# Sticky  Ruptured Oviduct--A Case History



## Pidgey

This post is for informational purposes and is not suggested as a “good read” for anyone other than people who keep a lot of pigeons and are deeply interested in managing their health. It is in response to communications that I have had with another member who has been having difficulties with a hen relating to possible oviduct problems. It is provided to help others identify possible oviduct problems before they go too far. It is lengthy, somewhat clinical and almost totally devoid of anecdotal commentary. It would probably put most of you to sleep and I’m not kidding.

It was in the end of January that I returned from an 11-day trip and noticed that both Winter and her husband, Patches, were suffering pronounced weakness and had lost significant weight. I immediately brought them both in and ran a fecal to determine whether coccidia were present. They were in both birds in large numbers. There was evidence of serious fouling of the cloaca on Winter—her tail feathers were matted at the vent. I also felt that she had some kind of swelling or “fullness” in her abdomen but I couldn’t be for certain. Given that she had lost so much weight, it did seem out of proportion.

Patches had the classic symptoms of straight coccidiosis suggesting an uncomplicated treatment involving only Corid-treated water. His medication was 0.625 mL Corid per 8 oz of water. Winter posed a greater difficulty indicated by the mucoid quality of her feces. Her stools were very sticky and difficult to emulsify for the float test. I felt that indicated a concurrent bacterial infection at that time so I augmented her treatment with Baytril (I use a water-soluble version obtained from Quality Pigeon Supply here in Tulsa). So, her medications were both 0.625 mL Corid and 0.5 mL Baytril per 8 oz of water.

Both birds were in such a state that I tube-fed them Kaytee Exact for a couple of days before allowing them solid food. I mixed the Kaytee with the medicated water. I put them in the basement under a heat lamp shining over a board for a perch. They tend to park under the heat lamp in a case like that and if they get too warm they can move as needed to self-regulate their comfort.

Both birds got a lot better within a week. At the end of the week, Patches was ready to rejoin the loft so I took him out. Winter was better overall, but she still had some disturbing characteristics. Her mucoid stools persisted and she had an almost constant tremor. I tried isolating her under the lamp and it became obvious that it wasn’t a chill because she was quite warm.

In another week, she was still shaking sporadically but she began flying everywhere and pining to go back to the loft. I took her out for brief spells during the next week just to let her know that her home was still there. I have come to believe that it helps in the healing process if the patient can have some time to see that its world still exists. Even in the case of pigeons from elsewhere, it perks up their interest in life if they can sit and watch other pigeons. Too much isolation is bad for a bird.

The tremors never really went completely away but she certainly seemed strong enough so I let her go back out. The weather was typical winter for the Tulsa area—nights in the 20’s. She was out for a couple of weeks when I returned from another business trip and found her supporting herself with her wings while eating at the feeders.

She had relapsed so I took her back in and started over. I had to soak her tail in warm water to free up the soiled feathers. Her fecal was the same as before so I restarted her on the identical medications and treatment. She had taken to “hunkering down” more than during the first round, the swelling in the abdomen had gotten perhaps a little worse and there was an identifiably hard mass that felt egg-shaped and could be moved around.

After a week on medications, her condition had stabilized and the coccidiosis was over. Her stools had retained the mucoid consistency on a somewhat regular basis up to this point but they began to separate into a normal stool with an overlay of mucous. The overlay had a reddish tint so I took a fresh Q-Tip and worked to get a sample for a simple smear. The mucous did not want to adhere well to the Q-Tip (odd, seeing as how you normally can’t get snot off easily) so I had to roll it in the stool to finally get enough. 

I rolled it onto a clean slide and then used a blow dryer to dry the slide. Examining it at 400x, I thought I could see red blood cells. I re-processed the slide using staining techniques to make them more visible and confirmed their presence. Not enough to indicate anemia, but there was certainly something not right. Coccidiosis can produce bloody stools but it generally would not persist this long after treatment.

