Hi,
I have a pet japanese coturnix quail. 15 months old.
She lives indoors. I only have a canary that occasionally goes outside in the balcony but he's fine.
The bedding is pristine, I spot clean at least twice a day, and change it every few days.
She has a nipple drinker so the water is clean too, unless maybe if she throws some bedding in the dish underneath and drinks from that. But I clean that as well.
Around a couple weeks ago, when I changed her feed, she started having diarrhea. After returning to her previous feed the diarrhea slowly started to go away. It totally went away and then it came back but intermitently, not all poops were diarrhea. She also had polyuria and drank more than usual. For the rest, she seemed normal and active, a bit hyper even.
Then a week ago she stopped laying eggs all the sudden. Still acting normal. Diarrhea up until now interminent.
I've been giving her pretty much all her life a canary mix seed for her to forage on the floor of the cage. Recently they've added some colorful vitamin bits to that mix and I wondered if that was the problem so yesterday I stopped with that and today no diarrhea.
But the bigger problem comes now. Today I picked her up and she can't breathe well. When she's normal/resting she doesn't make any evident noise, but when stressed she makes A LOT of noise while breathing. See videos. Please up the volume to max to hear the noises well.
When stressed pretty much all birds make some sort of noise when breathing but this is way worse than that. It's very clearly like she can't breathe well.
She doesn't have any mucus or conjunctivitis that I see, so I am guessing it's a lower respiratory tract infection, not upper tract. I haven't seen her sneezing so far either.
Her weight is not low. In fact she's been putting weight for the last 3-4 months not too sure why (only treats I ever give her are fruits and veggies). Her "normal" weight that she had most of her life is 260g. I think she's somewhat jumbo. Then she started gaining weight and right now she's at 324g. Although I don't know if from now on she will start losing. I'll be weighing her daily.
Today she also shows a bit more lethargy, although she still eats and moves around. So I guess she's been incubating a respiratory disease for the last week and that's why she stopped laying eggs. The problem is I'm clueless about what can it be, in an avian medicine book, it shows that respiratory diseases can be caused by pretty much anything: bacteria, fungi, viruses, protists, parasites. I have performed a swab of the opening of her trachea, her chloanal upper region, and another one of her throat in general. I've checked it under the microscope to hopefully discard some options and all I've seen is maybe compatible with bacteria from the size of it. It's too small to be anything else I believe. For sure not protist, let alone parasites. And as far as I know, it's too small to be fungi either. I've checked it with a decent magnification x100 oil, same vets and general microbiology diagnosis use. I attached a picture but I don't expect you to know, just in case you wanted to see.
I'm a scientist (physicist) and I have a decent microscope but I'm by no means a microbiologist. All the resources I have is my very basic microbiology partially self-taught knowledge, the avian medicine books, and a couple books about veterinary microbiology.
I have already spent around 400€ on her on previous vet visits for a totally unrelated issue, so really I don't know what to do at this point. I can see a vet doing a citology and an x-ray minimum, so that's going to be very expensive. Probably want to run more test than that. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do about taking her to the vet. I guess I will, but I really can't afford it at all. So I'm also thinking on giving her antibiotics (amoxicilin/clavulanate) and an antifungal and cross my fingers. I have the medicines at home and I know how to prepare the right dose and give them to her since I've done so in the past for skin infections.
I've also read that it maybe? quail bronchitis, but I've read too that japanese coturnix are resistant, so I don't know. And she doesn't have contact with other quails or animals in general besides maybe going close to the canary cage sometimes? If it's quail bronchitis there is no treatment it's just wait for her to clear it, since it's a virus.
Or aspiration pneumonia? A couple days ago she shook her head and spilled some liquid. But she's done that in the past and she's been fine.
Anyway, this are my questions for you:
I'm mostly interested in you hearing her breathing and saying if this is a familiar issue to you.
1. From the videos and the sound, can you recognise this respiratory issue?
2. Do you know what respiratory diseases can quail get while being isolated?
3. Do you think it can be quail bronchitis?
I have a pet japanese coturnix quail. 15 months old.
