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Try putting other foods like leafy veggies of the sorts through the cage bars like this




or this



Of course since yours is injured the veggies will have to be lower, but they may just get her curiosity up.

Jo

Yes, birds can get addicted to stuff.... I heard of a cockatoo (I think?) who got addicted to smoke from a cigarette... the new owner/rescue (that didn't smoke) had to slowly wean him off of it.... but I'd say that it's less likely that a bird could become addicted to medical drugs than to cigarette smoke...

It may help to massage the foot to try and get blood flow going through....

Is that Luna Bella, Jo? She's beautiful!

It took several weeks of coaxing to get my first 'tiel, Lady Gwen, to eat something fresh, but kale was the first thing she tried and liked. I've tried carrots and beet greens with Yadira. No luck so far.

Yadira had her vet appointment last night. Things are looking up. The dead patches of skin are healing. She still doesn't have any movement in her leg. She doesn't have any muscle mass in her leg anymore and she's getting a lot of scar tissue, but the vet doesn't think we will have to amputate. He thinks she will eventually gain some movement, but probably never like she had before the accident. The vet feels that the worst is over.

Last night I scrubbed Yadira's cage real good and removed all the perches except for two, which I set as low as possible. Tonight I'm going to put her in it and see how she does. She's flown a bit and is calling back and forth with Lady Gwen like she used to do before the accident.

She's calming down too. She still snaps at me a lot, but once in a while she lets me stroke her head for a minute. She gets very upset though when I try to do anything with her leg. I've still got her on the painkiller. I'm not sure how I would go about massaging her foot.

I've also been in contact with the company that makes the toy. They would have liked me to have sent them the toy, but I had the vet throw it away that first night, so I can't do that. Instead, my vet wrote up a report for them on what he observed and they will send that to their quality control department. I'm happy with the response they've given me to my situation.

Thanks for all the advice!
-Maija

I don't know if the toy was so much a problem as the toy and band combo--I have rotated the same toy in and out of my cage for years, and no problems--but my birds aren't banded.

That's a good point. I'm still thinking about whether or not to remove Lady Gwen's band too. One thing that concerns me though is that a lot of birds are banded and there are some very good reasons for leaving the bands on. I think bird toy makers should take those kinds of things into account.

-Maija

christie wrote:They should take those things into account. Some states require birds to be banded.

Indeed; perhaps---

Maija Thorstrom wrote:I've...been in contact with the company that makes the toy. They would have liked me to have sent them the toy, but I had the vet throw it away that first night, so I can't do that. Instead, my vet wrote up a report for them on what he observed and they will send that to their quality control department. I'm happy with the response they've given me to my situation.

---there is yet some hope that they will take it into account. Everybody makes mistakes; I'm more inclined to trust a company that owns up to it and deals honestly with the consequences than one that pretends nothing happened. What was the name of the company again?

Do you know which other toys have had problems?
-Maija

whoa...thanks for the info. One timeone of birds got a toe caught in one of those short cloth perch's fuzzy ends. thank God I was home and heard the screaches....I trimmed that perch so no strings were loose....

Thanks for that info, Christie. I remember reading on the Birdsafe site that some large parrots have gotten the goofy links caught on their beaks. I actually do have some of those. I've watched Lady Gwen playing with them often and I find it hard to imagine how she could get hurt by them. The plastic is too thick to fit in her small beak and the openings are large enough and loose enough that her foot goes in and out easily. I rotate my toys, so none of them are always in the cage. I wonder if maybe the danger is just for larger birds?

I'm not as experienced as other people, so I'm not trying to be really argumentative. I'm mostly just trying to understand. What are your thoughts on this?

I can see why the millet holder would be dangerous. I'm glad I don't have one.

Thanks!
-Maija

Last Wednesday I started putting Yadira in her cage in the evening. I noticed that she has trouble maneuvering on the wooden perches, so I replaced all of her perches with rope perches of different diameters. She still doesn't use her injured leg at all, but she uses her beak to compensate and move all around the cage. I've seen no sign of movement in the leg.

She has calmed down a lot. I continued to take her with me to work until this past Tuesday. She was finished with the medication, and climbing out of the carrier to explore or sit next to me. She only snaps now if I put my hand into the cage or carrier. Once she's out of the carrier she accepts whatever I'm doing without fuss.

Generally Yadira is active for a few minutes and then sleeps for several minutes, then wakes up and begins again. She isn't shaking anymore, so I don't think there's much pain. If she starts showing signs of pain again, I still have some of the pain medication left. Yesterday, she tried a little broccoli.

I would be very interested if anyone out there has ever had any similar experiences to mine and would like to give me advice on how I can make things easier for her (types of perches, cage arrangements, handling ideas, etc.). It looks like she is going to be a one-legged bird for a while longer, maybe permanently.

I am so glad that she is recovering faster than the vet initially predicted!

-Maija

Maija,

Altho my Chirp only had a broken leg, with the splint on it, he was very awkward at first, but as time went by, he got where he could navigate to just about any place he wanted. He never put any weight on the leg while it was splinted, so he was using his beak as the 2nd leg for the most part. They can adapt quite well with the loss of a limb, and the breeder I got some of my birds from has a B/G macaw that lost a leg to another animal, and she can move about her cage and such with east. Of course there are limitations, like standing on one foot, and since that is the only foot they have, there's never any rest for it. I'd like to think you are heading in the right direction with various type perches, some soft, some firm, and of course, varied shapes and sizes. Our little charges are very much able to adapt, just as humans are. Too bad someone has not come up with some sort of prosthesis for those missing legs or feet.

Sam