She was still occasionally shaking and was more and more reluctant to stand. I took her to the vet as well as that slide and a fresh-floated 30-minute fecal. The vet confirmed the blood cells, agreed that the fecal was clean and performed another type of fecal to gauge the ratio of short-to-long bacteria (good bacteria to bad bacteria). It didn’t reveal anything of significance. 

Upon palpating the hardness, the vet became concerned. She felt that it could be a tumor but that it would require a different vet to perform the surgery if elected. He wasn’t available and wouldn’t be in unto the next day for a half-day and then would be unavailable for three weeks.

So, we sat the next morning until he could squeeze us in. When he examined the bird, he said that cases like this were usually a 50/50 shot—if you open the bird there’s a strong possibility that what you see may warrant immediate euthanasia. There are some tumors that birds can get that don’t grow very fast and they’re usually not operable because you’re more likely to lose the bird than not. I decided not to.

Days later, I manipulated the mass and found that it could be moved out amost to the vent (well away from the kidneys). It seemed so much like being “egg bound.” That manifests in two ways—one where the egg is bound in the cloaca and blocks the feces from exiting the vent (that’s the really dangerous kind) and the other where the egg stops essentially in the uterus and doesn’t pass through the vaginal canal. I began to wonder if maybe it was the latter presentation. I irrigated the vaginal canal with mineral oil to aid in delivery if this were the case—it certainly couldn’t hurt—but it didn’t help.

(continued)


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## Pidgey

Within a few of days of the last visit to the vet, she wasn’t standing at all and didn’t seem to have much strength in her legs to stand. Since he was gone, I took her to a different vet that came highly recommended in the racing pigeon community. He heard her case history, felt the hardness and used an otoscope to peer into the cloaca for evidence of egg binding. He didn’t see anything.

And here’s where it gets rough: He looked at the bird and said, “well… there’s ONE way we can find out.” Holding her firmly he plucked feathers off of her abdomen to expose the lump. He then took a small syringe with a needle on it and plunged it into the mass. Withdrawing the plunger, he attempted to extract some fluid but only got a fraction of a drop, which he spread on a slide, examined and sniffed. Even he seemed a bit puzzled but he told me with no hesitation that surgery was going to be the only way to get to the bottom of it. 

At that point, he believed that it might have been the same kind of cheesy growth that we normally associate with trichomoniasis (canker). He further explained that the “cheesy growth” we’re all so familiar with is actually the product of the inflammatory process in birds and is not, in fact, a colony of trichomonas themselves. Think of it as the bird-equivalent of pus.

When we opened the abdominal cavity (I attended but did not assist), there were several (about six) loose shapes about the size of individual pieces of gravel like that which is used on gravel roads. He explained that it is not rare in birds to rupture an oviduct for whatever reason: congenital weakness, infection, etc. When that happens, egg materials spill into the abdominal cavity and eventually become a calcareous mass. They do not themselves contain bacteria but do provide a perfect reservoir for a bacterial colony to grow in.

The leg weakness was due to the bruising of the kidneys by the hardened debris. The sciatic nerve in pigeons runs through the kidneys and when they swell it affects the motor control of the legs, paralysis or weakness being the chief symptom. Palpating her during examinations didn’t help, I’m sure.

The mucous discharge accompanying the stools was probably expressed from the abdominal cavity back through the scarified rupture of the oviduct. Antibiotics can hold off peritonitis and infection of the organs for a time, but not forever because they cannot control the bacterial colonies within the foreign bodies. And the foreign bodies will not be re-absorbed into the host.

Upon closure, Winter came to in short order but spent the next two weeks unable to stand. I kept her in a towel folded into a nest with diapers (folded toilet tissue) under her back end. I changed them about every two hours, day and night so as not to infect the surgical closure. I kept her food in front of her and offered her water every time I changed her diapers. Hugs and petting seemed to be appreciated as she was the only pigeon in the hospital at the time.

She stayed on Orbax pills (a quinolone derivative antibiotic similar to Baytril) for 10 days after the surgery (the entirety of her prescription) and then the doctor decided that she needed to stay on antibiotics for a month (telephone follow-up). So we shifted to the water-soluble Baytril that I had on-hand.

