John: Hey bird lovers, it's time for Avian First aid, episode four. Dr. Gordy is going to tell us about traveling with your bird to the vet.
EPISODE 4
TRANSPORTING YOUR INJURED BIRD.
Dr Pam Gordy: If you think that you are going to need to transport the bird to the veterinary clinic, call ahead if you can, it really helps us to know when you are coming, we can get oxygen on, we can get the incubators warmed up, we can have our best technicians not go for lunch right now. So it really helps us if you know you are coming, what the problem is, and what time you think you will get there, and often what happens when you go to a veterinary clinic, I mean, we are there to look after other pets, and that's what we are doing, and that's what the receptionists tells you.
If you can work through them, that's really useful for us. If you can say, can you could tell Dr. Gordy that my bird is doing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and she can come to me, and if I am in a surgery doing a C section on someone's pet, I can say, tell them come right now, tell them do this first, and it really helps us way better than leaving a message, because I have to have the vet phone, phone me before I can do anything. It's got the time, I finish what I am doing, then we have lost precious time. So it help that you can use, you know, go through our receptionist, and go back and forth and that's really useful.
We talked about a carrier, this is multi types of carries to have, and usually you are set up with them anyway because you bring your birds to various places. The ones that I find really useful are those little Plexiglas ones that are actually for reptiles, and down they have a little flame on the top, they are good for small and medium sized birds. You can see through them, so you can assess your bird, as you are doing, as you're traveling. They are easy for us to catch birds and remove the catch birds out of, and they also double well as hospital cages, as they are flat and the injured bird can't climb on the side, hang on the top and then fall. So that time it's is a good choice.
If you are traveling with your bird, take out the water and take out any swinging toys or the perches. Because as you go around corners, it will knock the bird over, and knock your bird off. And water always spills, and makes a mess in the bottom. So usually, you know it's thought to be a long trip anyway, take that out. Temperature is extremely important in any kind of first aid or sick bird. Their body temperature is several degrees higher than ours, and when any kind of illness, blood loss, shock, their temperature drops really quickly, so warming the bird up is super important. If you have a little hospital cage, or any kind of other small cage, you can put a heating pad right underneath it. I put a heating pad under it, and then I put a towel on top, because some of the heating pads can be too hot, and if the bird is unable to move round, you can burn them, even through that. So I put the heating pad underneath, then I put the cage thing, and then I put the towel in, and then I put the bird on.
I like the smaller cage, rather than a bigger one. It heats up quicker, and it doesn't likely or hopefully not be in there for any long, anyway, but it heats up quicker, and the ones with the solid sides are also vulnerable to getting drafted, so solid sided cages are fine. For bigger birds, the dog cages work well, and you can often modify them, by put a perches across, and you could do the same thing. You can put a heating pad underneath. Heating pad shining down are okay, but it takes quite a bit longer for them to warm up. The heat rises, so if you put it underneath that rises up and then if you cover those cages, they can get warmed fairly quickly. Then you should have a blanket to cover it to keep the heat --
John: Of course smaller birds are easier to handle than larger birds, but larger birds are also little tougher than the small birds. Small birds can be fragile. Hopefully none of us will ever have to use these procedures, but it's good to know. The important thing is to get to the vet, and to get there in a timely fashion. The quicker you get to the vet, the better chance your bird stands of surviving. So that's the episode on traveling with your bird. The next episode we'll deal with catching your bird.
