had taken a ruler and coloured in the three toes the same and the rest of the foot looked normal. It was kind of a light bulb moment, because I am pretty sure that I had seen this before, but at the time could not remember if this was her normal foot colouration. We went back to other photos that we have of her and the colouration is not there. The foot is not cold, but it kind of felt cool but then testing it again, I didn’t. If you have any ideas or suggestions, I would appreciate hearing them.