OK who wants to play "what is wrong with this quail"

[bathtub]

What type of food are you feeding? I’ve had a double silver with some internal issues, she feathered very slowly, has purple eyes, is blind, and at 3 weeks old or so she stopped being able to stand. She would just lay they’re scraping her legs, unable to get up. I started giving her vitamin e and she could stand within a couple days but was still wobbly, would often shuffle in wheelbarrow position with head and chest on the ground, pushing with legs. Several months went by and she improved enough to stand most of the time, but wasn’t able to run or jump.

My husband bought me vitamin e oil that you can mix into liquids for human consumption, because popping the pills and getting it in her mouth 2x per day was a chore. She immediately went lame again and couldn’t stand, so I went back to squeezing pills into her mouth.

I had her on this super pricey feed that I had changed when she was a chick before she started going lame, I thought maybe the new food was missing something, but months on it and she didn’t improve that much.

last month when I tried to order the feed, their website was messed up and the lady at service wanted me to email her my card info, which I was unwilling to do, so I didn’t buy more. I had recently swapped my flock to feed I buy locally, but I had been buying the outside birds Hudson feed pellets from chewy.com. I had some pellets left over and I gave her those. Well, she’s up and running, jumping and flapping. Her feathers are more feeble since birth, which is why she lives inside, and she was always filthy and not grooming herself. She’s still more messy than the other sighted birds, but I don’t have to wipe her clean at all any more, and before I wiped her 2x per day and she was still a mess. I’ve examined the ingredients and I don’t know what this feed has that the other 2 dont, but she is “almost normal” now. I see her stumble sometimes, but that can also come from her blindness. She’s been jumping a lot lately which she couldn’t do at all since she was 3 weeks old, she’s now 5 months old.

Previously she received 1 - 400 iu pill every morning and night, and 2 - 1000 iu pills in the water every 2 days, shared by her and 3 others, with nutridrench also in the water. I first weaned her off the direct pills. Then the vitamin e in the water, than the nutridrench, it has been 2 weeks now med free and she’s healthy and feisty. Previously if I forgot to give her the pills or we went away over night, she would be falling and unable to stand the next day, even with vitamin e also in the water. Now she’s running and jumping with no meds at all.

Thank you so much, this is really helpful! And an amazing story - so glad she is feeling better now!

I had her on nutrena gamebird feed for her whole life until @Kiki recommended that I change the food a couple weeks ago. I picked up a bag each of Homestead Harvest organic quail layer and country feeds organic layer pellets (Which i've been crumbling for her). Unfortunately she won't touch any of them (including the old stuff). The country feeds is what I've been giving her through a dropper as a slurry, just because it blends up more evenly and is easier to administer.

The vitamin E is an interesting idea - just double checking, is your double silver a chicken or a quail? want to make sure I adjust the dosage appropriately if its the former. Can I also ask, what brand of pills did you use?

 

[FloorCandy]

Thank you so much, this is really helpful! And an amazing story - so glad she is feeling better now!

I had her on nutrena gamebird feed for her whole life until @Kiki recommended that I change the food a couple weeks ago. I picked up a bag each of Homestead Harvest organic quail layer and country feeds organic layer pellets (Which i've been crumbling for her). Unfortunately she won't touch any of them (including the old stuff). The country feeds is what I've been giving her through a dropper as a slurry, just because it blends up more evenly and is easier to administer.

The vitamin E is an interesting idea - just double checking, is your double silver a chicken or a quail? want to make sure I adjust the dosage appropriately if its the former. Can I also ask, what brand of pills did you use?

She’s a quail, I started with one 400iu gelcap each morning squirted into her mouth. She got up and improved to a point but not great so I upped it to 2x per day and she mostly stopped the wheelbarrow shuffle, but she eventually was getting strong enough to fight me giving the medicine, and would spit it out if I didn’t hold her head and neck up long enough to be sure it was all the way down. So, I started adding it to the water hoping I could eventually stop having to fight it into her mouth, and she seemed stronger and more coordinated, but if I cut back the direct pills, she would go downhill fast.

