- Hey everyone, Jamieleigh here from "BIRDTRICKS"
with my sun conure here, Lilly.
And today's video is kind of going off of my last video,
if you saw it,
about how to choose an avian veterinarian,
and then what to run away from, if you see those red flags.
Today's video is kind of going over,
all right, you finally found an ideal vet for your bird,
and now what do you expect?
And this video is to educate you
about the things that I've kind of learned
along the way of my bird care journey.
We all start not knowing.
And so there should never be any shaming.
And I know that a lot of that goes on in forums,
and so sometimes we can feel too scared to ask questions.
And that's never a community
or an atmosphere that I wanna create.
So I wanna see an avian community that's open and honest,
where we're not afraid to admit our mistakes
so that others can learn from them,
as well as share information openly.
So I'm gonna talk about kind of the experiences
that I've had with some veterinarians.
I've had experiences with non avian vets, avian vets,
exotic vets, kind of the whole, the whole thing.
For those of you that are new to the channel.
My husband and I usually travel as entertainers,
which hasn't been happening lately.
But back in the normal days,
we traveled a lot and we would travel with our birds.
And in order to do that, you have to get special permits,
you have to have pet passports, societies permits,
import and export permits,
you have to have health certification for the birds
and that's usually done 10 days in advance
of coming and going.
And so a lot of the times we would have to have a USDA
and US Fish and Wildlife come out
and inspect our birds and make sure that they were healthy
and we weren't bringing any sort of diseases or infections
or sick animals back into the country
whenever we were traveling around.
And so in this way,
we got to know a lot of different veterinarians
and their preferences.
Because just as trainers, just as people,
vets kind of have their own things that they like to do,
and they don't all agree on the best method of doing things.
So, I kinda wanted to make this video
to clear up a few things,
and get a few basic expectations out there
on what to expect from your annual exam.
Those of you not doing an annual exam
with your bird, please do.
Even if you need to travel,
it's just something that happens once a year.
I have had this done in numerous States,
depending on where I'm traveling to,
and by some really, really amazing vets.
It's a big difference, if you go to an actual avian vet,
'cause a lot of them can do all the blood work and stuff
right in house and have results for you really quickly.
Whereas non avian vets they can still take the blood,
but they have to send it out to a lab.
And then you're waiting days and days
to find out what the results were.
So it's not as efficient, I guess you could say.
So the first time I experienced an avian vet
I was blown away,
that they were reading me my lab results,
like right then and there.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so what to expect from an annual exam.
Number one would just be
that there's an interest in your bird's history
from your veterinarian.
So they wanna know,
where you got the bird,
how long you've had the bird,
did you raise it from a baby,
did you adopt it from somebody,
how many homes has it been through.
Just kind of a brief history
so that they can learn your experience level with the bird,
and just also get a baseline of how long you've had it,
so that their health history is fairly accurate.
If there's a lot of unknown out there,
it kind of goes into
what they're gonna find out about your bird.
So another thing is that you'll wanna make sure
that you've kinda given a brief description.
Now I've always laughed at these descriptions
that my avian vet, where it'll just be like,
what does the bird look like?
And it's like, well, sun conures tend to look the same.
But if they have some sort of identifying marks
like if you've microchipped your bird,
or if your bird still has its leg band on,
you wanna write all that down
so that they have it in their files and in their notes
that, that's your birds microchip number
and that's your birds leg band number.
It's just kind of an identifier for it,
when it comes into use later.
And also I have three sun conures,
so sometimes it can be really hard to tell them apart
when they're flying around.
Whereas if you get that leg band number,
you know, okay this one's Lily,
this one's Phoebe, this one's Tiaca.
So they do have some identifying marks as well,
as their little features.
But for a vet tech or somebody in the office
needing to be able to tell them apart,
the leg band's gonna be the most effective.
So something that I tell all of my clients,
all of the people that watch my YouTube videos,
everything is to be weighing your bird consistently.
This is so that you have an idea
of your normal weight range for your birds.
Some birds really fluctuate during hormone season,
and so to their appetites.
So understanding that will help you from freaking out
during that time when you do see that natural fluctuation.
