Help! Duck ate metal nut.

[jeepgirl13]

He has placed the nut in a spot where it is able to cause maximum damage: You will hit the nut with your lawn-mower-blade, accelerating it to the speed of sound, it will then shatter the kitchen window and topple over the milk-pot on your gas-stove, extinguishing the flame. The leaking gas will explode and send your house into a decaying low earth orbit. Your house won't burn up entirely during re-entry and its remains will crash into the White-House, where everybody believes it is an attack from Russia. The resulting global war will wipe out 95% of all life on this planet…
And all that because your duck ate a nut!!!

But the duck will be just fine

 

[DucksOhio]

(If you were being humorous -- and I hope you were -- I do apologize).

I actually wasn’t joking. I know hardware disease is a big problem with birds, my vet told me especially eagles and hawks will try to ingest anything shiny.
I had a duck who was treated with chelation due to a thin wire she swallowed.

Sorry if I offended anyone.

 

[Jpat]

I actually wasn’t joking. I know hardware disease is a big problem with birds, my vet told me especially eagles and hawks will try to ingest anything shiny.
I had a duck who was treated with chelation due to a thin wire she swallowed.

Sorry if I offended anyone.

did the celation help? i only read about it

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

But the duck will be just fine

Of course, ducks will be in the 5% of surviving species! Ducks are survivors!

 

[DucksOhio]

did the celation help? i only read about it

Unfortunately, no. I brought her into my vet because she wasn’t eating and was very lethargic with acid green poop.

An X-ray revealed a small metal wire in her gizzard. He treated her for 5 days with the chelation. He gave me updates every day, chelation, antibiotics, syringe feeding, as she wasn’t eating.

She passed at the vet clinic, but necropsy revealed a “ton” of tiny, undeveloped eggs in her reproductive system.

I feel part of this was my fault, as I may not have provided consistent oyster shells. On the other hand, she was a Khaki, these girls are bred to be super egg layers. Are we messing with nature too much?

I trust my vet, not sure if chelation treatment is really harmful, it was what he recommended.

I read a story about a Pekin who had like a $12,000 surgery to remove a whole mess of metal bits, like darn near a whole toolbox!

I guess birds are attracted to shiny things, and we should do our best to keep them out of reach.

 

[Jpat]

Unfortunately, no. I brought her into my vet because she wasn’t eating and was very lethargic with acid green poop.

An X-ray revealed a small metal wire in her gizzard. He treated her for 5 days with the chelation. He gave me updates every day, chelation, antibiotics, syringe feeding, as she wasn’t eating.

She passed at the vet clinic, but necropsy revealed a “ton” of tiny, undeveloped eggs in her reproductive system.

I feel part of this was my fault, as I may not have provided consistent oyster shells. On the other hand, she was a Khaki, these girls are bred to be super egg layers. Are we messing with nature too much?

I trust my vet, not sure if chelation treatment is really harmful, it was what he recommended.

I read a story about a Pekin who had like a $12,000 surgery to remove a whole mess of metal bits, like darn near a whole toolbox!

I guess birds are attracted to shiny things, and we should do our best to keep them out of reach.

you tried your best no doubt about that

 

[goldysgirl]

Do you know what the nut was made of? If it was made of or has anything like lead or zinc in it, you need to find a vet to remove it if it isnt passed. Their bodies treat pieces of metal like stones and keep them in their gizzard to help crush up their food. Thats why when ducks eat lead shotgun pellets they cause so much harm.

I had a duck recently who ate an old nail, and what i later discovered was known as a 'lead head' which is the top part of a roofing nail, and is large and round. They were two separate items,the nail was not the same roofing nail that had the lead on top, and the lead head had fallen off a totally different nail so only the top part was eaten. Anyway I had no idea she had eaten anything dodgy until I saw her limping one evening, and on closer inspection realised she was wobbly and off balance, and had pale membranes and was anemic. By the following morning, she couldnt even stand, and I was pretty sure it was lead poisoning, but the only bird vet at the only clinic which had the chelating agent that is needed for lead poisoning, was not working when I called the vet the next morning. The vet that was there wanted to take blood and send it up the other end of the country to check lead levels with a wait of over a week for results. I pointed out the duck might well be dead by the time the blood results came back, and luckily she agreed to give my duck a calcium edta injection that day to see if she improved.

I took the duck back the next morning when the bird vet was in, and he xrayed her and showed some alarming looking x rays with the nail in front of her gizzard, and the lead head in her gizzard. She was too ill to operate so I took her home and gave her edta shots twice a day for 5 days the back to the vet. She was still very sick but could stand a little, which she had been unable to do 5 days prior (she was walking a little wobbly when I found her at night, and by the next morning she couldnt stand at all).

