Post by MarkT on Dec 19, 2008 21:04:29 GMT -5
Yesterday the harrris hawk appeared perfectly normal. Today when I went out to get him for feeding he was sitting on the far perch when I got out to the facilities. This is not normal. He usually moves to the closest perch to the door when he sees me coming. When I walked over to pick him up it appeared that he was bending over to let one rip. I gave him a minute but nothing happened so I picked him up and headed inside. On the walk to the house he just didn’t seem right. When I placed him on the scale once again it appeared that he was trying to slice one but he couldn’t. At that point I was pretty sure there was something wrong so I grabbed him and started to do the exam.
Since it appeared like he was having a hard time going, you know where the exam started. I checked around the vent. The feathers were soaked/covered in urates. Palpating around the vent I could feel something hard right at the end. My conclusion at that point was the bird had some kind of blockage at the vent that wasn’t allowing him to defecate properly but hadn’t blocked things enough to prevent urine and urates to pass by. Finding this I got on the phone to the vet and was in the exam room within a half hour.
The vet came to pretty much the same conclusion that I had and ended up pumping some lube (something KYish) up the bird butt. What came out of the bird was one heck of a mess for the technician to cleanup. While the vet was writing up the file the bird pooped a couple more time. Those made me feel a little better.
The mutes at the vet’s office and the ones he has passed since I have gotten home appear to consist entirely of fecal material (all brown). Not knowing how long it has been since he had passed anything normally I’m not too concerned with that. But the consistency of the mutes has me concerned. The mutes are brown and runny but appear to have a bit of grainy-ness to them. In addition to being runny, he is also passing little rock hard irregular shaped pieces about the size of a pea in his mutes. This is what probably stopped him up to start with.
On the up side, he is pooping.
On the down side he looks bad and does not have an appetite. I am hoping for a better looking bird in the morning.
This is an 18 year old male harris that is living on a diet of DOC, quail and rabbit. He is flying at about 670 where last year he was going at about 655.
I haven’t seen anything like this before. Does anyone have any ideas?
Since it appeared like he was having a hard time going, you know where the exam started. I checked around the vent. The feathers were soaked/covered in urates. Palpating around the vent I could feel something hard right at the end. My conclusion at that point was the bird had some kind of blockage at the vent that wasn’t allowing him to defecate properly but hadn’t blocked things enough to prevent urine and urates to pass by. Finding this I got on the phone to the vet and was in the exam room within a half hour.
The vet came to pretty much the same conclusion that I had and ended up pumping some lube (something KYish) up the bird butt. What came out of the bird was one heck of a mess for the technician to cleanup. While the vet was writing up the file the bird pooped a couple more time. Those made me feel a little better.
The mutes at the vet’s office and the ones he has passed since I have gotten home appear to consist entirely of fecal material (all brown). Not knowing how long it has been since he had passed anything normally I’m not too concerned with that. But the consistency of the mutes has me concerned. The mutes are brown and runny but appear to have a bit of grainy-ness to them. In addition to being runny, he is also passing little rock hard irregular shaped pieces about the size of a pea in his mutes. This is what probably stopped him up to start with.
On the up side, he is pooping.
On the down side he looks bad and does not have an appetite. I am hoping for a better looking bird in the morning.
This is an 18 year old male harris that is living on a diet of DOC, quail and rabbit. He is flying at about 670 where last year he was going at about 655.
I haven’t seen anything like this before. Does anyone have any ideas?
