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Ideas for a tiny syringe for medication?

Lady Jane

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Why wouldn't you vet give you the supplies to give the medication? Usually they do.
 

karen256

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The vet provided the usually small 1 cc syringes but the tip is still really hard to get into a little budgie beak.
Plus the antibiotic is in this horrible, sticky raspberry flavoring that hardens like glue into his feathers if he manages to wriggle around and I miss his beak. Smaller syringe tip just means it's a lot quicker and less messy to give him his meds.
 

karen256

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Well this is somewhat unrelated, but does anyone have a good idea for washing up a little budgie without causing a ton of stress to him?

I can't always get all his meds in. Sometimes he turns his head, other times he will shake his head and send most of the medicine flying. In any case, I think he's getting enough into him, but he ends up with a lot of it on him as well. The antibiotics were mixed into this super-sticky raspberry syrup. It hardens and basically glues his little feathers together. Cheeky does her best to try to clean him up, she really tries (to the point where it looks like it must be painful, but the little budgie doesn't mind - he just loves that she's paying attention to him) but she can't make much headway. Today, she spent almost an hour trying to preen him, and I figured a bath after that might help - but it didn't. All it did was apparently distribute the syrup more evenly, instead of just around his face, so now his feathers are a matted up mess everywhere. And he constantly smells like raspberry syrup.
I think the only way to clean him up would be to forcibly bathe him, so that his body is actually submerged, but that would be too stressful. I've just been sticking to encouraging voluntary bathing, but that just doesn't seem to be enough. He is the most pathetic looking little bird, I just feel so terrible for him.
 

Peachfaced

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When Sherbie was being a pill about taking her meds, I would just do little bits at a time. She eventually gave up and just let me give her half the dose at a time. She did end up with a bit of goo on her sometimes. She only bathes once a week. Sometimes I could wrap her up and give her a wad of paper towel to chew on while I wipe her face with a wet paper towel.
 

SandraK

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A warm damp washcloth wipe-off right after he's been medicated?
 

rocky'smom

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agree with @SandraK warm wet washcloth right after meds are given.
 

Sylvester

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Why wouldn't you vet give you the supplies to give the medication? Usually they do.
LJ, the vet only gave me the syringe. And I agree with Karen, the red sticky stuff has already made my budgie look like she has one of those waxed mustaches.
 

Lady Jane

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This is an old thread with valuable information about medicating a small bird so I am bumping.
 

Lady Jane

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If you let the medication dry its more difficult to wash. Warm wet q tip may help or the corner of a wash cloth.
 

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This is an old thread with valuable information about medicating a small bird so I am bumping.
I would like to clarify and just add for the purpose of information that these are called tuberculin syringes (not insulin syringes) which may help with searches. those are Cathlons on the tips. Tractor Supply sells the syringes. Squirrel supply places are a great place to find tiny little supplies as well under the baby feeding sections. If your vet gives you meds, ask them to open an IV Catheter, REMOVE the needle and just give you the plastic cathlon if you think the tip of the TB syringes are too large. I would only recommend using such a small tip with budgies, finches and the like. It would be dangerous to use these cathlons on a bird with any real beak strength.
 

Mockinbirdiva

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I used to work for the oral and maxillofacial surgeons here as a surgical assistant. We used monoject syringes to irrigate with and these have a very fine tip. The problem I would see is pulling up the correct amount of medication. Here's a link so you can see what it looks like or order but to find an array of websites just google Monoject irrigation syringe.

BettyMills: Monoject Curved Tip Irrigation Syringe, 12mL, 1/EA - Medtronic 61412012

Or you might even contact your area oral surgeons or dentists to see if they use them and ask for one to try out before ordering.

 

Lady Jane

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The picture i posted with extender is a TB syringe. It worked fine for my budgie for 30 days of giving meds. The insulin syringes have orange color on them for identification and should not be used for birds as the measurments are in units, not ml as meds are measured.
Thanks for the name of the extender as I was calling it. Now we know.
 
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