Two weeks after the surgery was when she began to start standing up. It took another week before her legs were restored to full strength. I began to notice an increase in the quantity of the blood cells in the mucal discharge and a general sense of diminishment of her wellbeing. That’s hard to quantify but I know her pretty well. 

After a consultation with the vet, he decided to change her medication to Keflex (cephalexin, a cephalosporin derivative) for a time. I’m not sure, but the suspicion might have been that the discharge was due to a persistent kidney infection, which would likely be why he chose this drug. I have not questioned him about that. She did appear to get better, though. Her spirits and energy returned such that I didn’t see the need to keep her in the house any longer; she finished the last few days of that medication in the loft.

Over the next couple of months, some abdominal swelling had returned but there was no indication of hardness. She never seemed sick but I eventually began to notice that she wasn’t as energetic as a month before. She had gained most of her old weight back and it was difficult to tell if the abdominal fullness was more egg material or fat (she is quite fond of safflower seeds and Lin does tend to overindulge her). Since I had been watching especially for this indication we returned to the vet.

He palpated her abdomen and confirmed my suspicion. She was in much better pre-op shape this time so we went straight to surgery. This time most of the material removed resembled an egg yolk in color although somewhat thicker in consistency. I was surprised at how much there was—probably three ounces. There was also one piece of a calcareous formation that resembled the gravel-like chunks removed before. I opted for the removal of as much of the oviduct as was possible and so he ligated the ostium and the vaginal canal, removing the magnum, isthmus and uterus. The ovary looked too scarified to safely remove.

The ostium is a trumpet-like opening that resembles an orchid. A fertilized ovum (the yolk) is received into the ostium and passes to the magnum where it picks up the “white of the egg.” Next it travels to the isthmus where the inner and outer membranes are added. From there it goes to the uterus where the calcareous shell is produced. The vaginal canal is simply the muscular narrowing that helps provide the shape of one end of the egg and then dilates to allow passage to the cloaca. 

As the uterus is responsible for much of the hormonal interplay involved in ovulation, we are hoping that this will be the last time that evacuation of the abdominal cavity will be required, but that remains to be seen. Post-op medication was as before, a ten-day course of Orbax. At this writing, she has one pill left. She only spent two days inside the house this time. The first day she was understandably discomfited but by the end of the second day she was feeling “wonderful, thank you very much—now may I PLEASE go back out to the loft?!?”

They really are very tough creatures. Virtually all of the conclusions to be gleaned from this case history can be taken at face value where they appear in the text to this point. The one heretofore unobserved conclusion that I find interesting to note is that Winter somehow infected Patches with the coccidiosis. That is not the typical manner of getting coccidiosis as I have understood it, so it’s something to ponder but I do not have an answer at this time.

Pidgey


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## Skyeking

I'm changing this one to a sticky.
Thanks for the information.

Treesa


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## pigeonmama

Pidgey,
You are wonderful!!!  
Daryl


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## Lin Hansen

Pidgey,

This is great...(not what happened, of course, but the story.) I can't speak for everyone, but I found it truly interesting and very informative. My sister-in-law just graduated vet school and even though she does not have a big interest in avian medicine (figures!), I will be emailing her the link to this thread because she will probably find it interesting as well...plus it may be good for future reference in her work.

Thanks,
Linda


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## Feefo

Thank you for that Pidgey, and thanks for making it a sticky Theresa. there is so much important and interesting information there.

My Juvie has never been completely well and suddenly passed several small uneven waxy lumps that the vet could not identify under the microscope. We both assumed egg related and she was put on antibiotics, she has been okay but barren since , so I just supply her with plastic eggs to keep her happy. I subsequently read in one of my reference books that the unidentifable lumps area symptom of a diseased oviduct or the contents of an abscess of the oviduct. I assume that these are conditions that can also progresss to ruptured oviduct ? 

