Peafowl health information: Respiratory

new 2 pfowl

Crowing
Jan 13, 2012
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Dunedin, NZ
Greetings peapeople,
Several months ago I was very lucky to get a rescued one year old IB male, Peggy (don't ask!).
He had some respiratory issue, and after doing research here, I thought he had an upper respiratory infection.
The people at the rescue gave me some medication that did not help him.
So I finally took him to a super great bird vet and found out that he has pneumonia.

I haven't seen pneumonia discussed here so I thought I'd share his symptoms and treatment in the hope that it might be helpful for the rest of you.

His symptoms are:
making a sneezy/coughy sound
shaking his head
sometimes when he shakes his head, fluid comes out of his nostrils
breathing with beak open
rattly gurgly sound when breathing, with beak either open or closed (sometimes louder than others)
*edited to add: another one of his symptoms was that he wasn't making any vocalizations at all

His symptoms are aggravated by stress; he is the youngest male here and is harassed by the "big shot," which makes his breathing more labored.

Other then a bit of puffed up feathers, he doesn't have other symptoms.
He eats, drinks, poops, flies, grooms, roosts in the tree, etc.

The treatment the vet prescribed is:
keeping him indoors and warm for 7 days
medication: three (3) 22.7mg tablets of baytril, twice a day, for seven days

Tomorrow will be my first day of giving him the tablets myself...good luck to me!

By the way, here Peggy is having a dirt bath....

 
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Thanks for the information it is appriciated. We usually refer to it as a respiratory infection which is probably why the word pneumonia isn't really used. Same symptoms
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You very lucky, most people cannot find a Vet who will look at a peafowl, I know I can't LOL!
 
Would you mind if I reposted this information in the peafowl illness and injury thread? And if you don't mind sharing their info, could I get the name phone and address if your vet that will see peafowl? There is a section on the thread for vets that take peafowl, and I'd like to add them. Good luck with Peggy- Blu hated the Baytril tabs. He was fine eating the other capsules, but he wouldn't peck up the Baytril ones. Had to pry his beak open and shove them down his throat.
 
Are the tablets coated? if so you could put them in a rasin or grape and they would eat them whole if you bird likes grapes like mine do. Can baytril be purchased without a vet? if so what is the shelf life on them, would like to keep some on hand just in case.
Guess i could just look the info up myself but better to have it here anyhow.

Gladf peggy is doing good, he's a beauty.
 
Are the tablets coated? if so you could put them in a rasin or grape and they would eat them whole if you bird likes grapes like mine do. Can baytril be purchased without a vet? if so what is the shelf life on them, would like to keep some on hand just in case.
Unfortunately not available without prescription, and not approved to be used in humans either. The tablets are HONKING big and not coated, or at least all the ones I've seen.



Mine were green, but looked the same otherwise. About the size of a dime. However, I believe your idea might work, since they are not coated/time release tablets. You would have to cut the tabs along their split lines, and put the quarters into something of decent size. I looked up someone putting it inside of blueberries that way, for their chicken.
 
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Thank you all for your well-wishes for Peggy! He's really a sweetheart.

Yes, Kedreeva, you can certainly repost this information if it might be helpful.

The vet is:
Dr. Christine Sellers
Cat and Bird Clinic
101 West Mission Street
Santa Barbara
California
(805) 569-2287

I don't know if any of you are in this area? But if so, I wholeheartedly recommend Dr. Sellers.
She's really wonderful. I knew about her because she looks at a lot of the birds and animals for the wildlife rescue.

She showed me how to give Peggy the tablets; I have to catch him and put them in his beak.
I did it this morning and the catching part was the hard part.
Apparently, birds are easy to pill, because you really just have to put the pill into their beak and tilt their head back a little, and they do the rest.
(Luckily for me, shoving down the throat doesn't seem to be necessary!)

*edited to add: these tablets look like the photo posted by Kedreeva, but they have the number 23 on them, and they are about 2/5 of an inch (1 cm) in diameter.
 
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She showed me how to give Peggy the tablets; I have to catch him and put them in his beak.
I did it this morning and the catching part was the hard part.
Apparently, birds are easy to pill, because you really just have to put the pill into their beak and tilt their head back a little, and they do the rest.
(Luckily for me, shoving down the throat doesn't seem to be necessary!)

oops, well not actually down the throat... into the back of the mouth and hold his beak shut, just like you describe :) Thankfully catching Blu was the easy part- he'd been in for surgery on his leg so he wasn't very mobile! Thanks for the info, I'll get it relocated to the appropriate thread!
 
Just wanted to update on Peggy's condition:

He still has one more day to go (out of seven) of his medication.
However, after four days of medication, ALL of his symptoms were gone!
wee.gif
 

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