Button quail seemed to suffer a violent death

[mcalki00]

Hello all. We just encountered something that may have been a choking? I'm not too sure what happened here & maybe someone else has experienced this before to shed some light on the matter. We have 2 that are old enough to be in a permanent habitat. The same two have been in a large cage with ample room & we haven't had any issues with them that seemed out of the ordinary. Each night we have the same routine where we turn off their light & cover their cage partially with a blanket mainly to keep the warmth in. We did the same thing tonight. Maybe about 15 to 20 minutes after we shut everything down for them I heard some extremely violent banging inside the cage. I haven't seen or heard anything like that from them before. It sounded extreme. At first it didn't really register with me because it was so out of the ordinary. Once I realized that something was wrong I immediately turned on the light & took of the blanket to find one of them lying there & I knew right away something was wrong. She was moving her beak open & closed almost like a fish would do out of water. I picked her up & held her but she didn't try to get away at all. She soon passed in my palm of my hand. Could it be that she choked on a piece of food? I don't understand what could have made her bang around the inside of the cage like that so violently if there wasn't something to cause her to do that in the first place. Has anyone else experience d something similar to this? She seemed quite healthy & active & happy prior to this, meaning that we didn't have any reason to think she was in poor health or anything else would be wrong with her.

 

[azygous]

Choking is a very real possibility. It sounds just like what a chicken of mine did when she choked on a cherry tomato. She went into a panic, running around, then flapping madly as she fell over. I witnessed the entire episode so I was able to grab her and shake the obstruction loose. She returned to normal and acted as if nothing had happened.

If I hadn't been there, she would have died, no doubt about it. She's still alive all these years later at age eleven years.

I'm so sorry your little quail died.

 

[mcalki00]

Choking is a very real possibility. It sounds just like what a chicken of mine did when she choked on a cherry tomato. She went into a panic, running around, then flapping madly as she fell over. I witnessed the entire episode so I was able to grab her and shake the obstruction loose. She returned to normal and acted as if nothing had happened.

If I hadn't been there, she would have died, no doubt about it. She's still alive all these years later at age eleven years.

I'm so sorry your little quail died.

Thank you so much for your reply. That's our best guess. It all seems so random.

 

[Pennys Mama]

Hello all. We just encountered something that may have been a choking? I'm not too sure what happened here & maybe someone else has experienced this before to shed some light on the matter. We have 2 that are old enough to be in a permanent habitat. The same two have been in a large cage with ample room & we haven't had any issues with them that seemed out of the ordinary. Each night we have the same routine where we turn off their light & cover their cage partially with a blanket mainly to keep the warmth in. We did the same thing tonight. Maybe about 15 to 20 minutes after we shut everything down for them I heard some extremely violent banging inside the cage. I haven't seen or heard anything like that from them before. It sounded extreme. At first it didn't really register with me because it was so out of the ordinary. Once I realized that something was wrong I immediately turned on the light & took of the blanket to find one of them lying there & I knew right away something was wrong. She was moving her beak open & closed almost like a fish would do out of water. I picked her up & held her but she didn't try to get away at all. She soon passed in my palm of my hand. Could it be that she choked on a piece of food? I don't understand what could have made her bang around the inside of the cage like that so violently if there wasn't something to cause her to do that in the first place. Has anyone else experience d something similar to this? She seemed quite healthy & active & happy prior to this, meaning that we didn't have any reason to think she was in poor health or anything else would be wrong with her.

I had that happen with one of my coturnix, it sounded like a flogging was going on, and looked like a major seizure, and just died in my hands. I'd thought maybe he'd flushed up and hit his head on the top of the cage but I never found out why it died. Nothing obvious in the necropsy. Sorry you lost one of your birdies

 

[2 many chickens]

Sounds like the death was from her bashing her brains out on the cage lid.

 

[FluffyFeathers97]

Small birds can get night frights, where they wake up suddenly and thrash themselves around. It's common in parrots/parakeets/etc most of the time but I wonder if that's what happened, and she hit the lid/side of the cage like 2 Many Chickens said.