Also there's a general fluctuation with birds,
from their empty weights, to their full weights
and a little bit in between.
So having an idea and an understanding of that
before you go into your vet's office is kind of nice,
but also if your vet is getting the weight of your bird,
they're gonna track it for you as well.
And if you're going at the same time every year
you can expect a fairly safe fluctuation and range
that your vet will be able to say like, yeah that's normal,
or no, your bird has lost too much weight,
or maybe your birds getting a little chunky.
They'll be able to tell you,
but more important than weight, I would say,
because weight is more of a tool
of kind of finding out if your bird is sick.
Just because they're prey animals,
they hide illness until they can't any longer,
which is usually when it's really, really serious,
and oftentimes too late.
But more important than that is the body condition.
And this is something that your vet can tell you.
When I was in Australia,
the vet there did a body condition
based on a scale of one to five.
Every vet might do it a little bit differently
but they'll explain their body condition numbers to you,
so you know that what you're trying to get for.
I remember listening to the body condition talk one time
and I was like, so am I trying to get to a five?
And they're just like, no, definitely not (laughs).
So they'll have their different weight ranges.
I won't say it here.
I have another video on it as part of my Patreon series.
Where I did a vet series
with veterinarian Matt Gosbell,
and he really goes into it way better
than I can do it justice here.
But make sure that you're getting a body condition number
from your veterinarian
on every single Annual Well Bird Check.
Also, just for clarification,
the Well Bird Check with the body condition
is just telling you if your bird is underweight, overweight,
if it's muscular, if it's atrophied.
They'll be able to feel everything as far as body condition
and be able to tell you like, yeah, the weight that you have
is a great weight for your bird,
or there'll be able to tell you, like
you need to put a little bit more weight on your bird,
maybe through certain vegetables,
through certain foods,
or certain amount of exercise (bird flapping its wings).
Oh, I thought you were leaving (kisses the bird).
What were you doing?
(mumbles) doing?
your back on that side? (kisses the bird)
Lilly girl, you're so quiet.
It's kind of a treat.
Another thing you can expect from your annual exam
is just kind of a physical check.
So this is something that happened
upon import and export of our own birds.
We would have a veterinarian come on and inspect them
and make sure that they're not having any discharge
from their eyes or neiers.
Do you wanna go somewhere?
You can go somewhere.
So they're just kind of inspecting
for obvious signs of sickness or ill health.
So, are their eyes dripping?
Or do they look like they're in pain?
Or do they have discharge from their neiers?
You know, is their poop all smeared up on their underside
or hanging there?
And whether they can't totally dislodge it?
How do their beaks and nails look like?
Are they overgrown?
Are they curling over?
You know, are they uncomfortably long?
Are they the correct, oh my gosh, what's the word?
But you know, like when they get scissor beak,
whether the alignment is off, they wanna check for that.
So these are all things
that would be done in the physical exam
where your veterinarian would be able to spot and say,
okay, so you're having an issue with A, B or C.
So the physical exam is really, really important.
Also, they're gonna be checking for like lumps.
Gosh, if you guys have ever seen cyst,
or like fatty lumps in birds,
it is awful, it looks so uncomfortable.
So they might be looking for things like that.
They're also gonna be examining
your bird's feather condition.
Maybe you have a bird that's starting to over preen
and you haven't noticed
and your vet will be able to point that out.
Or just the feather conditions looking kind of ratty,
and you didn't know that your bird should be taking a bath.
Just things like that,
where they're really looking over
the overall feather quality of your bird as well,
and making sure
that your bird just overall physically looks good.
So upon bringing our birds back into the U S,
they would always do these swabs,
where they would swab both the beak and the cloaca.
And that's just kinda basically your bird's bum,
looking for any sort of bacterial infections
or bacteria that they don't like.
This is something that most vets will do one or the other,
but you do have some vets that will do both.
I don't think I have a preference.
It's probably more comfortable for the bird to do the beak.
So the three tests
that my birds always get in an annual exam
is they get their CBC profile,
which is basically just fancy words for their blood work.
It stands for complete blood count.
