Injured Pigeon in Toronto

[jazaroo]

Hi mhernan,

Well it does stay interesting. You can expect another egg in the next 48 hours. What I do with a pair of unreleasables I have, is to wait for the second egg, then hard boil them, as Reti has suggested, and returned them to sit. Just make sure if you do this the eggs are cooled down to slightly warm, before returning them.

I will have to rely on the others for help here on whether it would be better to remove the eggs altogether, or let the hen sit them. I will also ask other to please help out on the amount of feed you should be providing for the hen and juveniles daily, as with mine I just provide a seed bowl and keep it topped up every few days.

I am not sure of the timing on the return of the mate I have, but I am hoping sooner, rather than later.

All the best,

Ron

[mhernan]

what does boiling the eggs do?

[Reti]

Originally Posted by mhernan

what does boiling the eggs do?

They won't hatch and she will give up sitting on them after three weeks.
You won't have any more babies and have the cycle continue on and and on and end up with 100 pigeons on your balcony.

Reti

[mhernan]

yup, u were right. I just got home now and there lyes a second egg. I feel real bad about boiling them. I sure hope this is the right thing to do. Thanks.

[Lovebirds]

Originally Posted by mhernan

yup, u were right. I just got home now and there lyes a second egg. I feel real bad about boiling them. I sure hope this is the right thing to do. Thanks.

You did the right thing. There has to be some kind of control. Those of us that lofts full of bird have to do this all the time, or else we couldn't keep all the birds that would hatch.
The birds don't know the difference. They will sit on the eggs for about 19 to 21 days and then when they don't hatch, they'll walk away from them and with in the hour, they'll be mating and ready to go again.
You can't inject human emotions into these guys. They don't see the eggs not hatching as a "bad" or "sad" event. It just "is".........and they go on.
Trust me, it "feels" worse for us than it does for them.

[mhernan]

Thanks so much guys for the support. I'm boiling one egg now, and then I will boil the other one. It was hard at first because the kids were just looking at me (they've all been taking turns sitting on the egg).

I'm curious, once she realizes after 3 weeks that these eggs don't hatch, and after she goes off to mate with some other pigeon, is she gonna come back to my balcony again? And then i have to keep boiling the eggs all summer?

[TAWhatley]

Originally Posted by mhernan

- How much bird seed should I be feeding all 3 of them?

I'd suggest about two tablespoons each if you are feeding once a day. That should be sufficient, but I tend to overfeed and would probably be putting out about twice that amount

Terry

[mhernan]

well the babies (I mean kids) are learning to fly. I feel like a proud aunt or something. They are also doing something funny with their feathers It looks like they are moulting, I'm not sure, but they are picking at their feathers a lot and making them go "full" at times, like a shiver or something. I don't know.

In any case, mom is still with them.

[Lovebirds]

Originally Posted by mhernan

Thanks so much guys for the support. I'm boiling one egg now, and then I will boil the other one. It was hard at first because the kids were just looking at me (they've all been taking turns sitting on the egg).

I'm curious, once she realizes after 3 weeks that these eggs don't hatch, and after she goes off to mate with some other pigeon, is she gonna come back to my balcony again? And then i have to keep boiling the eggs all summer?

If you don't want her coming back, it's best to remove everything that she could percieve as a nesting spot. I would suspect that she might come back, but if she finds a new mate, then HE may pick the nesting spot. Hard to tell really.

[Lovebirds]

Originally Posted by mhernan

well the babies (I mean kids) are learning to fly. I feel like a proud aunt or something. They are also doing something funny with their feathers It looks like they are moulting, I'm not sure, but they are picking at their feathers a lot and making them go "full" at times, like a shiver or something. I don't know.

In any case, mom is still with them.

The kids (that's what we all call ours too ) are picking the sheaths off of the feathers as they grow out. Then the shaking or shiverying is to send all that "stuff" flying off of their bodies.

[mhernan]

Ooooh, thank-you so much Renee for explaining that. I don't have to worry then - yeah!

[jazaroo]

Glad to hear that Mom and the kids are doing well, thanks for the update.

Dad id stable, but still is still suffering from ataxia. I am hoping this will pass before too long. He has settled in a little and now preens himself occasionally during the day and still grumps and wing whacks when I change his cage. I will keep everyone updated.

All the best,

Ron

[jazaroo]

Hi All,

This bird has been with me for three weeks today, so I thought I would do an update on him.

All in all, he is doing fairly well, he is self-maintaining himself and he has gone from about 320 grams up to his present 345 grams. After the initial few days of good progress, in terms of him being able to stand and get around, although with some bad imbalance problems, after being treated for poisoning with the activated charcoal and supplements, his progress has kind of leveled off since.