Cynthia


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## Pidgey

Cynthia,

I wouldn't doubt it. I just expressed EVERYTHING that I have (recently) come to know about oviducts. When we opened her up this last time, there were some things kind of like you describe--can you give a little more detail like size, color and shape?

I think that it's possible for them to go barren without them ovulating anymore but I sure don't know how many possible scenarios there are. I did a search using "ruptured oviduct" in the browser and found the part about the nerves and weak legs/paralysis. Give it a try and add "symptoms."

Pidgey


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## Feefo

Hi Pidgey,

This is only slightly larger than actual size. It was paler when it came out and darkened on exposure to light. There were 4 among her droppings the first morning, then more when I had her isolated. Some a lot smaller than this one. They had ab an outer layer as soft as the inner layer and of almost the same color. The lump at the end looks like a head, but wasn't.

Cynthia


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## Skyeking

Cynthia,

My bird Sasha just dropped one of those jelly bean looking things with a tail on it. It is yellowish and inside there is tissue and blood.

I described it to Reti, who's bird Whitney had lost that kind of thing. Her avian vet told her that was an immature egg yolk sac.

I'm treating her for infection as well as with organic (gesterone) hormone cream. Matters got more complicated because she had classic signs of coccidiosis, so she is on treatment for that. This bird has had no mate until recently and has been fine all her life, never layed an egg before, and is 3 years old.

Since she just started laying or trying to lay an egg, I'm hoping to keep further complications from developing by seperating her from her newly acquired mate. 

She is 5 days into treatment, no more signs of any weird droppings, and the wet cocci droppings are beginning to be normal again. She is regaining her energy, eating well, and picking and pruning.

I will keep her on the gesterone cream, recommended by my rehabber, and see if that will normalize what is going on in the oviduct as it balances out the hormones. Time will tell..... I have used this cream successfully with female with soft shell eggs, who didn't respond to any calcium treatments.

Treesa


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## Feefo

That is interesting, thanks Treesa!

Juvie dropped the "things" some weeks ago and has been okay ever since, but since we got her (she was a juvenile that Helen kept releasing only to find her soaked and starving afew days later) she has looked "odd", perching with her tail too far down and just looking slightly off colour so I think that there has beena problem from the beginning!

Cynthia


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## Pidgey

Treesa,

It almost sounds like the rest of the egg didn't get installed. And, to boot, it must have stayed long enough in the oviduct to begin to grow. At least she passed it instead of it becoming lodged in the abdominal cavity.

The only thing that I can suggest is grab a completely normal and friendly hen of equal size (that isn't making eggs at the moment) and feel around the back end and abdomen to get a real good idea what's "normal" (anatomy lesson). Then pick up the sick hen and try to compare. The second time that I had to take Winter in, there was a watery feel and it felt "bigger" than it should have. She's just plain "svelte" now and the bones around the vent are easy to feel. They weren't before.

Hopefully, the infection hasn't done that kind of damage yet and she'll just be rendered barren at the worst. Is there any mucous discharge?

Pidgey


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## Pidgey

Cynthia,

I doubt there's much difference between the two cases so you two ought to stay together on it before either gets as bad as Winter did. There's surely got to be something on the net regarding that. I certainly didn't see it coming with Winter, though.

Pidgey


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## Skyeking

Hi Pidgey!

She had the "classic look of an eggbound female" before she dropped it, so I gave her a dropper full of olive oil, and that helped her pass it, although at the time, I was expecting an egg come out.

I just picked up Sasha and I can feel the bones around her vent, as well as another hen I just picked up. I ran my fingers up her abdomin and it is solid and slim.

There has been no mucus discharge, just the green and white droppings beginning to form again. Pidgey, she is not acting like a sick hen at all today, hopping off and on the perch, cooing all day, making a mess of her seeds and pruning and picking. She is almost like her old self. She is doing her little hop and strutt dance as she coo's! She is a little flirt! LOL

Seriously, though, she has two more days of treatment for the cocci, and I'm keeping up on all the natural healing, as I have been tought to do, and colloidal silver for any infection that may be left. 
...so far..so good...

