Pet Forum / Birds / Parrots / August 2003

Our treasured little Cockatiel Harry started struggling to do poop on Friday
evening. Harry is actually a female, we didn't discover this until she was
14 years old. Harry had recently recovered from a foot infection some 3 weeks
previously and we wondered if there was a connection. The next day things
initially seemed quite a bit better, then a sudden decline. I scoured google.com
and we quickly decided to take Harry to the emergency vet clinic, and they
have avian specialists. After several tests the Xrays showed Harry was egg
bound with two eggs. Harry had grown extremely weak in the two hours we waited
for all the tests. We were advised to leave him there for an extraction the
next morning. They delayed the procedure until 2pm, and called us to say
all was OK, but the eggs had stuck and they were uncertain that all the contents
had been retrieved. There was possibly some internal damage from 'unsticking'
the eggs, but indications were that this was relatively minor. Harry had
been on antibiotics since the previous day, and would continue to be hydrated,
fed and monitored. Everything was looking good, but we were warned that we
still faced some dangers. Harry also recieved a Lupron injection to prevent
more eggs. About 16 hours later, having been alert and eaten without help,
Harry suddenly died at the vets. Harry had not had eggs for 7 years. Harry
had not given any obvious signals that eggs were coming, such as hooking
her tail and making that chuckling/clucky noise. There was no evidence of
eggs when felt for. We were quite surprised that our Harry, who would have
been 24 this December and was quite healthy despite a bout of gout a few
years ago, could be producing eggs. I would certainly welcome any comment
related to these events. Since Harry's death two days ago I have found several
web sites with good information, and I wish I could have seen them before
last Friday, since we would have been at the vets a whole day earlier. The
problem is I didn't find these sites without knowing the keywords "egg" "binding".
I was searching with words like "loose stool" or "diarrhea" and found less
information than needed to raise a red alert. I was particularly interested
to know if anyone had any knowledge about such an old hen having eggs?

Harry had almost 24 golden years, I had him/her since she was a little chick.
Harry was affectionate, loving, and the heart of our house. We both loved
Harry like our child, and the grief is so great. Our deepest regrets to all
those who have already faced this, and those that eventually will. We have
some doubts whether we did our best, though it seemed at the time we had.
We were extremely in tune with Harry, and even though birds try to hide it,
we felt we knew him well enough that on Friday night we were not overly alarmed.
I hope that maybe someone might take heed and learn from what we wish we
could go back and do differently.

Thank you so much for reading. You can see Harry at http://users.ev1.net/~hcage/main/index.htm
if you would like. I will be adding more information there in a few days
from now. Best wishes to you all, enjoy every moment you can with your special
feathered friends.

Annemarie