good news for Erik

[cellio]

My vet wanted to rerun some blood tests now that Erik has mostly recovered from his recent bout of crud. Good news the first: his temperature tonight was 100.3 (a full 3.5 degrees down from a week ago). The antibiotics definitely seem to have helped.

Good news the second: tonight he weighted 7 pounds, 8 ounces -- yes, a full 7 and a half pounds! It's been a long time since he weighed that much. (He's up 4 ounces from last week, though last week he went in on an empty stomach so I don't think he really gained 4 ounces in a week.)

Comments

Re: Congrats to Erik!

[rob-of-unspace.livejournal.com]

Going from 25 to 30 g doesn't happen overnight. Feeding can account for 1-2g at a time. If a parakeet is down around 25 grams, it's near death. At that point, I have to force-feed, and the odds are 50-50. From what I've learned from the vet, I have never killed a parakeet from placing food in the trachea. The stress of force-feeding, though, may have been the proximal cause of death several times.

I hate force-feeding parakeets, but for the ones that survived, it was obviously worth it. In at least one case, the bird adapted to the force feeding and lived another 4-5 months that were surprisingly happy.