# Throwing up, bottom of cage



## Kimchee2016 (Jul 11, 2016)

Hi. This morning I found throw up in my Kimchees cage. She is now in the corner of the bottom of her cage. A few days ago she had watery stool but now it's almost cleared. Yesterday she was happy and playing. She just went back up on her perch. Should I be worried? :yellow pied:


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

It does sound like a vet visit would be a good idea, but there could be other explanations. What is she doing down in the corner - looking tired and sick, or acting like she's sitting on a nest? The corner of the cage bottom is a popular place for breeding behavior. Is she eating normally? If she's acting like she's sick then definitely call a vet.


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## SilverSage (Oct 19, 2014)

Please go to a qualified avian vet immediately. If she is throwing up that's not normal nesting behavior.


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## Kimchee2016 (Jul 11, 2016)

She looks tired and sick. She didnt eat this morning and im coming home soon. Do you think it would br ok to wait til friday?


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## SilverSage (Oct 19, 2014)

No it will not be; birds hide their illness until they are near death; you need to rush to an avian vet immediately!


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## EllenD (Oct 9, 2016)

No, do not wait until Friday, I'm guessing that your bird may not last until Friday. I'm not saying this to scare you, but I kind of am saying it to scare you. 

The fact that you say "He looks tired and sick" tells me all I need to know, as birds hide all signs of illness as long as they can. So he has most likely been sick for a long time, and as SilverSage already stated, they wait until they are close to death to show that they are sick.

I'm very sorry, but diarrhea + vomiting + bottom of the cage + tired and sick looking = EMERGENCY AVIAN VET IMMEDIATELY! 

Your cockatiel is very sick, and if you don't get him to a certified or qualified avian vet immediately it's going to end badly. Do you have a certified or qualified avian vet? Please find one immediately if you don't, a general vet or an Exotics vet that "sees birds" is better than nothing so if that's all you can get him to immediately than please do that, but a certified or qualified avian vet will know to run fecal smears, cultures, possibly blood work, and they'll know what meds to use. But the main thing right now is time is of the essence, please take him now!

"Dance like nobody's watching..."


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## Kimchee2016 (Jul 11, 2016)

The vet said she can come in at 2:20 tomorrow. Will that be too late? She started playing and eating again. And her stool is getting better.


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## SilverSage (Oct 19, 2014)

I don't think you realize how severe the situation really is. Anytime a bird is acting sick, it is an emergency situation! If your bird is so sick that they can no longer hide their symptoms, they are usually on the brink of death. You need to rush your bird to any avian vet that will allow you to come in as an emergency walk-in. Even if you have to drive hours to get to that vet, it is better than waiting until tomorrow. By waiting around and not taking Uber to the veterinarian immediately you could be signing his death sentence. Please take your Bird to the vet right away, which ever vet will let you come in that is qualified to treat birds.


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## enigma731 (Aug 12, 2011)

If the bird is playing, eating, and currently not showing any additional signs of GI distress, I don't think it's an emergency. It's not actually that uncommon for birds to have unexplained episodes of vomiting that pass on their own. That being said, I would still see the vet ASAP, and WOULD treat it as an emergency if she starts showing symptoms again, including just being lethargic.


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## arnabsri (Jul 22, 2015)

My was passing only urine / urates today 4 times with no faeces.when we called vet.he asked to give sporidox .1 ml.we gave it to him.but after taking that my cutie thrower up 3 times .But then he ate lil pellets and have two poops with green faeces.not sure what needs to be done now but he is sitting on his perch sleeping with his head on his back.can anyone explain what's goin on


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## SilverSage (Oct 19, 2014)

Sometimes I wonder how much experience with sick birds people have.

As someone with a large personal flock, a rescuer, foster care provider, and breeder who has been working with parrots professionally for over 15 years I can tell you; this is an emergency! Maybe you would take it more seriously if you have had the heartbreaking experience of having birds die on the vet table because you waited HOURS too long to get them to the vet, forget DAYS! 