I’ve tried homestead harvest and among other complaints I have, my birds hated it.

 

[bathtub]

She’s a quail, I started with one 400iu gelcap each morning squirted into her mouth. She got up and improved to a point but not great so I upped it to 2x per day and she mostly stopped the wheelbarrow shuffle, but she eventually was getting strong enough to fight me giving the medicine, and would spit it out if I didn’t hold her head and neck up long enough to be sure it was all the way down. So, I started adding it to the water hoping I could eventually stop having to fight it into her mouth, and she seemed stronger and more coordinated, but if I cut back the direct pills, she would go downhill fast.

I’ve tried homestead harvest and among other complaints I have, my birds hated it.

Awesome - thanks so much for the info. I will definitely give the vitamin E a try. If you've got any brands you recommend for vitamin E supplements I am all ears - I'd hate to accidentally end up buying the homestead harvest equivalent of vitamin E!

 

[FloorCandy]

Awesome - thanks so much for the info. I will definitely give the vitamin E a try. If you've got any brands you recommend for vitamin E supplements I am all ears - I'd hate to accidentally end up buying the homestead harvest equivalent of vitamin E!

I bought the cvs store brand of gel caps.

 

[bathtub]

Just wanted to post an update in case its useful for anyone.

We continued giving her .15 ml meloxicam and feeding her slurry through a dropper twice per day (as much as we could get in her). I also started giving her a couple droppers of yogurt in the mornings, and in the evenings gave her some calendula tea (I also mixed up her slurry food with the calendula tea). Following @FloorCandy 's great advice, I also got her cvs brand 400iu gelcaps which she got one of once every morning (she *hated* them, and I could only bear to do it to her once daily).

We set her up daily in my office where things are just a little brighter and warmer than where she usually is, and also plugged in one of those salt lamps (I have a heat lamp but wasn't sure how to safely set it up in the office, and since this salt lamp is usually next to my bed, I knew it gave off a bit of heat). She snuggled up next to it for most of the day. I also put out her sandbox for her, and put a lamp with an old incandescent bulb over it, which kept the sand warm for her. She also hung out in there a lot. We put out different vessels of water mixed with a fairly high concentration of ACV (1 tbs per quart) which she would gradually drink more and more of (I also gave her some through a dropper during feedings).

At first she would only eat dried mealworms. I fed her more of those than I normally would just to keep her in the habit of eating something (plus I thought if we were going to lose her, she ought to have all the treats she wanted before crossing over to the other side). Every now and then she'd eat some sesame seeds, and gradually she became interested in cucumbers if we cut them up into tiny bits. I put different kinds of regular bird food everywhere - in two different kinds of feeders and also scattered it all over the ground in hopes she'd eat it. Here she is eating some cucumber bits (and funny enough she ate some radish bits, too - she'd never eaten that before but I happened to be making a salad and she pecked at one I dropped so I gave her some and she loved them!):

For the last week and a half she steadily started eating more and more sesame seeds and cucumbers and would go crazy every time we came in, asking for worms. Increasingly, although she wouldn't touch the quail food, she started incessantly pecking in between all of the floor boards and seemed to really enjoy eating all the gunk in there (I know, gross). I actually even tried crunching up her bird food and smashing it in the floorboard cracks to see if she'd go for that, but she definitely knew the difference and went for the sawdust/wood ash/whatever else it was she was finding in there. Maybe the wood ash was helping her detoxify or something? I did add some activated charcoal to her sand bath about ten days ago just in case it might help. Here she is eating some sesame seeds:

Anyway, we kept this up and gradually she seemed to get a little more energetic and seemed to be having less trouble digesting stuff. We tapered off the dropper feeding and medicating and just did it in the morning. Yesterday it was really warm, so we decided to bring her outside for about fifteen minutes. She immediately started pecking at the ground and eating all kinds of plants and bugs and stones. When we brought her back inside, she miraculously started eating her quail crumbles (although she still won't touch the homestead organics - I think I agree with you on that count, @FloorCandy!). I again put a little activated charcoal in her sandbath because--as a bird that has always been indoors--I am positive she was exposed to all kinds of things she's never been exposed to before.

