knowvagale
Songster
If this title reads like a clickbait article that's because I really need people to click on it. Paragraph three for the actual problem. Paragraph 1 for the dramatic retelling where I self flagellate for perpetuating this disaster. It started last Monday, when I walked outside to feed the birds and noticed an ominous tuft of chest feathers with a tiny bit of dried blood on them inside the loft. It was clearly from Gennie, my oldest and most beloved pigeon, but there were no other feathers or signs of a struggle. The babies were up in the next box, looking unperturbed. Still, I was nervous, and while Mozzarella, Angel, and Yang, the three white birds, had all fluttered down for dinner, Gennie was nowhere to be seen. So I rounded everyone up and put them inside, fed them, and, like a complete and total idiot, left the bob trap open, stubbornly believing that Gennie had just flown off and would come home later in the evening. I did go out to check on the birds around dusk. I'd thought I'd put all of them in the loft, but Mozzarella was sitting on top, so I must not have. In a last act of complete and unrepentant dumbassery, I did not close the bob trap. I also did not bother catching Moz and moving her inside. This was the only good decision I made that entire day, and it was 1000% laziness. I went to bed.
The next morning, there were no birds in the loft. No babies, no Angel, no Yang, Moz was gone from the top of the loft and Gennie was still missing in action. It was not hard to deduce, from the amount of blood in the next box, and the white feathers littering the cage and two seperate sites in the backyard, where the former four had gone. I had thought that a predator that got in would not be able to get out again— bob traps are supposed to be like a one way valve, right? Evidently I had underestimated the craftiness of raccoons. Or foxes. Whatever it was had clearly wrenched its way back out of the trap. Then I left on a three day trip.
When I came back, there was some good news. Moz had returned, and mostly in one piece. Her right wing was bloody, and she preened at it excessively. She wouldn't come near the loft or let me close enough to grab her, and even with her flight slowed down from the injury she was too fast for me to chase her down. I fed her outside the loft and the squirrels ate most of it, while I waited for her to calm down I befriended the squirrels, who were ironically less reluctant to eat out of my hand than she was. A week after the massacre, I called her down for dinner, filled the feeder in the loft and rattled it, and stood aside, holding the door open, and she hopped into the cage. That was about four hours ago. I wasn't about to leave her in there overnight, because now that predators are aware of the loft, even with the bob trap closed, I was supremely unsure that the cage would hold against an even moderately determined raccoon. Also, I hadn't bothered to clean it and it was all sorts of bloody and shitty and generally not a sanitary place for someone with an open wound to be hanging out. I set up a storage container with straw in the bottom, a water dispenser, and a window screen over the top in my bedroom for her. Than I diluted some chlorhexidine 6:1 and got a helpful bystander to hold her still while I examined the wound. The wound is next to her humerus, on the side with the flight feathers rather than the leading edge of the wing. It's hard to see exactly how big the damaged area is. It's covered by a scab about as big as the top segment of your thumb, which is mostly black and yellow. Infection was my biggest fear, but it was hard to tell whether it was realized. While the scab looked generally worrisome, the flesh around the wound was pink but not inflamed. I clipped some of the feathers that had been covered in dried blood away from the wound, but didn't want to pull them out and risk causing more trauma to the area. I swabbed the whole wound with the diluted chlorhexidine, and some parts of the scab seemed to soften when they were soaked with it. I didn't know whether I should try to remove the scab, so I left it be. Moz was a perfect patient, only squirming a bit when I first applied the medicine.
I have no idea what to do now. I am way out of my depth treating a wound like this, especially on a bird. I have taken care of my fair share of sick and injured animals, but nothing like this. Info on the web is conflicting and mostly unhelpful. Topical antibiotic ointment is recommended by some sites and explicitly condemned by others. Should I remove the scab? This seems like it would be very stressful for the bird, but if there is an infection it's probably the only way to treat it, other than maybe oral antibiotics. Oral antibiotics for birds typically don't say work for topical injuries. Ones I've found that you can buy without a prescription mostly seem to be preventative stuff you put in everyday feed. Anyone with bird first aid experience, please let me know what your advice is.
The next morning, there were no birds in the loft. No babies, no Angel, no Yang, Moz was gone from the top of the loft and Gennie was still missing in action. It was not hard to deduce, from the amount of blood in the next box, and the white feathers littering the cage and two seperate sites in the backyard, where the former four had gone. I had thought that a predator that got in would not be able to get out again— bob traps are supposed to be like a one way valve, right? Evidently I had underestimated the craftiness of raccoons. Or foxes. Whatever it was had clearly wrenched its way back out of the trap. Then I left on a three day trip.
When I came back, there was some good news. Moz had returned, and mostly in one piece. Her right wing was bloody, and she preened at it excessively. She wouldn't come near the loft or let me close enough to grab her, and even with her flight slowed down from the injury she was too fast for me to chase her down. I fed her outside the loft and the squirrels ate most of it, while I waited for her to calm down I befriended the squirrels, who were ironically less reluctant to eat out of my hand than she was. A week after the massacre, I called her down for dinner, filled the feeder in the loft and rattled it, and stood aside, holding the door open, and she hopped into the cage. That was about four hours ago. I wasn't about to leave her in there overnight, because now that predators are aware of the loft, even with the bob trap closed, I was supremely unsure that the cage would hold against an even moderately determined raccoon. Also, I hadn't bothered to clean it and it was all sorts of bloody and shitty and generally not a sanitary place for someone with an open wound to be hanging out. I set up a storage container with straw in the bottom, a water dispenser, and a window screen over the top in my bedroom for her. Than I diluted some chlorhexidine 6:1 and got a helpful bystander to hold her still while I examined the wound. The wound is next to her humerus, on the side with the flight feathers rather than the leading edge of the wing. It's hard to see exactly how big the damaged area is. It's covered by a scab about as big as the top segment of your thumb, which is mostly black and yellow. Infection was my biggest fear, but it was hard to tell whether it was realized. While the scab looked generally worrisome, the flesh around the wound was pink but not inflamed. I clipped some of the feathers that had been covered in dried blood away from the wound, but didn't want to pull them out and risk causing more trauma to the area. I swabbed the whole wound with the diluted chlorhexidine, and some parts of the scab seemed to soften when they were soaked with it. I didn't know whether I should try to remove the scab, so I left it be. Moz was a perfect patient, only squirming a bit when I first applied the medicine.
I have no idea what to do now. I am way out of my depth treating a wound like this, especially on a bird. I have taken care of my fair share of sick and injured animals, but nothing like this. Info on the web is conflicting and mostly unhelpful. Topical antibiotic ointment is recommended by some sites and explicitly condemned by others. Should I remove the scab? This seems like it would be very stressful for the bird, but if there is an infection it's probably the only way to treat it, other than maybe oral antibiotics. Oral antibiotics for birds typically don't say work for topical injuries. Ones I've found that you can buy without a prescription mostly seem to be preventative stuff you put in everyday feed. Anyone with bird first aid experience, please let me know what your advice is.
