I visited the local vet yesterday to let her take a look at my birdy. It had been picking the feathers in his neck again and I was somewhat worried as he has done that before, but it was never this bad… So first I went to the vet without the birdy, as I didn’t like the idea of putting it in a small dark box to transport it there… but she had to see it, so I had to return with the birdy an hour later.

And that visit was a lot of things, but not what I expected from it… Her first reaction when seeing my birdies little neck was rather hysteric… she almost started screaming that she needed stitches! His neck was one big open wound… I got very scared and confused… what is she talking about?!?! Yes, there are two places in his neck where no feathers are, just smooth skin. But that has been like that for as long as we had him… and that was when we got the egg he got out 3 weeks before he was born… So, if that was already a problem, he has lived already 15 years with it without a problem… but the vet woman claimed it was not normal and he had bitten himself to end up like that… Well, that got me a bit mad, as I would know for sure if he had done anything like that! How could I not… he would be bleeding like hell if that would happen!! Finally she calmed down again and I was able to make clear that she could do a lot of things with my birdy, but stitching was not going to one of them! Then she also figured it might not be a good idea, as he would probably go bite the stitches…

Well, this set the tone for the rest of my consult… Next she got some magazine articles and internet printouts from a binder and started calling out things that were mentioned in them as solutions to the picking problem. I gave my comments on each point along the way and in the end I got a little note with the following “recipe”:
- Daily showers; I told her we already did that. She still wrote it down.
- Not with the heating, no sudden temperature changes; Well… his cage is not at the heating, plus it’s summer… the heating is not on, and unfortunately I still don’t have control over the weather outside, so don’t know where she is aiming at with this one…
- Egg food, boiled chicken, boiled egg; Well, here we got something to work with. Egg food he has, but doesn’t really like, but it’s available, chicken he sometimes eats when we eat chicken, but then it’s never boiled… Boiled egg… we will give it a shot!
- Let bird fly loose; Ok… didn’t you just hear me? The birdy is always loose! His cage never closes… So he can fly all he want!
- Green food; Yes. But what is green food? He gets lettuce and green beans, as well as apple and pear… but ok, we can figure out some more green stuff for him to eat.
- Boiled corn; Ok…
- Dried pine cone (without fungus); Will try to find one in the forrest…
- Small seeds; Sorry? Small seeds. Yes, I heard you, but why?!?! It’s a small birdy… he already eats small seeds… he is to small for the big seeds…
- 3 times a day, 15 minutes attention/play with the bird; … ?!?! Are you kidding me?!?! He gets attention all the time when there is someone at home! And play with it?!?! It’s not a dog or a cat!!!

Conclusion… € 18,- lighter and much more worried then when I came… And not only worried, also quite upset. Upset with the woman for telling me more or less that I am not threading my birdy in a good way… and that really started to annoy and upset me later when I got home, because we give the birdy truely the best life possible… He can do anything he wants and gets attention all the time!

Finally I realized I shouldn’t put so much value to the words of the vet. What does she know? She ain’t with us, so how can she judge just by looking at my birdy? As a result we will change his diet slightly and keep most things as they were. I might go to a different vet later this week for a second opinion that makes more sense!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 24th, 2005 at 19:13 and is filed under Animals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.