UPDATE on Gilbert and quick question

[Goosebaby]

So I would recommend kiefer.

 

[KristieM75]

Dairy isn’t digestible to birds, so it causes a lot of stomach issues.
But a good cultured “live” buttermilk or Kiefer has a lot of beneficial bacteria and yeast which consume most of the lactose so it isn’t as hard on them.

Plain yougurt and even most big brand Greek yougurt is so pasteurized there isn’t much left alive in it, good and bad, so I’m not sure how much use it is.

There’s also probiotic supplements, the trick with those is to get the highest percentage of organisms + a higher number of species. Certain companies also have better quality. Most have a range of 1 to 9 species, 1 being not really worth your money. Dumor probiotic is decent all around, probios doesn’t have as many species but there product is fresh and good quality. Savachick has one species, it’s not worth the bother.
Then there’s brands marketed towards parrots, they get a bit pricier, healthy gut avian probiotic and vetafarm probiotic are good ones, vetafarm comes in a tiny bottle though, so you’re not getting much.

There are human probiotics which work for birds as well as they do for us, but not all are made equally, and the effective ones can start getting pricey, Dr. Tobias deep immune is a good brand I’ve used, it’s moderatly priced, the best is visbiome which is what doctors want people to take when fighting clostridium, I have no expierience with it though, I can’t afford an $80 probiotic.

With any probiotic the key is trying to make sure it’s alive and as much of it makes it to the gut past the stomach acid as you can get, hence the higher count probiotics being more effective.
I like to mix several probiotics with some kiefer and drizzle it over soupy mash made fom feed mixed with water, it’s the only way I can get mine to eat probiotics or kiefer that doesn’t involve a syringe, but chlorinated water kills the probiotic so bottled non chlorinated water is more potent to use when giving probiotics.
There’s also culturing the probiotics themselves by mixing a few probiotics together with some water and honey and warming it to 90 degrees for 24 hours in a vacuum sealed dark container, but that is hard to do + without being in a lab setting there’s a big risk of culturing bad bacteria with the good.

I will most likely try the Keifer or buttermilk. Do
You know how much of that he should have? I have another question about something that just started late yesterday. Gilbert has lost his “voice”, he went swimming yesterday and probably preened for about and hour and a half and then more here and there. I think he ate too many feather casings..is there anything I can do for him to help him get his squanker back?

 

[KristieM75]

So I would recommend kiefer.

I didn’t see this until after I had already replied to the longer message

 

[Goosebaby]

I will most likely try the Keifer or buttermilk. Do
You know how much of that he should have? I have another question about something that just started late yesterday. Gilbert has lost his “voice”, he went swimming yesterday and probably preened for about and hour and a half and then more here and there. I think he ate too many feather casings..is there anything I can do for him to help him get his squanker back?

Does he still have loss of voice today?

Loss of voice is really concerning unfortunatly. It’s one of those “needs a vet now things.
Unless it’s natural voice changing as he matures, which can be hard to recognize for new owners. Has his voice been the usual squeaky baby voice until this happened? Has he just gone completely silent? Or is his voice pitch altered? Have you heard him coughing.

 

[Goosebaby]

As for Keifer, a little drizzle on top of his food for a few days should be enough.

 

[KristieM75]

Does he still have loss of voice today?

Loss of voice is really concerning unfortunatly. It’s one of those “needs a vet now things.
Unless it’s natural voice changing as he matures, which can be hard to recognize for new owners. Has his voice been the usual squeaky baby voice until this happened? Has he just gone completely silent? Or is his voice pitch altered? Have you heard him coughing.

No coughing, no anything. He’s perfectly normal and doing everything normal except his squeak’s. He does have his baby squeaks still and was fine until after he preened so much yesterday. He does have a little baby honk sometimes but not offend We could here some baby squeaks still late last night but they were really hoarse. Now today he hasn’t said anything, well he’s tried but not much of anything haS come out. Sorry if this is all
MEssed up. he’s being a little turd and biting my phone and my fingers as I’m trying to type.

 

[KristieM75]

No coughing, no anything. He’s perfectly normal and doing everything normal except his squeak’s. He does have his baby squeaks still and was fine until after he preened so much yesterday. He does have a little baby honk sometimes but not offend We could here some baby squeaks still late last night but they were really hoarse. Now today he hasn’t said anything, well he’s tried but not much of anything haS come out. Sorry if this is all
MEssed up. he’s being a little turd and biting my phone and my fingers as I’m trying to type.

What I mean when I said he was being a turd/brat ..I have a pink skull with a ring on it that he loves to play with and he never just stays playing with that.

 

[Goosebaby]

No coughing, no anything. He’s perfectly normal and doing everything normal except his squeak’s. He does have his baby squeaks still and was fine until after he preened so much yesterday. He does have a little baby honk sometimes but not offend We could here some baby squeaks still late last night but they were really hoarse. Now today he hasn’t said anything, well he’s tried but not much of anything haS come out. Sorry if this is all
MEssed up. he’s being a little turd and biting my phone and my fingers as I’m trying to type.

Well it could be nothing, he could have inhaled something that irritated his airway, or he could have something really serious. It’s hard for me to say, but I’m hoping it’s nothing.

 

[KristieM75]

Well it could be nothing, he could have inhaled something that irritated his airway, or he could have something really serious. It’s hard for me to say, but I’m hoping it’s nothing.

Me too!! I’m hoping and thinking it might be from him overly preening himself and getting those flakey whiteish clear coverings that are over their wings. Because that’s the only thing he did different yesterday. And that’s when he started to get raspy. Do you think it could be that baby goose food he’s still eating since it’s so dusty?

 

[Goosebaby]

It could be, but it might not be, mine eat Purina flock raiser crumbles and they’re adults, sometimes they inhale a little but they’ll cough for a little bit but be fine.

The only two times I’ve had a bird lose its voice is with my goose Tuesday who aspirated 3 ml of liquid “Gatorade mixed with denegard” which she recovered from after a few days, and Tuesday again when she was at the vet and I wasn’t allowed in. I don’t know what they did to her but she lost her voice for a solid week after that. When she would try to make a sound it was a faint deep gurgle croak.

My expierience with altered pitch and reduced vocalizing is with my gander Thor, his voice became hoarse and he had a frequent high pitched nasally cough, he had aspergillosis.

So from my own experience goslings becoming adults will get weird altered high and low voices as they’re developing their adult voice.
Loss of voice can be from liquid in the lungs or some kind of trauma, like being grabbed by the neck roughly “I’m not going back to that vet ever again,” or something irritating their syrinx in some way.

Altered pitch that sounds low with less vocalizations could be some kind of lung infection, bacterial or fungal like aspergillosis. Asper is an insidious disease, the chronic form develops slowly and can cause minimal symptoms initially, and it mimics many other illnesses, sometimes it’s only noticable when it’s gotten to the point of being untreatable. It’s an opportunistic disease that can infect a bird when their immune system has been under attack from another illness, or from exposure to vary high spore counts in their environment. This is what Thor sounded like when he had asper https://www.instagram.com/p/CfZRwtUggzS/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=