Digestive enzyme/gut acid problems? (not urgent)

[FeatherSubordinate]

I was browsing Google and I found an interesting IFF link (IFF = bad source, I know).

It was a thread about Great Grey owls and people were talking about how hard they are to raise in captivity. It appears that a member had an autopsy done on a Great Grey chick that died:

Ok, one of the things people are often reluctant to do is have a post mortem performed on a dead bird. I've never understood that. I want to know the cause - so I can either try to prevent it, or worse, find out if I made a mistake so I can learn from it.
With this in mind, we had a PM done on one of the dead chicks. The results are in.

The gut PH was very low, in fact bordering neutral. No gut acid = no initial breakdown of food to access the nutrients and leave it in a state for the rest of the gut to deal with. This leads to the next finding - a congested gall bladder. In addition, the proventriculous was holding undigested food.

The PH is a difficult one to address, but the advice from the vet is to dip food in a mix of 1 part cider vinegar to 500 parts water to raise the gut acid level.

Another finding was minimal gut flora, so a probiotic is advised.

The final part is probably the reason for the backed up gut. Despite 12 to 18 hours between hatch and feeding, there was a significant amount of unabsorbed yolk left in the sac. Future advice is to leave neonates for 24 hours before the first feed.

This was useful to learn because we have other chicks which by candling you can see also still have yolk in them at 5 and 7 days old! They are now on a liquid diet until that yolk is gone.

This has been a hard experience, but with the reputation Great Greys have for keeling over as babies, with luck, these lessons can be learned by all Grey Owl breeders and many more will survive. It's just a shame I have to wait until next year to see if our new knowledge will make significant improvements.

Thank you very very much for the help of our vet Alistair Lawrie. This guy rocks! :!:

Barry

this reminds me of a post about lemon juice hypo syringed into DoC's ..
the lemon juice a thing learned from Parrot keeping ....
good luck ,,

I've been reading the "The Diseases of Birds of Prey" chapter in Falconry and Hawking, 3rd Edition by Philip Glasier, and it seems that the digestive enzymes in the parents' saliva can be very important for chicks. This doesn't seem to be limited to the case of owls according to Glasier.

I'm trying to figure out if the digestive enzymes/acid levels of non-chicks, non-owls are ever at risk though, and what would cause such an occurrence. I've searched through the various illnesses that Glasier mentions and I can't pinpoint anything.

Could something like that ever happen to a passage hawk?

I'm guessing efforts to save the hawk would be centered around trying to restore digestive enzyme production... If such a thing is possible, is there a common solution? Probiotics? Special diet/supplements? Is the only option to take the bird to an avian vet and rely entirely on them?

Edit: Any preventative avian health supplements that anyone can recommend would be wonderful too. I've seen a couple names thrown around, but I'm trying to figure out treatments related to this specific issue, preventative or non.

[echotadog]

PRO-Vital RAPTOR BOOST : is a raptor supplement made to add to their food .
It contains probiotics and a balanced chelated mineral and vitamin intake .

One ( old school method ) way of restoring gut flora is by rubbing a few tidbits in freshly laid mutes before feeding them to the hawk . Assuming the mutes are clear of parasites and other illness .

Another easy method to insure optimal health in your Raptor is to ALWAYS do Varied whole food feedings.
This means for small food sources like Mice you allow the hawk the opportunity to eat or remove the rumen from the mouse . The natural flora and vitamins in the gut of prey creatures can restore a depleted gut in BOP...
That being said - QUIT CITING THE IFF and don't focus on such obscure issues . Focus on would be apprentice studying for now .

[Falcon Boy]

I don't think there is anything wrong about reading IFF, nor with the question. He's just curious.

I've never heard of the rub the meat in mute thing...that sounds odd to me.

In the case of that great grey, i can't say what the issue is. I've never heard that they have problems raising their young but then again they aren't commonly bred in the US. It sounds like that individual bird may have just been genetically inferior, no stomach PH is quite odd i'd think, but then again i have no idea what the natural pH of a birds stomach is.

Re: the cider vinegar and water thing: There is a of a certain type of cider vinegar which can be diluted in water (i don't remember the type or the ratio right now, but very very minimal vinegar) that can be used to help cure sour crop. If you really want to know what it is i can call my friend and find out.

