Pigeon Hit by car

[LV426]

So I was driving home from work last night and I saw this pigeon flapping on the side of the highway and of course I swerve over and pull over and grab my shirt from my gym bag and run back to see if I can get this bird without getting us both killed. The first time he flew but only a couple of feet before slamming back into the concrete barrier and I was able to fling my shirt over him/her? and grabbed him up.

So now I have a pigeon in my lap. So I get him home and of course it was cold and rainy so I set him up in the hospital cage I use for various rodents that my cat brings home alive and let him warm up. I mean I figured if he died at least he would die in a nice warm place rather than in the cold and rain on the highway. He made it through the night so today I got a chance to access his injuries. I had made some calls today while I was at work but the vets were quoting $500-$1000 depending on the injuries and to be honest I could barely pay for my rent this month and the bird rescues I called refused to take a pigeon and said they would just euthanize him.

Well I know pigeons are tough little birds so I figured I would at least see what I could do.

So the skin was torn across the breast on one side and muscle was exposed but there wasn't any torn muscle except around the crop area, from what I could see. The biggest problem that I could visibly access is that there was a hole torn in his crop on the side of the injury.


So I get out my supplies and I scrubbed down the injury area with surgical scrub betadine and flushed the debris and seeds from his crop. I was able to pull the edges of the torn area of the crop and sealed it with surgical glue. (saw this type of repair on another site on the web).Then I took what skin I could and pulled that over the wound as much as possible and sealed that with the surgical glue as well. There's still some muscle tissue exposed so I just covered it in neosporin and wrapped sterile gauze around the bird to keep the area clean.

So Mr. Bird is awake and alert and seems to realize that I'm not trying to eat him. I had bird antibiotics, doxycyline on hand so I mixed that into his water and he drank a small bowl of water. I checked the wound and there was no leaking from the crop area.

Now there could be some other injuries and the bird does have difficulty in standing but that could be because of muscle bruises in the chest area. The legs themselves don't seem to be broken and the feet can grasp.

So I've set him up to be as comfortable as possible. I'd like the little guy to pull through but who knows. Anyway if anyone has any other suggestions that would be cool.