Treesa


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## Lin Hansen

Hi Everyone,

My sister in law just graduated with her Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from Tufts University and I forwarded this thread to her because I thought she would find it interesting. 

I thought I would post her reply here because she mentions a few drugs and things that I thought some of you might find informative in reference to this condition:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Linda,

I found the email...The write-up was awesome...Actually, I had a few cases in school with this and right away they removed the reproductive tract...But, then again, at Tufts, they have bigtime specialists and have seen it all...another good thing though is to give Lupron shots to prevent follicles from forming...And, soon enough, when I pass the boards, I will find a vet to hook up with that does dogs, cats,exotics, and birds..I will know more about birds eventually....As far as changing from Orbofloxacin to Cephalexin, the vet probably wanted to kill off anaerobes...Cephalexin kills anaerobes, Orbax doesnt...Just a thought...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, don't know if this will be helpful to anyone or not.....hope it is.

Linda


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## Pidgey

I'm going to add more writeup to this thread because of Pattie Cakers' current problems. Her story is spread out over a longer period than Winter's and is a bit different: It was in the first half of November of 2005 that I found Pattie Cakers ill in the loft. Immediately upon picking her up, I could feel a heavy and solid mass in her abdomen. I knew surgery would be required so I started her on a course of Baytril. Even though she hadn't lost a lot of weight and her keel was very prominent--the mass in the abdomen was making up for the lost mass in the chest muscles. This is the mass as removed:



And this is it cut in half:



This is simply a mass of the same buildup that you see with canker, although from a different cause. The mass measured about 2-1/2 inches long by about 1-3/4" wide so it was roughly egg shaped although far larger. It's likely that an E. coli infection occurred in the oviduct and this was the result. It wasn't something that was noticeable until the sheer size of it began to interfere with respiration, I think. It never affected her legs but it was also much softer (almost spongy) than the garbage that we pulled out of Winter that first time. Also, this came on much faster, I think.

At the time (one year ago almost exactly from this writing), the vet felt that the oviduct, while ruptured, was still in good shape so he sutured it up with Chromic Gut (an absorbable suture) and expected that she'd still be able to produce eggs. She never did and I have kept a fairly close watch on her until this latest development. I again found her showing signs of illness in the loft and picked her up. This time, I could feel a pronounced keel demonstrating significant weight loss but no hard mass in the abdomen. Instead, there was a lesser, liquidy fullness as well as a soiled vent that smelled bad. I brought her into the house and caged her to wait for a fresh poop sample. It wasn't coming so I tubed some Kaytee down her to help out. In time, she deposited a fairly large plop of some diarrhetic solids mixed with a lot of catarrhal discharge (snot). I did a fecal float, a wet-mount smear and a Gram-stain. The wet-mount smear was the first to process and I could see an awful lot of bacteria of different kinds including some things that were moving in the manner of trichomonads. There were also long rods (bacilli) swimming by at a fairly good clip for that kind of thing. I've only ever seen that in very sick pigeons so I put her on both Metronidazole and Baytril at the same time. The float came back negative for both Coccidiosis and worms. The Gram-stain came back predominantly Gram (-) which isn't good (generally, you'd rather see mostly Gram (+)).

I also put her under a heat lamp:



Warmth can be extremely important to a sick bird and it's my experience that a heat lamp is the best way to pump it into them short of an incubator.

The new information that will eventually be included will have to do with the possibility of a hen actually having a live embryo partially develop inside to the point of dying and then becoming a source of massive infection. I need to do some labwork tonight on the part of the (what-I-think-was-an) embryo that was ejected and then I'll firm this post up. I'm only sticking this blurb in here right now to make sure that this thread doesn't go into "Archive" status before I've gotten a chance to insert the new material (and this event needs to unfold a little further).

