Preventing is better than healing!
Your car needs to be inspected regularly, and you yourself probably visit your doctor on a regular basis – the same should apply to your bird!
Our advice is to check your bird’s blood and cloacal swab at least once a year.
The status of the intestinal microflora is an important parameter in the diagnostic, and a comparison of the actual results of the blood test with last year’s findings show us how your bird’s health status has changed.
Rico has his check up done on an annual basis.
He knows his transport box well because he usually uses it for playing.
Parrots and parakeets tend to keep their illness hidden as long as possible in order not to show their weakness to any potential enemies in nature. Sometimes you will only recognize a bird’s illness when it’s already developed quite far. If you wait for a self healing process for a few additional days, the bird may be so ill that diagnostic measures like endoscopy or taking blood for analysis aren’t possible anymore because of the bird’s bad physical condition.
These cases are very critical from the veterinary point of view because the sick bird needs help immediately. Sometimes I don’t have the time to wait for important laboratory results. But without an accurate diagnostic workup a proper therapy is impossible. That’s why the treatment of those emergency cases can’t be the goal of my veterinary work.
Therefore it makes sense to examine even those birds which seem to be “healthy” to the owner.
Blood collection under anaesthesia
Another part of the annual check up is beak and toe nail trimming.
