My Button Quail is sick?!

[pajaro42]

At least, I'm more than positive that he is.

I knew something was wrong last night when I went to say goodnight to him. It was dark, so I couldn't see very well, but I could tell he wasn't in his usual corner. Today when I see him, he's sitting towards the middle of his cage. He's all puffed up and is lethargic. I am very concerned about him, what should I do?

 

[pajaro42]

Oh, I should also mention that this came about very quickly. While by the end of the day he was acting like this, earlier in the day he had been quite awake and alert.

 

[dc3085]

Puffing up like that is a sign that he is sick. Now what we'll have to do is figure out what's ailing him.

First thing I'd do is pick up some vitasol from the pet store. It's a liquid vitamin you put in their water.

Next thing is to make sure he is eating, when sick they'll go off feed. If this happens feed him meal worms, millet, bread, crackers, watermelon, whatever he will eat (within reason, no cake).

You're going to need to pick him up and inspect him from head to to toe. Check his vent, feel over his head to see if he has bumped it on the roof, check his vent and his feet for abnormalities. You'll also want to check his primary feathers (first few on the wings) and make sure he has lost any (there will be blood on the tips of the feathers and likely around the cage if so).

That eliminates the physical wounds

Clean his cage or move him onto newspaper or something where you can see his feces. When he poops come back with a description, that'll help diagnose hopefully.

Where is he being kept? What type of flooring? Does it ever get wet in his cage (ie wet shaving from him walking in the water)? Do you have chickens?

Answer those with as much detail as you've got and i'll try to help.

 

[pajaro42]

Thank you for the quick reply! I did look into the things you asked me too.

At the moment he isn't eating. I tried putting millet in front of him (as that is his favorite treat), but he wasn't interested in it at all. Actually, he didn't seem interested in anything. New update: he's very weak. Since I posted, the only time I saw him move was when I was trying to pick him up. He weakly tried to wiggle out of my hand.

I did pick him up and look over him. I didn't seen any abnormalities around his feet or vent. His head also seemed fine. As for losing one of his primary feathers, I'm pretty sure he did. There is blood in the cage, and on the tips of his feathers...but it all looked like it was rather old.

I have moved him to a hospital cage with newspaper on the bottom. I'll update you on what his feces looks like when he poops.

As for where he is being kept, as a college student living in town I pretty much have to keep him in a cage on my desk. His flooring pine bedding, but it doesn't get wet that often as he can't walk in the water. I also don't have chickens. As mentioned, I'm a college student living in town. He's all I have.

There is something else that I just thought of. I may have only had him for about nine months....but I don't know how old he was when I got him.

 

[dc3085]

With pine bedding sometimes they eat too much of it by accident or whatever and it can bind them up pretty bad. Hopefully he gets better or gives us something to go on. Watch for drunken looking or any sort of abnormal behavior. I'll check back in this evening.

 

[pajaro42]

Alright, thank you again. Hopefully I'll have better news by this evening, or at the very least something even more helpful.

 

[pajaro42]

Unfortunately, no more help is needed. He is gone.

The more I think about it the more I'm positive he died of old age, and there isn't anything you can do about that. As I mentioned before I don't know how old he was when I got him, and everything just happened so rapidly. Yesterday he was eating out of my hand and running around his cage as I read him the short stories I was assigned for homework...and today he's gone.

 

[dc3085]

I'm sorry to hear that. It's tough with these little guys, or any pet for that matter.

 

[bigredshaverhen]

So sorry to hear about that, you say u don't know how old he was when u got him? Did he get much sunlight?
what breed was he?

 

[buttonquailer03]

Hi, I'm new and joined because I have a button quail who seems to be sick. We don't know what because we are brand new to having quail, and have never encountered something like it before. We have 16 quail, who are almost two months old and started laying a few days ago. The quail we are worried about, named Quinn, is in a separate tank but close to the others, because she/he was being picked on. We moved Quinn out after we saw a little blood on her neck from the other quail picking at her feathers. After a while, we put in another runt and they soon became snuggle buddies. We saw that Quinn was getting slow and not really moving around a lot. She still eats and drinks but just dozes off in the food bowl with her feathers puffed up all the time. We moved the other quail out and just solidated her/him until we know what's going on and if we can fix it, or if it's contagious. Quinn often stands in the food or water, don't know why. They are living inside, and we just moved them from my room into the laundry room. They have pine shavings as bedding and we give them the highest % of turkey crumble, which is 26%. Please help if you know anything.

Thanks.