It was a risk to expose her to different pathogens to which she hasn't developed an immunity, but the experience seemed to do her a lot of good. Since yesterday morning she's been eating and drinking entirely on her own, snarfing down the feed crumbles, and running around mostly like normal. We did give her the meloxicam this morning but didn't dropper feed or water her. She's still not back to her normal self, and will still puff up a bit and look a little sleepy/droopy, but then will perk out of it as soon as we engage with her. Our plan is to keep taking her outside in longer and longer intervals as weather allows, taper off the treats and meloxicam, and make sure she's still eating bird food and drinking. in hopes she will either continue to be comfortable, or if we are very lucky, make a full recovery.

The main thing I'm still noticing is that she continues to seem uncomfortable putting weight on her left leg. Again - I can't find anything at all wrong with the leg or the foot, and neither could the vet, so I'm not sure what's going on there. I was thinking of making her a cold infusion of shredded marshmallow root, which creates a mucilaginous drink that can help inflamed joints and digestion in humans, and could maybe help a bird? I'm not finding anything to suggest it could hurt a bird so it seems like it's worth a shot. Does anyone know of any reasons why I shouldn't give a quail marshmallow root?

Anyway, definitely not out of the woods yet, but I always appreciate when people post updates to their forum questions, so I thought I'd do the same.

 

[topochico225]

Just wanted to post an update in case its useful for anyone.

We continued giving her .15 ml meloxicam and feeding her slurry through a dropper twice per day (as much as we could get in her). I also started giving her a couple droppers of yogurt in the mornings, and in the evenings gave her some calendula tea (I also mixed up her slurry food with the calendula tea). Following @FloorCandy 's great advice, I also got her cvs brand 400iu gelcaps which she got one of once every morning (she *hated* them, and I could only bear to do it to her once daily).

We set her up daily in my office where things are just a little brighter and warmer than where she usually is, and also plugged in one of those salt lamps (I have a heat lamp but wasn't sure how to safely set it up in the office, and since this salt lamp is usually next to my bed, I knew it gave off a bit of heat). She snuggled up next to it for most of the day. I also put out her sandbox for her, and put a lamp with an old incandescent bulb over it, which kept the sand warm for her. She also hung out in there a lot. We put out different vessels of water mixed with a fairly high concentration of ACV (1 tbs per quart) which she would gradually drink more and more of (I also gave her some through a dropper during feedings).

At first she would only eat dried mealworms. I fed her more of those than I normally would just to keep her in the habit of eating something (plus I thought if we were going to lose her, she ought to have all the treats she wanted before crossing over to the other side). Every now and then she'd eat some sesame seeds, and gradually she became interested in cucumbers if we cut them up into tiny bits. I put different kinds of regular bird food everywhere - in two different kinds of feeders and also scattered it all over the ground in hopes she'd eat it. Here she is eating some cucumber bits (and funny enough she ate some radish bits, too - she'd never eaten that before but I happened to be making a salad and she pecked at one I dropped so I gave her some and she loved them!):View attachment 2589221


For the last week and a half she steadily started eating more and more sesame seeds and cucumbers and would go crazy every time we came in, asking for worms. Increasingly, although she wouldn't touch the quail food, she started incessantly pecking in between all of the floor boards and seemed to really enjoy eating all the gunk in there (I know, gross). I actually even tried crunching up her bird food and smashing it in the floorboard cracks to see if she'd go for that, but she definitely knew the difference and went for the sawdust/wood ash/whatever else it was she was finding in there. Maybe the wood ash was helping her detoxify or something? I did add some activated charcoal to her sand bath about ten days ago just in case it might help. Here she is eating some sesame seeds:

View attachment 2589225
View attachment 2589235
Anyway, we kept this up and gradually she seemed to get a little more energetic and seemed to be having less trouble digesting stuff. We tapered off the dropper feeding and medicating and just did it in the morning. Yesterday it was really warm, so we decided to bring her outside for about fifteen minutes. She immediately started pecking at the ground and eating all kinds of plants and bugs and stones. When we brought her back inside, she miraculously started eating her quail crumbles (although she still won't touch the homestead organics - I think I agree with you on that count, @FloorCandy!). I again put a little activated charcoal in her sandbath because--as a bird that has always been indoors--I am positive she was exposed to all kinds of things she's never been exposed to before.