Why the delay? Is the life of your bird not worth the inconvenience on the small chance she isn't ALMOST DEAD and MIGHT be able to wait a few days? Why? What good reason is there NOT to go to the vet immediately when two extremely experienced professionals are insisting that this is an emergency?

You came here asking if you should be worried. The answer is YES.

You asked if you had time to wait, the answer is NO.


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## enigma731 (Aug 12, 2011)

SilverSage said:


> Sometimes I wonder how much experience with sick birds people have.


23 years owning birds, rescue experience, including 3 special needs 'tiels, one of whom has chronic serious GI problems. Also a human healthcare provider. Just, you know, saying.

I do understand that birds hide their illnesses and may be seriously ill by the time they show symptoms. I also understand that the OP asked whether this was an emergency or not. The criteria I listed (demeanor, appetite, current status of symptoms) are what multiple avian vets I've worked with use to evaluate that. If the bird is eating, playing, and not currently showing symptoms, most vets would not consider that to be an emergency.

It's fine if you disagree with me. It's fine if you want to give different advice. What's not fine is assuming that you know what anyone else's credentials are, or implying that people are somehow ignorant for having a different perspective than you do. It's also not very nice to imply that an OP somehow doesn't value their bird's life because they asked how serious a situation is.


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## SilverSage (Oct 19, 2014)

I am not implying they do not care; I am phrasing it in a way that I hope will encourage them to look at and evaluate the risks from a different perspective. I'm sorry if my approach was overly rough; this week I have already tried to help 2 people get the vet help they needed and both birds have died due to them delaying proper care. It rips my heart out every time, and every time the owner wishes they had taken action sooner. The worst thing that can happen when you rush in a bird who doesn't need rushing is you lose some money. The worst thing that can happen if you don't rush a bird who does need rushing is they die.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

> My was passing only urine / urates today 4 times with no faeces.when we called vet.he asked to give sporidox .1 ml.we gave it to him.but after taking that my cutie thrower up 3 times .But then he ate lil pellets and have two poops with green faeces.not sure what needs to be done now but he is sitting on his perch sleeping with his head on his back.can anyone explain what's goin on


It sounds like the medication may be helping. Do you mean Sporidex rather than Sporidox? Sporidex is an antibiotic in the cephalexin class: https://healdove.com/health-care-industry/Uses-and-side-effects-of-Sporidex 

Sporidox seems to be a disinfectant. http://www.catalog.md/drugs/sporidox-plus.html

Did the vet actually see the bird, or did he just give advice over the phone?

It will be helpful to keep the bird warm. Put a heating pad under half the cage, or cover one end with a towel and shine a lamp on it so the heat goes into the cage. Make sure the lamp isn't so close that it could set the towel on fire. The reason for heating only half the cage is so the bird can move to the other side if it gets too hot.

Providing electrolytes is beneficial too. Pedialyte (a rehydration drink for human babies) can be used, or a sports drink like Gatorade. There are simple online recipes to make your own: 
http://www.webmd.com/hw-popup/rehydration-drinks?navbar=hw86827

http://clearingmyemptynest.blogspot.com/2009/02/oral-rehydration-solution-homemade.html


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## arnabsri (Jul 22, 2015)

Thank u tielfan for reply. Vet actually gave advice first at phone as he was not available for 6 hrs. the poop gradually became normal and cutie was eating his pellets drinking water.at evening we took him to vet where he examined and said the bird is active playful and poop is normal so need of antibiotics anymore.my cutie is eating drinking preening and running around the cage as usual.thanks to all of you for your helps


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## EllenD (Oct 9, 2016)

First of all, to KimChee, please just get your bird to the avian vet immediately, make sure they do fecal smears and cultures from his throat, nostrils, and crop, please insist upon it as it's the only way to ensure that your bird is properly diagnosed and given the correct medications to treat him. And please let up know how he is doing and what the vet said and did, as we're obviously concerned.