Re: Vitamins for birds. Personally I don't use any vitamins or supplments, but instead prefer to feed a varied diet (including feeding heart/lungs/liver etc). My issue with vitamins, for both people and animals, is that nothing i know of is good for you in excess. They say that some vitamins you just get rid of the excess, but i have never been convinced that they don't necissarily have any effects being in high concentrations. That is just personal opinion. I also don't like how vita-hawk turns a hawks feet/cere bright yellow.

With a passage bird, the only thing related to this i can think of that you might have to worry about is sour crop. There are a few different reasons sour crop can occur (others feel free to elaborate!):
-birds weight too low, then fed a very large meal. Bird can't digest the food quickly enough because of low weight and then the food rots and they cough it up. This is bad because the bird is already at a low weight, and now you can't really feed it very easily. This whole situation would totally suck. The lesson here would be to not let your bird get too low.
-warm temperature where ever the bird is, then fed a very large meal. The meal begins to rot in the crop before they put it all over and then they cough it.
-Some sort of impaction, which prevents food from moving from the crop to the stomach. This is worse than 'regular' sour crop because a vet will need to remove the impaction. I've only heard of 1 bird this happened to (that i can verify the source anyway) and it was because it swallowed a bone which passed ackwardly between the crop/stomach and got stuck.

Here is a great little section about sour crop from the modern apprentice
themodernapprentice.com/diseases.htm

Hope that helps

[FeatherSubordinate]

Mar 29, 2013 14:31:59 GMT -5 Falcon Boy said:

I don't think there is anything wrong about reading IFF, nor with the question. He's just curious.

I've never heard of the rub the meat in mute thing...that sounds odd to me.

In the case of that great grey, i can't say what the issue is. I've never heard that they have problems raising their young but then again they aren't commonly bred in the US. It sounds like that individual bird may have just been genetically inferior, no stomach PH is quite odd i'd think, but then again i have no idea what the natural pH of a birds stomach is.

Re: the cider vinegar and water thing: There is a of a certain type of cider vinegar which can be diluted in water (i don't remember the type or the ratio right now, but very very minimal vinegar) that can be used to help cure sour crop. If you really want to know what it is i can call my friend and find out.

Re: Vitamins for birds. Personally I don't use any vitamins or supplments, but instead prefer to feed a varied diet (including feeding heart/lungs/liver etc). My issue with vitamins, for both people and animals, is that nothing i know of is good for you in excess. They say that some vitamins you just get rid of the excess, but i have never been convinced that they don't necissarily have any effects being in high concentrations. That is just personal opinion. I also don't like how vita-hawk turns a hawks feet/cere bright yellow.

With a passage bird, the only thing related to this i can think of that you might have to worry about is sour crop. There are a few different reasons sour crop can occur (others feel free to elaborate!):
-birds weight too low, then fed a very large meal. Bird can't digest the food quickly enough because of low weight and then the food rots and they cough it up. This is bad because the bird is already at a low weight, and now you can't really feed it very easily. This whole situation would totally suck. The lesson here would be to not let your bird get too low.
-warm temperature where ever the bird is, then fed a very large meal. The meal begins to rot in the crop before they put it all over and then they cough it.
-Some sort of impaction, which prevents food from moving from the crop to the stomach. This is worse than 'regular' sour crop because a vet will need to remove the impaction. I've only heard of 1 bird this happened to (that i can verify the source anyway) and it was because it swallowed a bone which passed ackwardly between the crop/stomach and got stuck.

Here is a great little section about sour crop from the modern apprentice
themodernapprentice.com/diseases.htm

Hope that helps

That is quite helpful actually.

You don't have to call your friend for little old me, but if you do ever come across the recipe, I'd be quite curious to know. I'll call my grandmother, who raised multiple parrots and ask her if she's ever dealt with any of this in her time.

[Falcon Boy]

I found this posted on another site, this is what i was referring to before.

1/2 teasSSpoon organic UNPASTURIZED apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup pedialyte - clear

Mix and give orally. Bird will drink it with gusto. I use an eye dropper and drop a drop on the beak and repeat until the bird won't take any more. Repeat every few hours for a bird that is refusing food and down. For 24 hrs. if bird is still eating then maybe twice a day just to help regulate the digestive track. This works for yeast, fungis and bacteria. More broad spectrum and I swear by it since I learned about it a few years ago.

Only unpasterized vinegar.

[robhawkyyz]

the vinegar seems too dilluted in that recipe, probably all pedialite that the hawk was needing, but i have heard of apple cider vineger being good for us in the same way but that is drinking a 1/4 cup straight every week?? i know it's good for heartburn...