It was a risk to expose her to different pathogens to which she hasn't developed an immunity, but the experience seemed to do her a lot of good. Since yesterday morning she's been eating and drinking entirely on her own, snarfing down the feed crumbles, and running around mostly like normal. We did give her the meloxicam this morning but didn't dropper feed or water her. She's still not back to her normal self, and will still puff up a bit and look a little sleepy/droopy, but then will perk out of it as soon as we engage with her. Our plan is to keep taking her outside in longer and longer intervals as weather allows, taper off the treats and meloxicam, and make sure she's still eating bird food and drinking. in hopes she will either continue to be comfortable, or if we are very lucky, make a full recovery.

The main thing I'm still noticing is that she continues to seem uncomfortable putting weight on her left leg. Again - I can't find anything at all wrong with the leg or the foot, and neither could the vet, so I'm not sure what's going on there. I was thinking of making her a cold infusion of shredded marshmallow root, which creates a mucilaginous drink that can help inflamed joints and digestion in humans, and could maybe help a bird? I'm not finding anything to suggest it could hurt a bird so it seems like it's worth a shot. Does anyone know of any reasons why I shouldn't give a quail marshmallow root?

Anyway, definitely not out of the woods yet, but I always appreciate when people post updates to their forum questions, so I thought I'd do the same.

I think marshmallow root should be fine. I did a quick bit of research, and dried powdered marshmallow root is used in some kinds of quail feed. Really cool to see you using natural medications! I hope your sweet girl ends up okay.

 

[FloorCandy]

Just wanted to post an update in case its useful for anyone.

We continued giving her .15 ml meloxicam and feeding her slurry through a dropper twice per day (as much as we could get in her). I also started giving her a couple droppers of yogurt in the mornings, and in the evenings gave her some calendula tea (I also mixed up her slurry food with the calendula tea). Following @FloorCandy 's great advice, I also got her cvs brand 400iu gelcaps which she got one of once every morning (she *hated* them, and I could only bear to do it to her once daily).

We set her up daily in my office where things are just a little brighter and warmer than where she usually is, and also plugged in one of those salt lamps (I have a heat lamp but wasn't sure how to safely set it up in the office, and since this salt lamp is usually next to my bed, I knew it gave off a bit of heat). She snuggled up next to it for most of the day. I also put out her sandbox for her, and put a lamp with an old incandescent bulb over it, which kept the sand warm for her. She also hung out in there a lot. We put out different vessels of water mixed with a fairly high concentration of ACV (1 tbs per quart) which she would gradually drink more and more of (I also gave her some through a dropper during feedings).

At first she would only eat dried mealworms. I fed her more of those than I normally would just to keep her in the habit of eating something (plus I thought if we were going to lose her, she ought to have all the treats she wanted before crossing over to the other side). Every now and then she'd eat some sesame seeds, and gradually she became interested in cucumbers if we cut them up into tiny bits. I put different kinds of regular bird food everywhere - in two different kinds of feeders and also scattered it all over the ground in hopes she'd eat it. Here she is eating some cucumber bits (and funny enough she ate some radish bits, too - she'd never eaten that before but I happened to be making a salad and she pecked at one I dropped so I gave her some and she loved them!):View attachment 2589221


For the last week and a half she steadily started eating more and more sesame seeds and cucumbers and would go crazy every time we came in, asking for worms. Increasingly, although she wouldn't touch the quail food, she started incessantly pecking in between all of the floor boards and seemed to really enjoy eating all the gunk in there (I know, gross). I actually even tried crunching up her bird food and smashing it in the floorboard cracks to see if she'd go for that, but she definitely knew the difference and went for the sawdust/wood ash/whatever else it was she was finding in there. Maybe the wood ash was helping her detoxify or something? I did add some activated charcoal to her sand bath about ten days ago just in case it might help. Here she is eating some sesame seeds:

View attachment 2589225
View attachment 2589235
Anyway, we kept this up and gradually she seemed to get a little more energetic and seemed to be having less trouble digesting stuff. We tapered off the dropper feeding and medicating and just did it in the morning. Yesterday it was really warm, so we decided to bring her outside for about fifteen minutes. She immediately started pecking at the ground and eating all kinds of plants and bugs and stones. When we brought her back inside, she miraculously started eating her quail crumbles (although she still won't touch the homestead organics - I think I agree with you on that count, @FloorCandy!). I again put a little activated charcoal in her sandbath because--as a bird that has always been indoors--I am positive she was exposed to all kinds of things she's never been exposed to before.

It was a risk to expose her to different pathogens to which she hasn't developed an immunity, but the experience seemed to do her a lot of good. Since yesterday morning she's been eating and drinking entirely on her own, snarfing down the feed crumbles, and running around mostly like normal. We did give her the meloxicam this morning but didn't dropper feed or water her. She's still not back to her normal self, and will still puff up a bit and look a little sleepy/droopy, but then will perk out of it as soon as we engage with her. Our plan is to keep taking her outside in longer and longer intervals as weather allows, taper off the treats and meloxicam, and make sure she's still eating bird food and drinking. in hopes she will either continue to be comfortable, or if we are very lucky, make a full recovery.

The main thing I'm still noticing is that she continues to seem uncomfortable putting weight on her left leg. Again - I can't find anything at all wrong with the leg or the foot, and neither could the vet, so I'm not sure what's going on there. I was thinking of making her a cold infusion of shredded marshmallow root, which creates a mucilaginous drink that can help inflamed joints and digestion in humans, and could maybe help a bird? I'm not finding anything to suggest it could hurt a bird so it seems like it's worth a shot. Does anyone know of any reasons why I shouldn't give a quail marshmallow root?

Anyway, definitely not out of the woods yet, but I always appreciate when people post updates to their forum questions, so I thought I'd do the same.

If you’ve already bought 50 lbs of the homestead harvest, you can try fermenting it with water, some of mine accepted the sour slop more readily than the dry feed, plus the fermenting made the poop smell less, and the poop from homestead harvest was pretty stinky. My quail all really liked Hudson feed brand game bird feed which I ordered from chewy, and they eat the southern states brand, but prefer the Hudson. They don’t like anything about homestead harvest, but I think they prefer Hudson over southern states because they like pellets vs crumbles.

 

[sscaria]

Hello dear friends.

Posting with a complicated quail situation - anyone with time and interest wanting to weigh in is most very welcome to do so. I'll break it up into chunks since it's a long read.


How it started (TL;DR thought quail was egg bound, but wasn't):
I posted in this forum a couple of weeks ago when I suspected our lil buddy (her name is Helpful Friend) was egg bound (see https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/quail-possibly-egg-bound-possibly-had-seizure.1448321/)

Well, she wasn't egg bound. No egg ever came out and she seemed to get better, though she seemed a bit off and I was concerned that she wasn't eating enough gamebird feed. Truth be told I was almost certainly feeding her too much suet (I had been sprinkling it around her hutch so she had something to scratch around in and find...she's very hyperactive). We had also been feeding her a lot of black flies, which was new, and we thought maybe she was just having trouble digesting them since we found a few big black spots in her poop. So we stopped feeding her the flies and hoped for the best.

Then she got sick again (TL;DR stopped eating, drinking, lost a lot of weight, have been dropper feeding & took to vet)
Exactly one week later, she totally tanked. Puffed up and would not eat or drink anything (except mealworms and a few cucumber bits, her favorite). I was pretty sure she wasn't going to make it through the night so I just tried to make her comfortable. To my surprise she stayed alive another couple of days, and so taking it as a sign that the quail really wanted to live, I started feeding her slurry through a dropper. The first day of this I also mixed up some CORID and gave that to her, thinking from her symptoms and poop that she might have had Coccidosis (maybe the flies brought it?) but I increasingly felt like that wasn't the right move. The next day i kept feeding her the slurry and switched to an electrolyte solution for water. Then the following day I kept up feeding her with the slurry and then just mixed in ACV with the water I was giving her.