I don't think it was at all wise to tell the OP that the situation with her cockatiel was all of a sudden "not an emergency". I agree 100% with SilverSage, as she is totally and completely correct. Forgetting that birds instinctively hide any signs or symptoms of illness for as long as they can, we all know that, the OP's bird exhibited diarrhea + vomiting + sitting on the bottom of the cage, and then when we asked how the bird was doing and it looked the next day she said "He looks tired and sick". This is an emergency. Infections do not just clear up on their own and go away, I'm sorry but they just don't. And also I have to say that it's quite irresponsible to say that "It's not actually that uncommon for birds to have unexplained episodes of vomiting that pass on their own". In the 31 years that I've owned birds and the 20+ years I have bred birds I have never seen a bird that had the combination of symptoms the OP's bird displayed plus looking "tired and sick" and seen the bird just suddenly recover. Maybe you didn't read all the OP's posts or something, I don't know, but this was not just an isolated episode of a little vomiting as you wrote it off to be, it was long-term diarrhea, vomiting, and sitting on the bottom of the cage combined with the bird looking very unwell and being very lethargic. Can you honestly say that "It's actually not uncommon" for a bird with these symptoms to just get better? 

The problem, at least the problem that I have with most people (I cannot speak for SilverSage) that have a sick or injured bird and come on to the forum because they say they want advice from experienced bird people, is that they don't take their bird's condition seriously, probably because they are not at all knowledgeable about birds, and when they are told that their bird needs to go to an avian vet immediately they either totally ignore the advice that they sought, or they fight it. Bird health/medicine is not at all like that of dogs, cats, or people for that matter, and I think most people that have birds as pets, especially new owners, is that this is exactly how they think. I get very frustrated, angry, and sometimes absolutely enraged with the actions, or lack there of, of most bird owners. And honestly I personally don't really care if people get angry with me because I'm forceful or aggressive in my replies, if me being harsh gets a sick bird to an avian vet and saves it life then it was well worth not being popular. 

I've been a member of this particular forum for a little over a year and I think it's an awesome group, by far the most knowledgeable group of bird lovers on the internet. My only complaint is that when someone comes on here and newly joins because their bird is really very sick or badly injured, and has been sick for some time already, or worse, they somehow injured their bird badly days or weeks earlier and have done nothing at all about it and they want "home remedies" or whatever, when one of us is a bit forceful with our answers, telling them they must take their bird to an avian vet immediately, we are the ones who people get angry with, not the OP who is neglecting their bird! My breaking point is when I tell someone that they need to get their bird to an avian vet immediately, that their bird is very sick or badly injured and in pain, and their response is something like "I can't afford to take him to a vet" or "I'm just looking for home remedies", or even worse, they say something like "I know he's in pain but I think he's better, he'll be fine" or "Are you sure I need a vet?", or the worst, like in this post, after multiple members tell the OP that their bird is very seriously ill and needs to go to an avian vet right now, they say "Well I got an appointment for 3 days from now. That will be OK, right?" No, it won't be OK, not at all, which is why we told you right away that they are very sick and need to go now! It's like people think that we're kidding or something, or they just really don't want to take their bird to the vet, because of money or time or whatever reason, and they just fight us on it. If you come on to a forum filled with very experienced bird owners, breeders, and people trained in avian medicine to ask for advice, and you are told by multiple people that your bird could die very soon without immediate vet care, you better believe that we mean it.

