Her suggestions don't only apply to an elderly bird. I have been doing many of the things she is doing for Cocky, for Jasper since she was 61/2 years old. Jasper has a heat lamp, sleeps in a carry cage and has four inch flat board perches with part of them padded. She is on a very low fat diet and strangely enough her cholesterol has always been normal. Jasper will be 23 years old on June 8th.
She was diagnosed with severe, severe congestive heart failure barely 3 months after she was given to me. I have no idea how long she had had CHF. After a few years she developed a lot of atherosclerosis because her heart was not pumping well. She now has some thrombosis in her descending aorta. The lack of adequate circulation has been the root cause of many of her health issues.
About a year after she was diagnosed with the heart/circulatory problems, we discovered that she had a lot of arthritis. Some in the "elbow" joint of her left wing, but A LOT in her toes, ankles and up one leg. She was medicated with metacam until the pain got too bad, then she was put on Tramdol and Metacam. Next was Gabapentin. Two toes of her left foot were amputated because of the pain due to the arthritic damage. She is now on Celebrex, Gabapentin and SAMe, which seems to be working well.
Because of her heart/circulatory issues her immune system has never been real good and sometimes it will completely collapse. She has had Aspergillosis twice and a MRSA infectiom in her lungs once. She had bacteria caused ulcers and many other bacterial infections. Her liver and kidneys have been damaged somewhat by the illnesses, but mostly by the medications it took to heal some of the illnesses. Oh yea, she ruptured an aiirsac and it got infected - very little blood flow in airsacs so the infection was quite difficult to heal.
Jasper goes to the vet every three months for a checkup. She's like an old,old bird, but she's still young. Poor baby.
