[Izzy101]

Hi all,

Dove info: female, 15 y/o, white/albino Barbary dove. Housing is in a powder coated patio cage. Water is an open dish changed twice daily. Food is seed mix with calcigrit, and fresh veg chopped into bite size pieces served in the morning. I put clean newspaper in the cage once a day, and scrub out the cage with mild dish soap and water once a fortnight.

Problem: my dove has been healthy her whole life until last year. She has been vomiting on and off, and is now displaying weird eating and drinking behaviour. Here's a timeline:

June 2022 - vomiting (traumatic flinging of undigested food out of her crop); diagnosis from Avian vet was trichomonas and yeast infection. Treatment was flagyl and fluconoazole. I have two parrots housed next to her - they had a faecal analysis and results were negative.

September 2022 - vomiting; cytology and faecal smear at Avian vet was negative. Treatment was another round of flagyl and fluconoazole.

October 2022 - vomiting; Avian vet recommended another round of treatment with flagyl and fluconoazole. She started drinking excessively and having watery droppings over 2 weeks. Avian vet did cytology and blood profile, the result was low white blood cell count. Avian vet also observed bruising on skin of dove when they went to do the blood test and blood test site didn't clot well. Avian vet thought it could be a bacterial infection, affecting the kidneys.Treatment was enotril. Fruits were banned from her diet due to high sugar content.

November 2022 - vomiting; Avian vet recommended treatment with flagyl and enotril. After treatment I gave her bird probiotics in her drinking water.

December 2022 - yawning behaviour at dusk; never seen her doing this before. There's a YouTube video of exactly what it looked like if you search 'dove yawning'. Reminded me of crop adjustment behaviour in my parrots. She didn't vomit or anything so I let it slide. Seen her do it a few more times since then.

January 2023 - drinking and eating abnormally. She used to eat and drink a lot and only a few times a day, now she eats and drinks tiny amounts frequently. The way she does it is strange as well - she gets the water or food in her beak and tips her had back and gulps, a bit like she's biting at the air (imagine when a cat or dog tries to grab a flying insect with their mouth). This is especially weird for drinking as she used to drink by putting her whole beak into the water and sucking the water in. She also has watering droppings on and off - mostly normal droppings but a few random watery ones during the day.

Bonus info: she has a habit of eating her own droppings if they dry up on the bottom of the cage and she can get at them. Dunno why she does this. She probably does it a few times a week.

Her general behaviour is normal. She's alert, coos for attention and preens her feathers.

Does she have some swallowing problem or a damaged/blocked food pipe? I thought it could've been canker, but she's been treated with Flagyl multiple times.

Thanks for the help.

Izzy

 

[Izzy101]

Flagyl dose was 0.14ml once daily, 14 days (I think only 10 days in September 2022). She stopped vomiting when she received treatment each time.

She didn't receive vitamins.

 

[Izzy101]

The flagyl isn't in the original bottle (the vet takes out a few ml and puts it into a small vial), label says Flagyl S Suspension. Can't get any medication without seeing the vet and given the amount of times she's been given flagyl I can't help but think that's the only one they have but can check if I need to make another appointment.

Will attempt to check dove tonight and take photos of droppings. They are fibrous looking, no undigested food/seeds. I'll take photos of solid and watery droppings (she has both).

I'll also pick up some bird multivitamin for tonight.

 

[Izzy101]

Couldn't get her beak open, she doesn't like me touching her head. There's no discharge on the outside. I can't be sure, but I think there was some yellow colouration that I saw inside the lower beak near the base of the tongue.

Attached are pics of her droppings. The water in the watery one has dried up already, but you can see the outline on the paper and the fibrous consistency of the solid part. It has a reddish tinge because she ate capsicum. The solid ones are fresh (on top) and older (on bottom).

She also has a fluffed up look about her since yesterday and isn't moving much from her main roosting perch unless to eat or drink.

 

[Izzy101]

Thanks for the advice. She has an appointment at the avian vet on Friday.

 

[Izzy101]

She has been to the vet today. There's no other avian vet where I live, so can't get any other opinions.

The vet looked into her beak, did a thorough physical exam and couldn't find any obvious issues. She's going to have an X-ray and blood taken on Monday. Vet is concerned there could be an obstruction in her digestive system or something pushing into it. That something I'm guessing would probably be a bad.

I've been giving her the multivitamin supplement in the meantime and she's been having calcigrit for years. She's been a prolific egg layer her whole life but the past few years she's only had eggs every so often and the shell has been soft. Would prefer if she didn't lay eggs and stress her body but guess she can't help herself.

I showed videos of the drinking behaviour to the vet, too.

 

[Izzy101]

Update on yesterday's vet appointment. X-rays were done, everything was normal except for "a few very small white densities on her cranial air sacs around the level of the syrinx...These densities have the appearance of fungal lesions" (from vet email).

She's on fluconazole 0.1ml once a day with review in 1 week, minimum 2 weeks (or longer).