As SilverSage already said, it is so frustrating and painful watching helpless birds die needlessly all the time because their owners refuse to get them proper medical care. For the life of me I will never understand why people buy pets, any pets, and don't feel responsible for getting them medical treatment when they need it. It's actually much, much worse on my bearded dragon forums, to the point where I cannot even log on anymore. It's like people think it's a totally appropriate and understandable answer to say "I just can't afford to take him to a vet. I just came on here looking for help, but no one here wants to help me so I'll find another forum that will". They think what they are saying is justified. And without fail, every time someone responds with "I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be mean, but if you can't afford to get medical care for you pet whenever they need it then you should not have any pets at all, and should rehome him to someone that can", this is the person that gets jumped on by other members because we're being too harsh or too mean. They don't however jump on the person who purposely brought a pet into their home knowing that they can't afford to take proper care of it. I've seen many bird and bearded dragon owners on the forums that cannot afford to buy their pet food!!! Why in the world would you go out and buy a pet that you can't afford to feed? I just had this on my bearded dragon forum, a new member joined so that he could post a photo of his bearded dragon and ask if he looked too skinny, and then to ask why he wasn't growing appropriately. I assumed his bearded dragon was around 3 months old based on the photo, turns out it was almost a year old! When I asked him to give his daily diet he said he fed him 7-8 crickets a day along with some romaine lettuce. No multivitamin supplements at all, and he was dusting the crickets with calcium twice a week. Now for those of you who don't know, an 11 month old bearded dragon should be fed it's live feeder insects until they stop eating them every day, which usually amounts to somewhere between 20-30 crickets a day, and the crickets should be dusted with calcium every single day for the first year, then 3-4 times a week after a year. He should also get his crickets dusted with a multivitamin 3-4 times a week for the first year. And their salad, which should be offered fresh each day and also sprinkled with calcium every day for the first year, should not be just lettuce, or lettuce at all. It should be a good mix, lots of variety every day, of fresh veggies that are full of vitamins, minerals, and nourishment, not full of only water. So when I told this guy that his 11 month old dragon looked like a 3-4 month old, was emaciated, dehydrated, and certainly had pretty bad Metabolic Bone Disease showing, and that he should allow his dragon to eat feeder insects every single day until he stops eating them, which will probably be 20-30 crickets a day, and then he needed to throw out the lettuce and buy a variety of mixed veggies, his response to me was "Dude, if I could afford to feed him that many bugs and different veggies every day I would, trust me I wish I could. I have $15 a week to spend on his food, period". $15 won't pay for the fresh veggies and fruits a dragon needs in a week, let alone feeder insects. His beardie was dying of starvation, he knew it because that's the reason he posted his question and joined to begin with, and when told he needed to rehome his dragon before it died, he took off.

So these are the frustrations with desperately trying to get people to do what is right for their birds. The birds can't speak for themselves, so someone has to advocate for them. I'll be damned if I'm going to apologize for doing that.



"Dance like nobody's watching..."


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## enigma731 (Aug 12, 2011)

As a healthcare provider, I think I have a different perspective. There IS a cost to reacting too aggressively and treating every situation as an emergency. It's important to prioritize, to have the response and treatment be proportional to the level of urgency. Treating overly aggressively doesn't just cost money, it stresses the animal and the human involved, it can cause serious side effects or complications from interventions that are not needed, and it can take crucial time away from another animal that really does need to be treated emergently. Triage practices exist for these reasons. 

I also don't think that promoting panic or browbeating the owner actually helps to get the bird necessary care in the longrun. It's much more likely to just burn out or alienate the owner. If the overall goal is to promote good care for companion birds, then compassion for humans is important too.

Now, I am not saying that the bird in this particular situation did not need to be seen. I am saying that I think it is important to evaluate the most appropriate response in a given situation, and then decide how to react. Treating every sick bird as an emergency is irresponsible in its own way, as is using emotionally manipulative wording toward the owner.

Now, the bird in question in this thread has seen the vet, and I am not interested in further derailing this thread with this argument.


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## Kimchee2016 (Jul 11, 2016)

I'm sorry if I came across as "neglecting" my bird. I noticed she was sick two days ago and took her to a vet yesterday. I only asked again if I should take her because her symptoms had gone away. But thanks everyone for your advice. She slept over at the vets and they called to say she is doing well.


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## EllenD (Oct 9, 2016)

Kimchee2016 said:


> I'm sorry if I came across as "neglecting" my bird. I noticed she was sick two days ago and took her to a vet yesterday. I only asked again if I should take her because her symptoms had gone away. But thanks everyone for your advice. She slept over at the vets and they called to say she is doing well.


I'm sorry KimChee, I wasn't at all talking about you when I was talking about people "neglecting their pets", I never thought you were neglecting your bird at all. I was only trying to explain in generalities why we sometimes get frustrated when trying to help people on forums. I wasn't at all angry or upset with you at all, I was displeased with people minimizing what myself and other members had already told you. I hope your bird is okay, I'm so glad you got him to the vet, I saw your post saying it's lead poisoning (possibly), which is very serious but treatable, so hopefully the stay at the vet will help him, along with medications. 