And that's gonna give you your white cell blood count,
your red cell blood count.
And basically the CBC profile
is what detects illness or condition.
So that's why it's so important.
And that is where they draw blood
so that they can run these blood tests for your bird.
The other test that we are very accustomed to getting
especially when bringing our birds back into the U S,
is a bacterial culture.
But that will basically search for a bacterial infection,
that you would then treat with antibiotics.
Now, bacterial infections are so, so common with pet birds.
A lot of the times
we may think that our bird is being crabby,
when in fact they actually have a bacteria infection.
We just experienced this with a project bird named Sunny,
who had a bacteria infection for who knows how long
before we caught it, just by doing his annual exam.
The third thing is the Fecal Gram Stain.
So this is basically a poop smear.
So they take a sample of your birds poop,
usually there at the veterinary office
and they smear it on a slide and then go look at it
in a microscope, really good stuff.
Lilly, are you going somewhere? (kisses the bird)
So the poop stain, I guess you could call it,
is really, really handy,
if your birds poop is looking abnormal.
If something's funky about it,
and you're just like, I don't know what's going on.
I always recommend this.
But I recommend it even if your birds poop looks good,
because then you have something to refer back to
in your vet's records
of keeping track of your bird's health.
So a couple of ways that some vets will take blood.
I find that the more experienced vets
tend to prefer taking blood out of the jugular vein,
in the bird's neck.
Now this looks really, really scary,
but it's a much bigger vein,
and it's usually easier for them to get blood from
and get enough blood.
I had an experience
where a vet went for the vein in my birds legs for the blood
and they struggled getting enough blood out of there.
And it was just, it was a lot.
When you have to keep going back again and again and again
and poking the bird to get blood.
You are just upping the stress level,
which is going to most likely give you now
an inaccurate white cell blood count.
And it'll be abnormally high
because they're under a lot of stress,
than they would normally be.
So it can kind of give you a wrong impression
of your bird's health, by how much stress it endures.
So I have known that some people will just come in
and put their bird under to get everything done,
so that it's as minimally stressful as possible.
But I know a lot of people
don't feel great about anesthesia.
So it really depends
on what's going to be the least stressful for your bird.
My birds are pretty accustomed to this.
So as long as they don't have to be poked
and prodded multiple times,
they're gonna be pretty great about the exam.
I will say though, they got a little bit worse
after that experience
where they did get poked multiple times.
And I prefer a vet who's just comfortable with the jugular,
so that I know it's only gonna take one poke
to get all the blood that they need.
So then I think the last thing
that most vets are looking for,
is listening to the heart and lungs,
just to make sure there's no respiratory issues.
These are pretty common with birds,
just because they're living in captivity with us,
and they're exposed to things they wouldn't normally be.
So normally in nature, in the wild,
they would have fresh air all the time.
And in our homes, you know,
we are often doing things to our air to make it smell nice
or spraying things, or diffusing things,
that might make our birds feel dirty
or they might be inhaling.
We might be a smoker
and think that we're doing good by them,
by going in the other room,
and not understanding how much residue is actually on them.
So just things like that
will really bring to light what's going on with your bird
and its overall health.
I will say my recommendation
when going and getting your birds annual,
is just to go ahead
and get the blood work out of the way first.
That's the most important,
that's gonna give you so much data.
And you want it to be as stress-free as possible
so that you're not getting inaccurate results.
So I would say,
just go in,
have the blood work side of things done,
and then move on to the other things that can be examined,
like a physical exam and all of that.
And then talk to your vet about what your concerns are.
Or before ever taking the bird out,
you could always talk about what your concerns are going in.
But just keep it brief,
so that you can really spend your time chatting it up
and getting educated about everything
after your bird has already been through the trauma.
There's nothing worse than waiting in the doctor's room
knowing that you're gonna get a shot
and having all that time to anticipate the worst
and really build it up in your mind.
And our birds can tend to do that too.
They know that they're in the vet's office.
So you just kinda wanna get the worst out of the way first,
and then kinda go into everything that you're there for.
I recommend writing it all down.
Since I have multiple birds,
it can be hard to keep track
of what I wanna say about each one
or what I might be concerned with, with each one.