I'm adding a link to a necropsy where a pigeon had formed objects in the abdomen similar to Pattie Cakers and Winter:

http://www.pigeonbooks.com/cases/eggretention.html


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## Pidgey

Pattie Cakers had to get another surgery roughly a year and a half later from the first to remove more of the stuff. This time, it wasn't one discrete ball within the oviduct. The oviduct had developed a diverticulum-like (extra pocket) section with a mass in it as well as a few more in various little bubbles here and there. There were also "adhesions" to the intestines and in other spots. Adhesions are where normally separate tissues have developed scar tissue connections and the like. The really difficult thing about connecting to the intestines is that you cannot be sure that the removal of the tissue that you, by rights, should take out won't affect the other. This is because blood supply can become a tricky matter--it might end up coming from the tissue that you remove and going to a portion of the tissue that's remaining. In such a case, it could cause, for instance, a small section of the bowel to die which would be catastrophic a few days down the road. 

We treated it bit by bit and removed what we could. These are the removed pieces of which only one was viable tissue, the others being inflammatory debris (the disc at the far right is a quarter to give an idea of scale):



Dr. Weir only suggested Orbax pills or Baytril for recovery.

Pidgey

Note: Lately, my computer hasn't been showing the little images that some of these links are made into. Since other computers may have the same problem for whatever reason, I'm including the raw link here just in case:

http://pets.webshots.com/photo/2028220530073664377zeRlWG


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## Pidgey

I was contacted recently by a lady here in my town who was referred to me. She's got a rescued pigeon that has been her pet for many years. The symptoms that she described over the phone included the depression, gooey poop and a blob of stuff that could only have come from the oviduct. Sight unseen, I gave her some Baytril and Metronidazole with instructions for their use and dosing. She started that the tail end of last week and finally had a chance to bring the bird over about 5 or 6 days later.

The abdominal mass was obvious from the first touch. The bird's respiration rate was about 100 breaths per minute. The lady told me that she gets pretty anxious away from home so I told her to count the breaths over the next few days and chart it. The bird was back down to ~68 at home that day (4th) and was running 48 to 52 earlier this morning. I have seen this with these birds when they're responding to the Baytril/Met combo so it's falling pretty well in line with Pattie Cakers' symptoms and response.

The mass is every bit as big as Pattie Cakers' first time as well as the bird had lost a lot of weight. She's perking up pretty well now and eating up a storm. I had the lady get in touch with Dr. Weir to make an appointment and I'd like to be there if possible. So far, that's for 2:00 PM this coming Monday (the 9th). Personally, I'd rather see her put a little more weight on just to help build up some blood volume before the surgery if nothing else and I told the lady to call 'em up and suggest that as a possibility since she's doing so well. Anyhow, will include a follow-up post when the time comes since it's relative to this thread.

Follow-Up Note:

Sunday, five days later, the bird's maintaining a 46 to 60 respiration rate so that's probably not going to go down until after the surgery. She weighs 350 grams at this point and so the fattening up will be continued for the next week or two since the bird is in otherwise very good spirits. We'll try to get a weight just before and then just after the surgery to see how big the thing is.

Pidgey


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## mr squeaks

WISHING the lady ALL the BEST with her pijie's surgery and recovery! She will probably be a basket case worrying!! Glad you are there to help!

Please let us know as soon as you can how things go!

Love, Hugs and Scritches

Shi


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## Pidgey

The bird, Pearl, had her surgery yesterday. The lady and the vet agreed that it'd be better to postpone the surgery until Pearl gained some weight. Then the lady's mother got sick, the lady got sick and the vet went on vacation, all in sequence. So, Pearl had plenty of time to get ready. She ended up getting a combination surgery--removal of a really big mass (larger than the one that came out of Pattie Cakers) and removal of the oviduct as well.

She felt pretty crappy overnight but was walking, preening and eating this morning. Not real energetically, mind you, but it's looking pretty good. The resting respiration rate was down in the low 30s this morning and it had been running about 50.

Pidgey


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## TAWhatley

Thanks for the update, Pidgey! I hope Pearl is now on the road to a full recovery!

Terry


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## Maggie-NC

Pidgey, great news - some things make me want to cry and this is one of them.


