Hi everyone,
My budgie Jeffrey has been sick since around mid-June. He goes through periods of seeming tired and quiet and will vomit up his seed. This is usually in the afternoon and then the next morning he seems okay - until it happens all over again.
We’ve took him to the vet near us who diagnosed a bacterial crop infection (way back in June) and prescribed a course of psittavet (water soluble medication) for 10 days. We followed this direction and he appeared to get better, but as soon as we stopped the medication, he got sick again. So we went to the vet again who gave us more of the same and said to continue the treatment for 20 days. Which we did. He got better again and as soon as we took him off it again, the vomiting started again. So then we went to the vet AGAIN and were given more of the same medicine and told to keep on it until it ran out. That was on the 20th of August. The medication was finished on Thursday so Jeffrey has been on normal water for nearly two days and has started vomiting again.
We have two other birds who aren’t sick - although from what I read they could be carriers but not actually sick from it. One of them does like to feed him, but we have been keeping him separate from the others since we started the last course of medication.
He’s a pretty fussy eater as well and is scared of most food that isn’t seed (he’s also scared of the dark, such a little weirdo) so I’m not sure whether a change in diet will work and the only way I’ve been able to get him to drink the medicated water is by dipping my finger in it and he’ll drink it off my finger.
After flicking through the forum topics on here, I think I have a rough idea of what the problem is but naturally I want to take him to get properly diagnosed. Which leads me to my question - does anyone know of an avian vet in the Central Coast NSW area? The vet we’ve been taking Jeff too doesn’t specialise in birds but it’s the closest one that we are able to get to. I suspect that we are probably going to have to take him somewhere in Sydney, but it’s a bit difficult for us to get him to these places (why no vets are open on Sundays I will never understand).
In the mean time, would anyone happen to have any suggestions for his care? He’s fine when he’s off water, so I don’t know whether it would be too bad for him to keep him off water and just allow him a little bit every couple of days, although that sounds really cruel - particularly with the weather starting to heat up. Another thing we thought of is to maybe boil the water to remove bacteria from it and allowing it to cool before giving it to him, as the drinking water seems to be the big problem. Or should we just go back to the same vet for the same medicine until we can get him to somewhere else?
Sorry for the essay!!
Heather