This went on for a few more days. She continued to decline and became extremely thin, her breast bone is basically just covered now by the skin of her keel. We finally decided to take her to.a vet (we'd have taken her sooner if I had more faith in the vet's ability to do much with quail...I've brought quail to different vets on several occasions and have never had a fantastic experience. One vet had never seen a quail before, handed me a pamphlet about chickens, charged me $80 and referred me to the internet others at a bird and wildlife hospital have given me advice that ended up killing one bird. so, suffice it to say, I wasn't too excited about the vet and didn't want to stress the poor thing out for nothing. but I thought maybe the vet could give us some pain meds that would help her be comfortable.

The vet, unsurprisingly, said that they had no idea what the problem was, but that they could feel a bunch of fluid buildup in her abdomen. They drained the fluid build up and sent us home with meloxicam. I hoped they'd tube feed her but they said they couldn't. When we brought her home she was exhausted and huddled in the corner and, like the last 5 nights, I said goodnight to her thinking it might be the last time.

How it's going (TL;DR The bird seemed much better today, but still not great)
Today I brought her into my office where we have a wood stove. I fired the stove up and put her out with some water, food, and cucumber to see what she'd do (we'd been putting all of these things near her the whole time). the first couple hours she stayed looking pretty miserable, but then suddenly she made what seemed like a fairly miraculous turn around. She's spent the whole day plodding around the room, drinking lots of ACV water from her little teacup, pecking at veggies and sesame seeds and just a tiiiiiiiny bit of pecking at her gamebird feed but not much. We'd had a space heater going next to her aviary this whole time, but something about the heat from the wood stove really seemed to do her good, plus the meloxicam and the fluid drainage I'm sure didn't hurt either.

However, the bird is still clearly far from out of the woods and is experiencing a lot of weird symptoms:

The bird's weird symptoms are:
-Only standing on one foot - I have checked her feet and legs multiple times for injuries, and have also taken her to the vet for this, nobody was able to find any reason why she would do this). She did once have a big cyst looking thing on her leg, which the vet cultured and said it just seemed like joint fluid.
-puffing up after eating - She will eat a little bit of something then back up, puff up, close her eyes and generally act like she is in a lot of pain. Once she poops--which she does regularly but seems to do so with effort--she will then eat a little bit again.). Poops before today were extremely watery, but that was to be expected from her 'hospice' diet. After pecking about eating real food today, her poops were normal, although bright green from all the cucumber and pea sprouts she's been eating.
-excessive grooming - this is something she has always been prone to, which I've attributed to her being under stimulated. She's currently a lone quail as her other hatchmates have unfortunately passed on, and we were never able to successfully introduce her to a companion. She's been living alone for about 6 months but remained pretty chipper - she lives in our house so she gets a lot of daily attention and stimulation from us. I started spreading the suet around her aviary so that she'd have something to do, and it seemed to really help with the feather loss, though maybe it messed up her diet and all of this is due to a nutritional deficiency). Or, perhaps, she's had an internal issue and the grooming is her trying to deal with it. She grooms all over but lately seems to be obsessed with her keel, so there ya go.
-loss of voice - she is normally the most talkative quail *ever* she literally never stops chirping, again, very unlike other quails I've had esp females. however, she has lost her voice in the last week. her chirps transformed into little hoots that sound more like bobwhites than cotornix, and today she's barely croaking out her normal inquisitive purring.
-still not eating very much
-stopping a lot and just standing/sitting all puffed up with eyes closed.

So....Thoughts? Advice? Any ideas about what might be going on and anything else I can try to do to help her/make her more comfortable, this girl is all ears.

its been a while since you've posted this... how is she? Did you cull her ? i hope shes better ((( she seems like quite a funny little girl