And so I keep track in a little note pad
and then bring that into the vet office with me.
And once all the birds are out,
or if there's something particular about one bird
that I have a question with,
I might take that bird back out
and just say, hey, you know
is this feather and coloring normal?
You know, I might bring in some molted feathers,
if I feel like some feather condition was off.
You can always bring in data as well
and bring in weight charts and things like that,
and just say, is this a normal fluctuation?
Just make sure that you have the data to back it up.
So, you don't wanna be giving a vet a full weight,
and just a ton of full weights,
and then it gets in the morning of the appointment
and gets an empty weight.
That's gonna be a huge fluctuation.
So it's gonna be a little scary.
So make sure that you're bringing proper weight charts in
and improper data in that your vet understands.
So you guys can kind of work on that history together
and make reasonable progress
and keeping your birds healthy (kisses the bird), right?
One of the feather condition things
that would come up for Lilly,
is that she's kind of over preened on her head,
and obviously she can't reach there,
so it wasn't done by her.
But this would be something
where I would just wanna tell the vet
like, hey, yeah she's housed with two of her sisters
and they tend to over preen her cute little head.
Can you show them? (bird chirps)
Oh, you're gone.
Okay, well, I was gonna show you
but apparently I'm not gonna show you,
she's embarrassed, just kidding.
But that would be something that I would bring up.
Or if you have a bird out of your flock
who isn't bathing as frequently as you want
and you wanna bring it up and just say
I can only get my bird to bathe a couple of times a month.
What can I do?
Does this feather condition look okay?
And just kind of get those questions, answers,
that you're doing the best by your bird
and really taking note of those things.
Lil, Little Lilly,
Lil, (bird flapping wings).
Totally did that on purpose.
You did that on purpose?
(chuckles) You're cute.
You're cute, will you show them your head?
So, this is Lily's little head, hold on,
Lily's little head.
So it tends to be a little over preened,
where you can see it should be a little bit more orange
than it is yellow.
And that's because your sisters
are just a little too enthusiastic about that preening,
little too enthusiastic.
So one of the things my vet might tell me
or encourage me to do,
is just house them separately a little bit more often,
so that Lily's head has a chance to regrow nicely,
and not be so over preened.
And it doesn't really look that bad,
so maybe they would say no big deal,
as long as she doesn't mind,
and they aren't fighting, which they aren't.
But just things like that,
you can kind of keep in mind
for advices that you might get from your veterinarian.
Well, thank you guys so much
for watching this video of me and Lily
about what to expect from your Annual Well Bird Exam.
If there's any questions that you still have,
please leave them in the comments below.
And if you work with a really amazing avian veterinarian,
please recommend them in the comments.
People are always asking me
who I recommend in different States.
And unfortunately I haven't been
to every city in every state
to know which vets are really, really great.
But word of mouth goes a really long way.
So if you guys feel awesome about your veterinarian,
please leave it in the comments below.
Keep in mind, if you cannot find an avian veterinarian,
the other vets are capable of doing blood work on birds
and then they send it out to a lab.
And as long as they can decipher it for you,
you're good to get an annual from them.
But ideally you're working with an avian veterinarian
because they understand the intricacies of birds.
Whereas most vets who are dealing with cats and dogs
are not seeing
the same sort of just minute differences with parrots.
They're just so sensitive in some ways and hardy in others,
and it takes an avian veterinarian
to really understand that.
So, teacher tone.
I know it's incredibly hard to source avian vets.
When I lived in Florida, it was so much easier.
And now that I'm in Northern Idaho,
my avian vet is about three hour drive from me.
So in a case of an emergency,
I would definitely have to go to a non avian vet.
So, make sure that you have a vet nearby
that you can use for, in case of emergencies,
that you're well acquainted with.
Who understands and is willing and open
to reach out to other sources,
even if it's that three hour vet that is away,
so that they can help each other,
and your bird has a fighting chance when things go wrong.
(mumbles) (kisses the bird) and a cute baby.
Don't forget to like and subscribe.
(Jamieleigh kisses the bird)
(upbeat music)