Budgie with thyroid or liver disease

[tarinael]

Our budgie Winter has been giving us quite the scare for the past few months, and today's vet visit left me with more questions than I started off with. So I figured I'd post here and get your thoughts.

Comments

[tarinael]

I'm with you on the million questions. My husband was the one bringing him to the vet today, I wasn't there. And even if I was, it would've been such a shock that I wouldn't have been able to think of many questions to ask. The one that I can answer now is why she advocates separating him from the flock.

As far as I understand about thyroxine - it's a thyroid hormone, and it's a pill that needs to be crushed into his water. The healthy budgies can't drink it. (I don't know why I didn't put that into my post, I'm sorry, I'm so scatterbrained right now.) So he'd need to be separated from the flock so he can have his own separate water bowl. He could come out to play with them, but then the question of how do I train him to go to a cage other than their main cage at night comes in. They're not tame. They come out when we open the door, and they go back in when they get tired or when we start shutting lights off.

I have other questions, too. Why is thyroxine for life? Is it addictive? Is it for life only if it turns out to be his thyroid, or can he be taken off of it if it turns out to be his liver? What would happen if the healthy budgies drink that water? (Not that I think it's a good idea to give thyroid hormone water to healthy budgies, but I still wanna know. What if I confuse water dishes one morning and put the wrong one in the wrong cage?) She said that thyroxine is the treatment for liver disease also - why? What does a thyroid hormone have to do with the liver? And why does she use thyroxine for liver disease instead of milk thistle and the other options? Is thyroxine the only answer, or is there another answer that would let him stay with the flock - even if it's more expensive or less convenient?

I'll make a list of questions, ask them to both vets, and see if the answers differ at all between both vets. I hate to be such a skeptic, but I feel like I need to be.

[zandperl]

I wouldn't call it being a skeptic, I'd call it being an informed consumer. It's much easier to comply with doctor's orders if you understand them and agree with them. And there's always going to be mistakes, so if you understand the reason behind the directions you're given, you can better decide how to fix those mistakes.

One question about putting the medicine in his water though - I thought this was a really ineffective way to give medicine to birds b/c you never know how much of the medicine they actually ingest. Would it be possible for you to learn to towel/restrain him and use a syringe? Or is there another reason other than lack of tame-ness for administering the drug in his water?

The last time I had to medicate my bird (Kappa, dusky conure) they mixed the medicine with a flavoring agent that I administered by syringe after restraining her. She's such a smart bird though, after a few days she started taking the medicine voluntarily, I suspect b/c she figured out that it was what was helping her, though of course I can't prove that. By the end of the 2-week course of antibiotics she would come up to the door of her cage without prompting and lick at the syringe as I slowly squeezed out her dose.

[tarinael]

She didn't suggest any other ways of administering it to him. I was just wondering that, too... they drink so little. How do I know that he got enough? Isn't it a waste to use a pill just to have most of it get dumped down the drain? And for that matter, what impact would 5-10 years (depending on how long he lives) of daily thyroid water being dumped down the drain have on the local water table? There's gotta be another way.

My quaker parrot was that way with the syringe, too. The antibiotics were banana-flavored and he used to come up and lick it clean. He was so cute about it that I was tempted to buy syringes and put juice in them just to see him keep doing it after the antibiotics were over. I don't know why I didn't do that, actually, maybe I should.

As for Winter, I can usually get near them when I'm adding/removing toys from their cage and such. If a flavored syringe is an option, I could try to put it against his beak until he realizes something tasty comes out of it like I did with my quaker. I could also use the above juice idea to get them used to that now, just in case they ever need antibiotics anyway, even if this doesn't turn out to be an option.

[zandperl]

I've heard of people doing the juice thing before, but I'm too lazy to have ever bothered. :-P

Sounds like you're thinking this all through very well, and you're not letting the panic which I'm sure must be in there overwhelm you. You're doing the best you can to help Winter, just keep reminding yourself of that, and he's lucky to have you taking care of him. :) Hang in there!

[tarinael]

Thank you! You've given me some very good questions to ask, and they've given me other questions to ask. So I appreciate it. :) Both my husband and I are definitely panicking, but I guess all we can do is take it one day at a time. We'll see what happens!

[banshea]

I thought this was a really ineffective way to give medicine to birds b/c you never know how much of the medicine they actually ingest.

Indeed! I want to say that I was once told to medicate my budgie's water, but that was to treat an iodine deficiency and the necessary dosage was "more than zero". The other concern about medicating water is that it can sometimes encourage bacterial or fungal growth. In theory that shouldn't be an issue if dishes are getting changed and thoroughly cleaned on a daily basis, but I have seen stuff get really gross in a matter of just hours.

[tarinael]

That's a good point, too. They always find ways to get the weirdest things into their water dish. And Winter, the little clown... the night after he picked at the cyst and broke a blood feather, he somehow got a red pellet (and there are very few colored pieces in this food mix) into the water dish. I thought it was blood. Holy freak out session batman, I almost had a heart attack!

[calzephyr77]

You have some really great questions here! I have always thought that adding medicine to water was a poor way of administering medcine. I have a very wild budgie right now (Feisty) and our vet thinks he has the start of a tumour. It was quite obvious that the medicine was not going to go down the regular way, and after a little experimenting, I found that I could put the milk thistle on mashed peas, which he happily ate up.

[tarinael]

I'll keep that idea in mind! I could always, say, separate him until he eats the medicated food for the day, then put him back in with the rest of the flock. That's better than separating him for the entire day until he drinks medicated water. >.