Thank you for those kind words. This morning I feel a little better. I am so sorry if I sound ungrateful to anyone. I am so appreciative to everyone and their thoughts and information. I just get so frustrated that there are no "correct" answers out there. And knowing that my decisions on what I choose to do might cost Mickey her life in the long run is very difficult for me. I guess I was hoping to find someone who had been through this, had found what worked and then would be able to say do this, this and this and Mickey will be fine. I can see now that it isn't going to be that easy. As for my vet....even though he is a avian vet, it appears he has had very little experience with diabetes. He wanted to have her come in for glucose monitoring for the day to decide on the amount of insulin. Never mentioned the possibility of trying glipizide first or anything else. I honestly have learned and found more information from these forums then he has been able to give me. Supplements I can give Mickey to help her, all the hormonal behavior diet etc. that I have been able to get, I had to research or it was given in kindness in these forums. All he said about diet is low carbs, low sugar and higher protein. I don't feel I can bother him with every little question but on the other hand I feel that maybe he could be doing a little more research in helping me come up with a more definite plan of action. But at this time I feel like I am on my own. So again I am so sorry if I offended anyone or indicated in any way that I don't appreciate EVERY ONES input. Please forgive me when I get overwhelmed. It's just me, old and easily confused at times.
Thank you very very much for this information. Will check it out!
Sent another email to them. In hopes that they might respond this time. Maybe my first one got overlooked or lost in the mail.
I have found the Nutrition for pets and put in a request to join but I can't seem to find Shauna Roberts Feeding Feathers. Would you have a link to that or something? Thanks again for the info.
t li
Thank you for those kind words. This morning I feel a little better. I am so sorry if I sound ungrateful to anyone. I am so appreciative to everyone and their thoughts and information. I just get so frustrated that there are no "correct" answers out there. And knowing that my decisions on what I choose to do might cost Mickey her life in the long run is very difficult for me. I guess I was hoping to find someone who had been through this, had found what worked and then would be able to say do this, this and this and Mickey will be fine. I can see now that it isn't going to be that easy. As for my vet....even though he is a avian vet, it appears he has had very little experience with diabetes. He wanted to have her come in for glucose monitoring for the day to decide on the amount of insulin. Never mentioned the possibility of trying glipizide first or anything else. I honestly have learned and found more information from these forums then he has been able to give me. Supplements I can give Mickey to help her, all the hormonal behavior diet etc. that I have been able to get, I had to research or it was given in kindness in these forums. All he said about diet is low carbs, low sugar and higher protein. I don't feel I can bother him with every little question but on the other hand I feel that maybe he could be doing a little more research in helping me come up with a more definite plan of action. But at this time I feel like I am on my own. So again I am so sorry if I offended anyone or indicated in any way that I don't appreciate EVERY ONES input. Please forgive me when I get overwhelmed. It's just me, old and easily confused at times.
Thanks again for the kind words. But I am definitely a follower not a leader. If I am paving the way for others, there are going to be a lot of lost people!!!!! (I'd put a real smiley face here or an emoji or whatever you call them little guys but I don't know how.)
Sometimes you are on your own and paving the way for the next one.
No one has been offended and you are allowed to be overwhelmed by it all. You have already been down a long hard road to get where you are and all the information is a whole other can of worms. Reaching out as you are is the first step to finding help. Just remember you have a lifetime to care for Mickey, at this time she is doing well, take your time and make changes slowly to see how things affect her. Dietary changes can sometimes take months to show results so it is... one day at a time.
I am sorry to here that. I hope all went well!
I'm old school. If no answer by noon, call them.
Unfortunately, I doubt that she would really tell me much. I contacted Dr. Speers by email and he was kind enough to email back and forth some but would not really give me a lot of information.
You should also give her a call and let them know you sent an email. They have new staff and may have missed it. Tell them Chandra (Shaundra) mentioned Dr. Orosz might be able to help. Unfortunately, their is generally a consultation charge associated.
Unfortunately, I have hearing aids and it is very difficult for me to hear on the phone and especially embarrassing if I don't know that person and have to keep asking them to repeat something so I avoid it when possible. But I appreciate the suggestion.
Ahhhh thank you. I promise this isn't a stabbing emoji, it is a very very grateful emoji!!!!!!!You are now a leader - as a result of your love of Mickey.
Psst; I don't like emojis - been stabbed in the back too many times by people posting cutsey emojis while stabbing vigorously. So you are pleasing at least one person.
The emoji menu is accessed by pressing the smuley face on the bar above the entry box
Did get in touch with Alyce. She was very kind and helpful. But because she was able to control her Macaws diabetes with diet, it's a little bit different circumstances than Mickey. Where she was able to just discontinue pellets and had a lot of success with that, doing so with Mickey, while she is on glipizide might not be the right thing to do. Because of the fact she is on medication, the danger of low blood sugar without pellets would be a greater risk. So my hope is that I can eventually improve Mickeys diet enough so that she won't need to be on glipizide and then can try to see if removing pellets will help reduce her blood sugar levels even more. But at this point we don't even know if diet is the cause or it is a problem with her pancreas or something else. But I am sure the right diet can only help.Asked a friend who had a diabetic macaw as well as anyone else (in a Facebook group) willing to give input. Here are the replies so far.