I too think sometimes we do jump to "it's an emergency" too soon, which can cause a bird stress, waste money, etc., but that is all completely relative to the signs and symptoms of the bird, at least that's what I go by. In this particular case the bird is obviously very sick and needed to see an avian vet immediately, as I said, SilverSage said, as well as others...If KimChee had not taken her bird to the vet it may have died already... Hence our sense of urgency, which was 100% warranted based on the bird's symptoms.

"Dance like nobody's watching..."


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## SilverSage (Oct 19, 2014)

I missed the other post; if it is metal poisoning then I'm really glad you took her in; I almost lost two conures to metal poisoning a couple of years ago. 


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## enigma731 (Aug 12, 2011)

EllenD said:


> I too think sometimes we do jump to "it's an emergency" too soon, which can cause a bird stress, waste money, etc., but that is all completely relative to the signs and symptoms of the bird, at least that's what I go by. In this particular case the bird is obviously very sick and needed to see an avian vet immediately, as I said, SilverSage said, as well as others...If KimChee had not taken her bird to the vet it may have died already... Hence our sense of urgency, which was 100% warranted based on the bird's symptoms.


I'm going to assume this is snark aimed at me, since I'm the only one who didn't jump straight to "it's an emergency." Please note what I actually said:



enigma731 said:


> If the bird is playing, eating, and currently not showing any additional signs of GI distress, I don't think it's an emergency. It's not actually that uncommon for birds to have unexplained episodes of vomiting that pass on their own. That being said, I would still see the vet ASAP, and WOULD treat it as an emergency if she starts showing symptoms again, including just being lethargic.


I'm not exactly sure how this is minimizing the situation -- what I did was to give criteria for evaluating whether or not the situation was a true emergency. I am also not sure how a bird that is perching, eating, playing is "obviously very sick." 

Once again, it's not the intention or advice I take issue with, so much as the tone. Emotionally charged/manipulative language is not helpful in a situation like this. 

Now, I'm glad that the OP's bird is getting care. If you want to further discuss my views on avian healthcare, feel free to PM me.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

Hey, I asked questions instead of freaking out. 

There's another thread discussing the diagnosis at http://talkcockatiels.com/showthread.php?t=146146 In the end, the conclusions was that "Apparently she ate something toxic" which is much too vague to allow a specific treatment. The bird spent the night at the vet but we weren't told whether they did anything while she was there. 

Another thread at http://talkcockatiels.com/showthread.php?t=146218 says she's taking medication three times a day but we don't know what it is. I have a sneaking suspicion that they're giving antibiotics "just in case", because vets (and human doctors) do that frequently when they don't know what's going on.

We'll probably never know exactly what happened here because it doesn't sound like the vet knows either. Enigma can correct me if I'm wrong here, but it's my understanding that acute poisoning would have done the damage within a short period of time (minutes or hours). It took a day or so to get in to the vet, and by that time a toxin would have already done whatever it was going to do. There might still be some treatment options, for example chelation therapy, but I don't know if they do that sort of thing when they don't actually know what happened. There's no indication that the bird had any serious organ damage that would need long term care, in fact they apparently ruled out kidney infection as a cause.


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## enigma731 (Aug 12, 2011)

tielfan said:


> Hey, I asked questions instead of freaking out.


Oh, true. Okay, I _guess _I can share the snark with you. 

"Ate something toxic" with no identified toxin is a diagnosis of exclusion, which means that the vet has ruled out other specific causes. But you're generally right about toxins. With the exception of heavy metal poisoning, where there may still be metal in the system to be chelated out, the only treatment for toxic exposure is supportive care.

I think it's also worth noting that this particular bird did not get seen immediately, and did not die.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

We're getting our information from the patient not the vet, so it's always possible that what the vet said was more specific than the information that filtered down to us. But the OP did a good job of reporting some of the possibilities that were considered, like lead poisoning and kidney infection. So if the vet DID find something specific, it's likely we that we would have heard something that was more specific than "apparently she ate something toxic".


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