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## Pidgey

Well, the 72-hour report is that the lady's got a new bird altogether. Pearl's doing some tail-fanning now that the lady hadn't seen in a very long time. She started thinking that it's been "months and months and months" since she's seen Pearl feeling this good. Some of these oviduct problems can stretch out for a very long time.

Pidgey


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## Maggie-NC

Great news Pidgey. Thank you.


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## mr squeaks

ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIC, PIDGEY!!

WISHING PEARL ALL THE BEST!!

With love, hugs and scritches

Shi & Squeaks


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## Pidgey

Pattie Cakers had to be brought in over a month ago because she was going downhill again. I really think she's just too willing to not eat and stay on the nest. She just gets too far behind in such cases. Anyhow, I caught her looking a little spacey and decided she needed to come in for observation. Her appetite and respiration were fine but I could tell she didn't feel well and she'd lost weight so we started her on Baytril and Flagyl.

After a 10-day course of Baytril and a 7-day course of Flagyl, we shifted to the Trimethoprim/Sulfa combo and held that for a full two weeks. Poops sometimes had that funny snot-like liquid that seems to go with oviduct problems. Occasionally, out would come a lump of stuff from her oviduct but they were usually a little smaller than a dime.

She's finally recuperated enough to pop out a couple of big ones. I expect that she'll REALLY start feeling better now. When I started writing this post, there was only one, but now there are two. Here are pictures:



(Gotta' go to the upper right and navigate to the next pictures)

Pidgey


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## TerriB

So glad she is feeling better! Good thing you noticed her being off!

Intriguing! Could the darker lump possibly be an embryo?


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## Pidgey

No, they come out looking like pure snot (super boogers, which is what they are, in essence) and darken as they dry. The second one's already turning dark. I'll cut them open tomorrow.

Pidgey


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## mr squeaks

Darn, Pidgey...sounds chronic!

Sure hope Patti Cakers will be OK!!

HUGS and Scritches

Shi


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## TerriB

Interesting - looking forward to seeing what is at the core of these lumps!


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## Janet

I found this topic very interesting and helpful. I read through the entire thing. I just posted a topic a few minutes ago about what I think is the same thing you've been talking about. My pigeon is only a few days old though and a hard lump is forming in her abdomen area. I had 2 others that had the same symptoms at an early age and died. I have a strong feeling this one will to. I'm going to make an emergency vet appt. first thing in the morning. THANK YOU soo much for this post of yours and for sharing your experience with your birds. I certainly hope that their doing well and you are an amazing caretaker.


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## Steel

An injured pigeon some times suffer from shock. This means that blood vessels become inflamed the blood supply,specially to the toes. These feel cold. To counteract this. keep the bird warm ie. in a box with a wrapped hot water bottle. The condition should not last longer than 3 hours. Bach's Rescue Remedy is helpful.


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## Pidgey

Even though I rarely get on here on here anymore (life's gotten REAL busy), I'd like to add an update. Winter (now "Milady de Winter"... Lin renamed 'er after watching The Three Musketeers and I don't get a say in it) lives with us in our bedroom now. She's got her very own 250 Watt heatlamp, and that really IS keeping her alive because she can't keep herself warm enough when the temperature's below 90 or so. She's very much a lap pigeon now and insists on regular skritchings.

One VERY interesting thing that I'd like to share at this point which will be of great significance to us as a group is that she'd developed PMV-like symptoms a few years back--mostly torticollis (neck twisting), which was episodic when stressed for various reasons. Flight was impossible. At some point, she developed some kind of eye complication either due to getting pecked by a male in the loft or putting her left eye down into the floor in an epileptic-like fit. I brought her into the house and tried topicals and less aggressive systemic medications like ophthalmic terramycin ointment and initially amoxicillin as there was periorbital edema (swelling around the eye).

That didn't work, and after a lot of consideration, I decided to try something that nobody (and I mean NObody) had ever suggested to try--I put her on a oral max-dose Doxycycline/Tylosin mix for a month-and-a-half period. It's been said that Doxycycline is pretty hard on the GI and she certainly lost her appetite. I had to tube feed her several times a day for most of the therapy... AND... she STILL continued to lose weight through it all. This was literally one of those times when "the cure is worse than the disease".