Alyce
As soon as she was diagnosed (by a blood test) I took her Completely off pellets and instead gave her mostly Nuts (human grade) with No pellets even available. This cured the polyuria symptom of the diabetes in 2 days or less. Very fast. That meant she was no longer dehydrated.
The dehydration is a big risk which can kill them Much faster than the high blood sugar itself. I gave fruit too in this phase. She was a veggie hater but if your bird will eat them then by all means include veggies, but they do need the nuts for the protein and fat content, to keep up their weight (which is often down already due to the diabetes).
It's VERY Important to make sure their blood sugar doesn't "crash"! Super low blood sugar can be MUCH more rapidly deadly than high blood sugar.:O I always, ALWAYS made sure she had some sweet fruit - Banana, for example - in her food cage where she could get to it easily and quickly, to restore her blood sugar immediately if she was feeling out of sorts. (Hopefully their instincts will tell them to eat it.)
Make sure their "fast sugar" source is something like banana (with plenty of fiber in it) so that it won't spike her blood sugar too quickly, but make sure it's a sweet fruit and one your bird personally likes, not citrus or anything else which is tart (or too starchy but not sweet).
I was concerned she could go into a diabetic coma which kills very quickly so I always made sure she had access to Fresh fruit she wouldn't hesitate to eat, especially overnight but actually 24/7.
The brain in humans runs *only* on sugar. Our body has to be able to provide sugar to the brain or we will lose consciousness. I'm not sure if the brain of birds works the same way? But since they are meant to eat tons of fruit in the wild, I'm assuming their body chemistry (even more so than ours) is probably "geared" to have a constant steady drip of *natural* sugar available to it.
To know what is going on with their blood sugar, simply watch their pee puddle size and monitor them that way. (Not the poop, and not the white urates but the actual amount of water they excrete.) That is an extremely very accurate indication of their blood sugar levels.
Too much pee (giant water rings - way larger than normal) and they definitely have high blood sugar which is "spilling over" into their urine. (That's due to a mechanism of how kidneys work, making it pretty much universal, so far as I know.)
Once I got my bird's great big pee puddles to stop (via the nut and fruit diet) I gradually phased back in the (much less "tasty") natural type of pellets. Since it was the only thing she had available (other than fruit, veggies and some nuts) she did start eating it. (It's all her whole flock was getting too so she wasn't jealous seeing another bird get something "better".)
Please DO be sure to give them enough nuts to keep them from losing Any weight though, because otherwise they may seriously starve themselves to death quickly if they don't recognize the natural pellets as proper food.:O
:O
So, that's how I approached it. Our vet was clueless so we handled it much like a human situation (higher protein, lower sugar diet). Be aware also that it can be hormonal. Our bird had worse times and better times according to what her hormones were doing. I sometimes had to pull her pellets out and suddenly switch her back to the nut & banana diet temporarily when her hormones would mess with her and raise her blood sugar again. I kept a close watch on her pee amounts to see when her blood sugar was rising too high.
In the long term though, in retrospect, I would suggest going to an all natural raw diet, such as "chop" and maybe some "birdie bread" (things you can freeze) and supplement that base diet with natural pellets (any low sugar type) and supplement it also with *some* but not tons of high quality nuts of course too.
I'm feeding more pecans lately (from Costco) which are very low in oil. I also feed lots of walnuts which have *healthy* high quality oils in them. I feed almonds as well (good oils too) but I am very sparing with the cashews which are very oily. I found the best price on all my nuts at Costco. I get my pellet in bulk from Pet Mountain. (My almonds are by law sold only blanched here in CA which takes care of any poisonous chemicals in them naturally. They are safe to eat in large numbers for anyone - bird or human this way.)
Ultimately we lost our diabetic bird to heart disease, to badly clogged arteries. I'm not sure how much all those nuts may have contributed? This is why I now recommend a fresh food diet.
Mainly she was a chronic egg layer so her hormones were out of whack. Vet told us it is the Females who get heart disease (especially when they are chronic egg layers). This is very much the opposite of humans where the males are at much greater risk for heart disease.
We didn't know about it until too late but her arteries were clogged up. She died of a stroke, in her 20s.
Jason Crean
Good healthy fats like Alyce explained are critical to birds in this condition. Coconut oil provides a great, efficiently metabolized energy source that doesn't tax the pancreas. Tree nuts are vital as well!
Oh my....... my headache is back!!!
Thank you again Monica for the information. But when I read the last article I felt like I was reading a foreign language!!!! Oh how I wish I was smarter. I got the feeling it was giving some very hopeful information but I just couldn't wrap my head around it. There were so many words I didn't even know the meaning of. I do understand the difference between man's diabetes and birds and the fact that it is not lack of insulin but extra production of glucagon. But I so wish I knew what the rest was saying. I do understand that it involves the pancreas. Is there anyone who has some sort of medical history or understanding that could give me the basics of any ideas or possibilities of anything that can be tried or done that might be in this article. Since the pancreas is involved does anyone know if there any supplement that I could be giving Mickey that would help support her pancreas? I mean she is getting the Milk Thistle to help support here liver. Is there anything for the pancreas that might work?
