# Emergency - Blood and Vomiting



## ante bozanich (Sep 19, 2006)

This happened all of a sudden. He started vomiting this morning. His crop is now empty but he is still trying to vomit. His stool is now solid blood. What I cleaned from him this morning was healthy and normal.


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## Pidgey (May 20, 2005)

Any history on this bird?

Pictures?

Pidgey


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## ante bozanich (Sep 19, 2006)

Sorry I am panicking right now. This pigeon is more than my child. I found him couple of years ago. He was very young then but he still can't fly much or eat on his own. Otherwise he never had any other problem. He has a mate. She is a PMV survivor with ongoing symptoms. They've been together for over a year. Right now they are egg sitting.


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## Pidgey (May 20, 2005)

Why can't he fly much or eat on his own? See, that says something--it's indicative of a very large problem from a patient history viewpoint. So, how and what does he get fed?

What the blood sounds like is some kind of hemorrhage (obviously) that's either mechanical, vascular, from a tumor... impossible to say just looking at the outside of the bird. Very bright red blood could indicate that the source of the blood is very close to the vent. With an awful lot of blood, it almost doesn't matter. It doesn't take a dangerous amount of blood to LOOK like an awful lot of blood as a dropping, though, because we all hate seeing blood that way--it's too scary. If he's truly losing a dangerous amount of blood, you'll begin to see his respiration rate go up. Normal resting would be about 30. Anything significantly higher that that could indicate anemia to the point of the remaining blood simply not being enough to carry oxygen to the tissues.

Pidgey


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## ante bozanich (Sep 19, 2006)

Thank you! I rushed him to the WBF late yesterday. They were kind to see him so quickly. The X-rays and a swab test of the crop didn't show anything clearly wrong. When we got back home, I saw one more dropping with blood, which you can see bellow. It was not red fresh blood as before but rather looks like it is clotted blood. The good news is that since this morning he seems alert, acting his usual self, there is no visible blood in his stool any more, and I didn't see him vomit. Today, I fed him liquid formula with some honey in it, but ordinary I've been hand feeding him "fortified daily blend of grains and seeds for dove." I do it by opening his beak and letting him swallow it. I've been concerned about small grains going down his glottis so I do perhaps end up giving him too many peas and corn pieces. He does drink on his own. He's been like this since I found him couple of years ago. He was a fledgling of the age when they fly but when I reached for him on the church fence he didn't move much even though he seemed alert and healthy otherwise. Initially I took him to WBF and later had Dr Pilny look at him. Still we don't know what's wrong besides a guess that it is some kind of coordination problem. He does fly short distances but it is basically going several feet up and then coming down. He also tries to pick on seeds without much success.

I think I may have overreacted. I didn't want to take any chances; just a thought of something happening to him scares me to death. Still, the question remains; why was there blood and vomiting all of a sudden and at the same time.


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## Msfreebird (Sep 23, 2007)

I would do a fecal float, looking for parasites. And also a culture & sensitivity, looking for bacteria. Has any of this been done recently or in the past?


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