She lives indoors. I only have a canary that occasionally goes outside in the balcony but he's fine.
The bedding is pristine, I spot clean at least twice a day, and change it every few days.
She has a nipple drinker so the water is clean too, unless maybe if she throws some bedding in the dish underneath and drinks from that. But I clean that as well.
Around a couple weeks ago, when I changed her feed, she started having diarrhea. After returning to her previous feed the diarrhea slowly started to go away. It totally went away and then it came back but intermitently, not all poops were diarrhea. She also had polyuria and drank more than usual. For the rest, she seemed normal and active, a bit hyper even.
Then a week ago she stopped laying eggs all the sudden. Still acting normal. Diarrhea up until now interminent.
I've been giving her pretty much all her life a canary mix seed for her to forage on the floor of the cage. Recently they've added some colorful vitamin bits to that mix and I wondered if that was the problem so yesterday I stopped with that and today no diarrhea.
But the bigger problem comes now. Today I picked her up and she can't breathe well. When she's normal/resting she doesn't make any evident noise, but when stressed she makes A LOT of noise while breathing. See videos. Please up the volume to max to hear the noises well.
When stressed pretty much all birds make some sort of noise when breathing but this is way worse than that. It's very clearly like she can't breathe well.
She doesn't have any mucus or conjunctivitis that I see, so I am guessing it's a lower respiratory tract infection, not upper tract. I haven't seen her sneezing so far either.
Her weight is not low. In fact she's been putting weight for the last 3-4 months not too sure why (only treats I ever give her are fruits and veggies). Her "normal" weight that she had most of her life is 260g. I think she's somewhat jumbo. Then she started gaining weight and right now she's at 324g. Although I don't know if from now on she will start losing. I'll be weighing her daily.
Today she also shows a bit more lethargy, although she still eats and moves around. So I guess she's been incubating a respiratory disease for the last week and that's why she stopped laying eggs. The problem is I'm clueless about what can it be, in an avian medicine book, it shows that respiratory diseases can be caused by pretty much anything: bacteria, fungi, viruses, protists, parasites. I have performed a swab of the opening of her trachea, her chloanal upper region, and another one of her throat in general. I've checked it under the microscope to hopefully discard some options and all I've seen is maybe compatible with bacteria from the size of it. It's too small to be anything else I believe. For sure not protist, let alone parasites. And as far as I know, it's too small to be fungi either. I've checked it with a decent magnification x100 oil, same vets and general microbiology diagnosis use. I attached a picture but I don't expect you to know, just in case you wanted to see.
I'm a scientist (physicist) and I have a decent microscope but I'm by no means a microbiologist. All the resources I have is my very basic microbiology partially self-taught knowledge, the avian medicine books, and a couple books about veterinary microbiology.
I have already spent around 400€ on her on previous vet visits for a totally unrelated issue, so really I don't know what to do at this point. I can see a vet doing a citology and an x-ray minimum, so that's going to be very expensive. Probably want to run more test than that. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do about taking her to the vet. I guess I will, but I really can't afford it at all. So I'm also thinking on giving her antibiotics (amoxicilin/clavulanate) and an antifungal and cross my fingers. I have the medicines at home and I know how to prepare the right dose and give them to her since I've done so in the past for skin infections.
I've also read that it maybe? quail bronchitis, but I've read too that japanese coturnix are resistant, so I don't know. And she doesn't have contact with other quails or animals in general besides maybe going close to the canary cage sometimes? If it's quail bronchitis there is no treatment it's just wait for her to clear it, since it's a virus.
Or aspiration pneumonia? A couple days ago she shook her head and spilled some liquid. But she's done that in the past and she's been fine.
Anyway, this are my questions for you:
I'm mostly interested in you hearing her breathing and saying if this is a familiar issue to you.
1. From the videos and the sound, can you recognise this respiratory issue?
2. Do you know what respiratory diseases can quail get while being isolated?
3. Do you think it can be quail bronchitis?
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