Bizarre drama

Nine days ago, on the 26th February, the lower, scabby part of Perry’s lump fell away.

He had been fiddling with it all day.  It was far more noticeable than before & looked pretty bad.  I started ringing for vet availability as I had a feeling something was going to happen, perhaps more bleeding.  I had the cornflour at the ready.

In the evening, part of the scab began to prise away.  At this point, Perry was relentless & totally focused with ‘sorting it out’.  I watched with horror as I saw this black thing dangling between his legs, catching on the perch & getting in the way of his movements.  The expression on Lennie’s face most probably mirrored my own as he stared incredulously at what was unfolding before him.

Perry carried on & within about 15 minutes, the whole thing fell off!

Fortunately, it was completely dry, with no blood or gunk.  It was a clean break & clearly the natural time for it to separate with Perry’s body.

It measured 1.2 cm wide x 2.3 cm long x 1.0 cm deep.

Perry was fine afterwards.

After a chat with the vet on the phone, when she said it was very bizarre, we agreed there was nothing to do at this point, but once again, to wait & see.  The lump itself is obviously still there, & it is possible another blister may form, so we are still on the roller-coaster.

For the interested among you, here are some gory photos:

Perry’s scab – hours before it fell away

Perry’s scab – hours before it fell away

Top of scab

Underneath of scab

Perry minus lower scab

Perry minus lower scab

 

Perry must feel so much better for not carrying that lump of dried blood & dead tissue around.

Perry

Wait & See

When I last posted on Perry’s health (click here) I said that we were waiting to see our usual vet.  She visited on the 14th January.  After a thorough examination, the conclusion was ‘wait & see‘.

She said the following:

• The ball of dead tissue that fell off (15th December) left a crater, which has a lining of dead tissue. (The dead tissue is where there is an absence of blood vessels which can happen as a lump grows). This can be surgically removed but it is unknown how deep it is etc.  It is normal for the dead tissue to expand & is not necessarily a bad thing. The tissue around it looks healthy which suggests it may be healthy underneath too. The best case scenario is that when ready, it will just fall away.
• The lower wound appears to show that bleeding from the abscess/cyst/blood blister was from two areas.  There is a ‘cavern’ between them that looks like a scab.  As with the upper wound, it is hoped his body will push out the remaining blood clot when appropriate.
• The lower part of the lump is hard & still intact & brushing against his leg, hence his mobility issues.
• It is still unknown what is happening inside/below the lump so there could still be unforeseen complications.
• There was no obvious reason why he would bleed again, especially given his last bleed was on the 1st January.
• It could take Perry up to 3 weeks to recover from the significant blood loss.

There was a lot of information so my interpretation is probably not spot on, but I think I got the gist of it!

One thing I am sure of is that the vet weighed him & he was a huge 65g!  That may be all the extra millet I have been giving him.  As he is still stable & appears in good spirits, I have already begun to cut back on the millet!

Perry

 

 

An Alarming Feather

When cleaning the bottom of Perry & Lennie’s cage, I found a feather with the end of the shaft caked in blood.  As you can see from the photos, it looked pretty horrible:

Bloody feather

Close-up of bloody feather

 

My instinct is that it was Lennie’s feather, though I briefly wondered if it was Bezukhov’s feather that had floated across to their cage.  I spent the next hour or so watching the two of them & waiting for them to raise their wings so I could see if there was any problem, but all was well.  It seems strange that such a scary looking feather should not leave a trace of where it came from; it looks like it was violently wrenched from a wing.

Oh well…. another worrying day when sharing your life with birds….!

Lennie preening

 

 

Squawking

During their last moult, there were a couple of days when Atilla would squawk very loudly at intervals.  It was like she was in pain & she kept moving her wing around from the shoulder joint.  I wondered if she had landed somewhere a bit funny & caught her wing. 

I was quite relieved a few days after to find one of her wing feathers at the bottom of the cage with dried blood at the end of it.  I am not sure what had happened with the feather, but I was glad she was rid of it.  The squawking was quite upsetting at the time!

Mystery of the injured toe

It was not enough for Atilla to produce an egg for me to investigate on my return home.  No.  She also had a toe injury to alarm me.

Here she is, sitting on her swing holding one foot up in a suspicious manner…..

 

Close up of the injured toe:

When I was able to take a proper look I found she had dried blood all over one toe & the toenail was just a stump.  I assume the toenail has been torn off just beyond the quick & that is where the blood has come from.  The blood has spread over the rest of her foot.  It looks quite bad.  However, she is fine…. walking okay & leaning on that foot…. & behaving as normal (well as normal as Atilla can behave these days).

I searched the cage for signs of where she may have caught her toe but have found nothing.  The only other option is that one of the others has hurt her.  I do not like to think that would be the case.  If anything, I’m sure she would have given as good as she got, in which case one of the others would be sporting a black eye!

I feel bad that I was not there for her when it happened.