At the end of it, though... no more episodic torticollis, no more PMV-like symptoms--she was completely cured. After the end, she slowly gained her appetite back and started eating like a pig, gaining weight rapidly. BY SHEER COINCIDENCE, I ran into the same vet that did her original oviduct surgery in an antique store near Eureka Springs, Arkansas and mentioned how that'd gone and asked point-blank if he thought that she'd had a mycoplasma infection in her vestibular system (inner ear--where our sense of equilibrium, or balance, is processed). He totally agreed with the theory. 

The VERY important thought here is that they can have chronic infections that are synergistic (look it up)--I'm going to paraphrase The Big Book here as I can't find the reference at the moment: "Mycoplasmatales do not cause primary illness in the pigeon"... but it complicates or synergistically works with other infections (like salmonellae) to cause many of the symptoms that we see a lot in pigeons. That being said, it's very easy to coddle a sick individual pigeon literally to death while trying to "do no harm". SOMEtimes... the ONLY way out is THROUGH The Gates of H*ll. I'm sorry, but that's just how it is.

And, furthermore... my studies indicate that this EXACT same dynamic actually operates in us as humans. Literally. A lot of our physical problems (like some types of arthritis) have the EXACT same causes, even if usually due to different species of mycoplasmatales. Medical science actually knows this now, by the way, even IF they don't make it plain to US, apparently because we're a source of (exorbitant) income.

I used the formulary from Clinical Avian Medicine to dose her, and I continually adjusted her specific dose according to her diminishing weight through the entire therapeutic course. I utilized a 2 milligram resolution gem scale in order to stay very true to the dosing within a few milligrams. This discovery was more by accident than design, so I'll take no credit for forethought--I was really just trying to solve the eye infection at the time and the neurological effects were a complete and (very pleasant) surprise. 

For those of you who think that all (board-certified) avian vets have ONLY the welfare of the patients in mind and are NOT motivated by The Profit Motive and will omnisciently... walk the bird... AND YOU... through this treatment protocol (it's kinda' tough on the rehabber emotionally due to the progressively downhill condition of the patient) when it's warranted... well... I'm sorry, but you're dreaming. As bad as this sounds... you're HIGHLY unlikely (this means virtually NEVER) to get the advice to do this, nor will your vet do it him or herself. NEITHER is your own doctor going to put you through it for your OWN therapy for your arthritic problems. I can STILL remember listening to an interview on the radio in a parking lot in a rental car over a decade ago about the recently-discovered synergism of various pathogens to cause US our most common degenerative diseases... which I am personally NOW beginning to suffer due to my advanced age...

I'll be frank about this... I saw several of my good friends on here die of things from cancer to vascular-related diseases over a period of just a few years. TOO many. That is, TOO MANY for me to NOT seriously consider that a link existed between our rehabbing activities and our own health. ANYbody that knows me... even the people that seem to hate me due to some sort of "attention competition" that seems to occur on these forums... should seriously pay attention to this: YES.... we MAY as rehabbers... run a personal health risk in exposing ourselves to some of these zoonoses. THIS... depends on the individual (human)--there literally is NO way to reliably predict this. I'll say this for a certainty, though... if your personal blood oxygen saturation runs towards the high side, you're in better shape than those of us who run towards the lower. That's essentially the equivalent of saying that, statistically, the younger you are, the less this matters. And the OLDER you are... the higher the personal stakes are--Merry Christmas!

Pidgey


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## TAWhatley

Good to hear from you, Pidgey! Lots of food for thought in your post. Thank you!

Terry


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## John_D

Thanks for posting, Pidgey.


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## Skyeking

*Thank you for the update, Pidgey! I really appreciate your thoughts and viewpoints. *


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## cwebster

Pidgey, good to hear from you. Agree with your reminder to consider our own health. Am in the process of moving our pigeons from inside three rooms of our house to an outside shed because if hypersensitivity pneumonitis. So your caution is warranted. Take care.


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