Anyway, when the vet opened her up, he found that the nail, which was not part of the lead head roofing nail, and didnt contain lead as far as I know, had caused her stomach tissue to die, and he said so much of her stomach was necrotic, that there was not enough of her gi system left to be able to repair it after removing the nail. He said it was hard to tell how long it had been there but for at least a month - a month in which my duck had shown absolutely no signs of ill health whatsoever. And while it was the lead head that she had eaten that made her get very sick very fast, it was actually the non lead piece of metal inside her that killed her. She died under anesthetic. But the vet said if she had survived the operation he would have had to euthanase her anyway as most of her stomach tissue was dead and had basically disintegrated inside her.

If i had been lucky enough to have seen her eat the nail and lead head, I am pretty sure she could have been saved as the damage to her wtomach had occured over time, not instantly - it wasnt from the nail cutting her up or anything.

But that experience cost me almost $1000 for a duck I had to bury anyway, and taught me that you cant just hope they will be ok if they eat metal.

The vet gave me the lead head and the nail after the surgery, and both were smaller than they would have been when she ate the , so they had clearly sat inside her for quite some time and her digestive system was slowly breaking them down, and as well as releasing the lead into her bloodstream, the metal in the non-lead nail was damaging her stomach tissue and causing it to break down and die.

If you dont see a poop come out with that same nut in it, based on my experience I would say thatif you want to save your duck, you will need to take the duck to a vet and get an x ray done. Then find a vet who will remove the nut asap, before it starts caussing tissue death.

If i saw one of my ducks eat something like that in future, If had to, I would cut into their crop myself to remove it rather than let it get into their stomach where its probably going stay and slowly kill them. There is some instruction in storeys gude for raising ducks on how to do this - I've never tried, but i would if I saw a duck eat something metal in future, as from what i have read, its much easier to get a foreign body out of their crop than further down.

Sorry i know my post isnt exactly uplifting, and I hope i am wrong and your bird passes that nut, but I suspect it might not, and in that case youq will need to find a vet who can remove it, as soon as possible.

Don't wait because the bird appears well - by the time enough damage is done for the bird to get sick, it will probably be too late to save it (and if you can save the bird it will be a mich harder recovery and a much bigger vet bill).

On the up side, you have been lucky enough to see it happen, and not find out a month or more later, so you do have the opportunity to probably save your duck.

Ring around your local area and try and find a vet who has bird experience there might be one who doesnt have any specific quals ispecialising in birds, but who happens to have poultry themselves or just has seen a lot of birds, otherwise i guess you may need to consider making a long trip to the exotic vet.

If you cant find a vet locally who feels confident removing it, they should at least be able to x ray your duck, and send those x rays to the exotic vet and liaise with them, so you can get a reasonable idea of the prognosis and cost before you take the duck on a long trip to the exotic vet for removal.

Good luck please post the outcome of this situation for your duck?

I spent 1000 dollars trying to save a dog that got ill after a vaccination. Immediate attempts were made to save his life, and he actually died from liver failure after being treated with prednisone. He died alone, in the hospital, in a cage, with an IV running. I wish he had died at home in my arms. It has left me with a different outlook. I love my pets, but I will not put them through risky invasive surgeries. If I inderstand correctly (lots of animal and human healthcare experience here), surgeries of the digestive tract are risky and prone to infection. I am more of the wait and see type. I don't have ducks. I do have chickens. If one ingests a foreign object, I will chose to wait and see how the bird does. If it gets ill and is unable to recover without basic supportive treatment, or if it appears to be suffering, it will be humanely euthanized. Chickens don't usually accept weak and/or ill flockmates. They typically will begin to harass, peck and/or kill the weak flockmate. I am not sure how ducks deal with ill flockmates...hopefully better than chickens. And, living alone is usually not considered to be a good life for a chicken. I totally respect someone's decision to wait and see, as well as someone's decision to treat surgically. But, I won't be having any invasive surgeries performed on my birds and I feel it is a well thought out and informed decision.

 

[blackandtan]

All summer my dh works in the driveway on his trucks and equipment, and all summer I say “pick up your tools the birds like shiny things” (I free range, but not always by choice!)
One particular turkey-processing day I thought, “let’s look in the crop and see what they’ve been eating”, and what do you know? Each and every one contained a variety of sockets, nuts, small bolts and other small tools and things.
All the birds were very healthy, at least till I removed their heads, and didn’t show any ill effects from all the hardware they were carrying around. I’m not saying that it’s good to feed them that stuff, but I don’t think that it is necessarily a death sentence, (sharp stuff is different mind you).
Oh and dh was happy to get his tools back!

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Your DH is using quality tools which did not corrode. Dull Metal objects should not be dangerous, unless they contain poisonous metals like Zinc, Cadmium, or Copper. Especially Zinc is dangerous - even for humans - when swallowed, because it will be dissolved by the stomach acid. A little Zinc is OK and helps against Rhino viruses, but too much is really bad. -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc#Precautions

 

[slordaz]

So sorry for your loss, was more likely the internal egg laying that did her in. Why it's so important to know your flock, you will see if something is off if you are paying attention especially at fee time or if they are cooped when they are let out