Spinning quail, heat stroke? Head injury?

[2020Chickadee]

Hello everyone, I'm a bit confused on what happened to one of my quail and wondering if anyone has some advice. Yesterday afternoon I noticed one of my girls acting funny. I took her inside and she is acting like maybe she had a stroke? Her head is tilted so one eye is always looking at the sky, she spins in circles, and is unsteady on her feet. It's the next day and she's still breathing heavy and tends to choose to close her eyes. Her head movements are erratic when she chooses to move her head. The strange thing is she's acting normal outside of that. Drinks, eats, preens, digs, and is very strong. She is just over two years old.

A bit of background on her living conditions. They are outside and yesterday it got to 105°F/40.5°C. They are on the ground and get a "pool" (it's a one inch deep baking sheet) every day filled with cool water to help with the heat. They look forward to their pool being filled, it's very cute. Their enclosure has a 3 foot ceiling with padding on the top to help with any bonking, which is why I don't think it's that she hit her head but it's certainly not ruled out. All my other girls (13) are acting normal.

I'm thinking I'll need to cull her, but wanted to hear y'all's advice first. She's inside in a hospital cage so she's not stressed in the heat.

 

[muddy75]

It could be either of these things……is she eating and drinking since you separated her?
I would recommend adding electrolytes like sav-a-chick to her water and monitoring improvement for a few days but depending on severity, she may not recover

 

[Nabiki]

I agree that it could be either, or it could be something else entirely. Try the Save&a-Chick as @muddy75 suggested. If she doesn't improve in another day, I would cull.

 

[2020Chickadee]

It could be either of these things……is she eating and drinking since you separated her?
I would recommend adding electrolytes like sav-a-chick to her water and monitoring improvement for a few days but depending on severity, she may not recover

The water is down in her hospital cage and I feed her some water with a dropper every now and then just for peace of mind. I have seen her drink in the hospital cage. No new poops today, so I'm assuming she's not eating. She was in the main cage though so I'm wondering if it's that the container looks different so she doesn't know food is there. I may put her in the main cage for a few minutes by the feeder just to see what she's does. I have a separator so the other birds won't bother her.

I'll go and get some! Thank you Muddy! Hopefully she recovers...

 

[2020Chickadee]

I just wanted to give an update in case someone comes across this in archives. It's been four days since my birds illness. No tractor supplies had any savachick in stock, they said they haven't in a long time because of the high heat we've been having. The closest was over an hour away. I went ahead and got a bodyarmor and added it to her water as well as fed her it in a dropper several times a day, which she quickly figured out and would peck the dropper. Her stability improved but her ability to properly control her head did not and she would spend all day with her head completely upside-down, using the top of her head as a kind of brace on the ground for herself. Ultimately I didn't think she would have a very good quality of life and decided to cull. I did not peel back the skin on her skull to look for bruising, I just did not feel up to it. She did have a nice bald patch from mating and I did not see bruising there during initial assessment or right before cull.

Thank you Muddy and Nabiki for your help and suggestions! This forum has always been such a great resource of information and help.