He has issues with what looks to be muscle weakness, while standing he will all of a sudden lose strength in his legs and starts to collapse backward, but he does catch himself and manages to stand upright again. He can not perch at all, he will fall of a 3/4" perch immediately. If he over-the-shoulder preens, he will fall over to the side, as it seems shifting his weight on to one leg alone is too much. The same with wing stretches, as he tries to bare his weight on one leg to stretch, over he goes. I will say that I do think there are some very small incremental improvements with this, as instead of immediately falling over, it seems as compared to say a week ago, it now takes a second or two. Also, his gait is quite unsteady when he walks, however, there has been some improvement in this as well, but the improvements are, as I say, very slow in coming.

I have him outside for a few hours everyday where he helicopters and gets to exercise and hear the noises and excitement other wild birds around him at our backyard feeder, which he seems to enjoy.

Since I was not sure beyond an uncertainty that he was poisoned, I did start him on a course of Baytril just in case he was suffering from the nervous form of Salmonellosis, which according to D.A. Palmer in his book Pigeon Disease And The Vet, lists indications such as he was presenting as similar symptoms for this infection.

I , like many here, have had no first hand experience rehabilitating a poisoned bird, so I am unsure of what the length of his road to recovery will be, or how far along the road he will make it before the improvements stop or he is fully recovered. I have been doing some searches/reading and it seems the one reference I did find on Avitrol poisoning mentions improvements measured in the 1% at time rate. Mhernan, when you read this, it doesn't look like he will be able to make it back in a time frame that will allow him to rejoin his family, much to my disappointment, but he is safe and on the road to recovery, albeit very slowly mind you, but I am still hoping for a full one.

All the best,

Ron

[Lady Tarheel]

Ron, thank you for the "hopeful" update. From his picture, he looks very good and I think, although his recovery may slow in coming, he will make it. As long as he can keep those bright eyes, there is hope.

Thank you so much for all that you do for both pigeons and us.

[jazaroo]

Hi All,

Well, I feel this guy is finally almost ready do go home. He has been with me for a little over two months now and I must say that after his initial large improvement when I first got him, after poison treatment, it has been a slow road back for him. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, when I was reading up on Avitrol poisoning, there was a site that mentioned recovery improvements coming in the 1% at a time scenario and that is what I did find to be the case, at least with this little guy anyway.

Last week he started to be able to wing stretch steady on one leg, without falling over or faltering and tonight when I went to check on him I found him on the perch in his cage for the first time. He had tried a number of times in the past to perch and just did not have the leg/foot strength to do so and now does, without effort. The ataxia has resolved and only thing I now really see is now in terms of symptoms is a slight hesitation when he first hops onto his brick or off, but outside of that he looks to be back to normal. I figure I will give him a few more days to lock in his latest improvements and off he goes.

My intentions where to release him back to where I got him, but I did have a few concerns so I thought I would get some feedback on them. The first is that mhernan recently made a post regarding contractors coming to clean off her balcony and there where babies. I did not reply to the thread, as she PMed me and I replied with the same advice that was in the thread, but did not hear anything back.

Now when I got Davis (I started to name new birds after the street or area where they came from, this guy happened to come from Davisville Ave.) there where two juveniles still there with their mother, about four weeks old. The mother did lay another set of eggs shortly after I got Davis, which on our recommendations where boiled to stop any more new birds at the nest and I thought the plan was to clean everything off when the juveniles had fledged. I was surprised when I saw the contractor post as the original juveniles would been long gone, mherman had boiled the second set of eggs, so this must mean, I think, that the hen did take on a new mate and is still rearing them there. I did inquire into this in my reply PM as well, but did not hear back as yet. I am happy for the concern mherman has shown all along for these birds, perhaps work and life allowed things to go a little different than planned.

So I guess the questions I have are since the building where Davis lived is not a safe place for him to be, between the new war on pigeons policy at the building and him being poisoned in the area. On top of that, his mate has formed a new union, so would it be better to release him into “my flock”, they are about 5 miles from where Davis lived or let him go where he is from (what are the odds he will try and make his way home). I know we can’t protect them once we release them back, but this is the first time that I have had to perhaps release a bird back to a place I was unsure of and I want what would be best for him.

Right now he is not at 100%, but close to it, I could keep him another period of time and make up the final few percent, but I am thinking he is more than fine to make up the little that is left in the wild (if anyone disagrees please chime in, as it would be no problem to keep him a while longer, he just is starting to seem restless and I know what that means).

Ron