Yet another baby dove thread

[fuzzymarble]

I heard you guys like baby bird threads

This one had fallen out of its nest (I can't reach the nest or I would have put it back) and was impaled on a agave. The stick it was stuck on had gone through its crop and I think part of its stomach. After looking around the internet I found this forum and, using the information I'm finding here, I am trying to save the bird. Age? Dunno, but it's eyes are not open yet.

How it's been:

Day one was iffy as I could only feed it a little Similac at a time. Similac being what I could get right away. The formula would run out of the wounds. I found this quite disturbing. Things looked hopeless -- birds should not leak.

Day two was better. I overfed it in the AM and some leaking occurred. I left it without food for 6 hours in hopes of letting the wounds seal up again. During that time I made it to a pet store that carried Exact baby bird food. Tried to feed it the Exact (just a little, later in the day) and it was not impressed. Things looking OK -- serious failure in the animal husbandry department but bird is still breathing. Side note: bird has started chirping when being held.

Day three (today) I am feeding the bird very small meals of Similac and just a touch of Exact. Every three hours or so. I fear too much might Exact might over-stress the injured crop. Things looking better -- I need to be careful with amount of food per sitting while ensuring caloric intake. Keep checking the crop to make sure it is not filling up.

We've made it two nights and we're on our third day. I am keeping it in the garage where, with the swamp cooler running, temperatures are around 90. At night I simply turn off the cooler as nighttime lows are in the 90 degree range. So far I've spend $14 on Similac and $14 on the smallest package of Exact I could find.

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

Are you able to take the baby to a wildlife rehabilitation center? For the crop, smaller, more frequent meals may help to avoid stressing the injury. In my experience the crop itself heals very fast, so the hole shouldn’t be open for long.

 

[fuzzymarble]

I've got to keep my eye on the birds crop. I've been so bad about that.

There's no rehab type places around here that would take a wild dove. At least not to my knowledge.

Updates:

Day 4 was a disaster. I wanted to get the bird eating just the Exact baby food. The last meal on day 3 was just the bird food and on the morning of Day 4 I had to deal with a bloated crop. I thought maybe the food had backed up in the stomach where it was injured. I tried messaging that area and it was then the crop started deflating. This was, I think, just a matter of gas buildup in the crop. So I messaged the crop until it deflated. I burped my bird [seriously, that's a thing?].

Day 5 and all is looking good. The bird has started biting at the food so I have thickened up the mix to the proper consistency. My hope is that, starting today, I will have just five feedings a day of bird food and the bird will go from surviving to thriving.

Things that worked for me that might help someone else: I was able to keep my bird alive with Similac. I needed liquid and Similac was all that I could find that made sense. My bird is obviously very, very lactose intolerant and Similac has lactose. This made for quite the stinky mess but it was enough to keep the beast alive the first three days.

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[fuzzymarble]

This is not meant to be a blog so last update for a while.

She (because I it has to be something) has made it a week. It's been a catastrophic pain in my rectal area from trying to save a bird to trying to grow a bird. It is understood that considering previous injuries this is not a critter that will be released into the wild. It will always be stunted and that's OK. She will always be my pet.

Latest observations: If fed with temperatures above 90 F the bird will develop crop bloating. It got above 90 F in the garage today so she will be skipping dinner. I find it takes her about 14 hours to recover from crop bloat (or rot? ew!) after burping so skipping dinner is a better choice.

This is Simi a week after rescue: