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Intoxication? Spinal lesion? Something else?

OkiF

Sitting on the front steps
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9/29/20
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As I wrote in the introduction section, after the sudden death of Inkochan of unknown causes (started vomitting and looking sick on a Sunday night, died despite to vet visits on the Tuesday night).
Botan chan started to get her feet paralysed two days later.
It started lie an itch on the Tursday (frequently biting at one of her foot like she hurt herself of was annoyed), then within less than one hour it moved to her not putting the foot down, and finally her back toe to point forward, shortly before her "making the fist". Thinking she broke her toe, we installed her in a safe cage without perches and with plenty of journal paper on the floor (she likes to dig under papers) and brought her to the vet the next morning. By the time we arrived to the vet, Friday, both feet were curled and she was on her knees. The vet did not see broken blood vessel suggesting a broken toe... She found "yeasts" (sorry I translate for Japanese so some terms might need a bit of interpretation) in her poop, but nothing in her throat. She gave treatemetn for this and now she is still under antibiotics and some other things mixed with that I did not. full understand (it is challenging for my Japanese skills).
Becasue Botan chan was a bit stressed out and vomited after having been checked in the throat, the vet decided to let her recover until the afternoon to make X-rays. She could not see any clear visible fracture in the spine or anywhere else, but there was a tiny bright spot in her stomach, suggesting a potential metal intoxication. She asked us for potential cause, we did not find any clear potential cause but listed whatever we could think of. However, because her head looked fine and she had no blood in the poop and apparently a good digestion, the vet went back to her idea of a spine damage. We are still not really convinced... Botan chan stayed a full week hospitalised to check for evolution, during this time her weight dropped to 37 g (from 44.5 at arrival and 47 the week before Inkochan died, which was probably a bit overweight). Now she is back to 40 and hopefully will keep on adding a bit of weight. Interestingly, while before she loved sunflower seeds and some other fat rich seeds, now she barely eats these and prefers the smaller sized ones like millet... (before all these troubles, she would first of all eat all the biggest seeds and only then reluctantly eat the smaller ones...) at least she still loves the pellets (although not so much the brand recommended by the vet).
The vet recommended to keep her in a "tiny" aquarium (actually it is one of the transparent plastic things to keep the food fresh in which I made plenty of holes as it can open from the front so it is less stressing than a hand coming from the top in the standard "plastic aquariums" they often use. It is actually the same system as she had in the hospital so we thought it was quite safe. While at the hospital, she was apparently super quiet, but now that she is back with us, she is super active and trying to climb with her beak in the holes (so much for the recommendation of the vet of "don't put toys in for the first month as she needs to rest a maximum...").
So we are still not sure what happened, is it possible to have a metal intoxication that would only affect the feet without other symptoms? What are the side effects of the chelating agents (the vet mentioned some side effects as a reason for not giving that to her)? Does anyone knows if two weeks after the symptoms it is too late for chelating agents. Of course if she remains handicapped, we will adapt to her handicap, but if there is a chance for her to recover usage of her feet, it would make her life much simpler.

One thing in the "favor" of a spinal lesion is that Botan had her feathers partially cut to limit a bit her flying at the beginning (we are beginner and the shop recommended to cut not all, but a few before she can fly so she will not have the frustration of losing some ability, then when she molts we can keep all the feather full as we will be used, adn she. will be used to the house). It was no problems until a bit recently when we believe she might have lost one (some?) of her remaining feather before replacing the cut ones and in the last month or so, she was a bit heavier in her landings (and in her weight too actually) and tried to always take the shortest flight route (opposite to Inko chan who had the same feather cuts, but maybe was more balanced and slightly in advance in the molt who was making loops and trying to fly as much as possible).

Well any thought or advice is welcome!
 

Hankmacaw

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Lead and Zinc toxicosis can be determined easily with a blood test designed specifically for that purpose. Once heavy metal toxicity is determined, the bird should be started on chelation therapy and continued until all indications of heavy metal toxicity are absent. CaEDTA is the common starting chelation agent the switched to DMSA for long term cases.

My hank had zinc toxicity soon after I got him 22 years ago. DMSA was the only chelation agent available then and there were never any side effects. It took about 5 or 6 weeks for him to become cleared.

All the information you need is in this article;

Even if your birds didn't have heavy metal toxicity, the symptoms certainly indicate some type of toxicity. Inspect your home closely.
 

OkiF

Sitting on the front steps
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9/29/20
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Thanks for the feedback. We asked the vets about blood tests, but they recommended against it, unless absolutely necessary, on such small birds as it seems death by shock is not uncommon in these situations. Because the vets are quite convinced it is not an intoxication (we are much less convinced), they don't want to take the risk to give her chelating treatment at the moment (we really asked the strongest possible without being rude). They said except of the paralysis, she has no other symptoms associated with an intoxication. Personally, I really have trouble to think that two young birds who looked prefectly healthy for 6 months, suddenly have independent serious health issues in less than 5 days. We are really looking for everything even remotely potentially contaminated by heavy metals or other toxic stuff, but at the moment we are not sure. But we must make absolutely sure all is safe before even releasing Botan in her old cage (with adjustment if her handicap remains). Well, now she finished the antibiotics treatment and only keeps a complement of vitamin B. Since a few days, it looks like her left foot is less bad than the right one, I am not sure if we see this simply because we so much want to see some improvement, but actually her left foot was the second one to be paralysed, so possibly less deeply affected? Well, anyway, now we try to keep her calm (very challenging considering her super active character) and safe (again challenging considering that she tries to find any thing to grab and climb (at the moment there are only the holes in the plexiglass of her "aquarium" though...). At least she now put on some weight again and reached 40 grams, ideally in a few days she could reach 43-45 grams...
 

Destiny

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With her symptoms, a bright spot in her stomach on the Xray, and a recent bird death in the houshold, I would definitely suspect heavy metal poisoning. It can happen from ingesting even very small pieces of metal. The symptoms can be quite variable, depending on the type of poison and level of exposure.

I would ask the vet to do bloodwork to rule out heavy metal poisoning.
 

OkiF

Sitting on the front steps
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sorry for the late answer... We pushed the vet to the max for testing for poisoning or trying DMSA and see if anything improves, but she did not want in the absence of other symptoms and also did not want to take any risks getting blood from a small bird. Well, now Botan chan recovered her left foot quite fully (she slowly does not use her left knee to walk or "sit") and she spend most of her time on a little perch. Her right foot is still handicapped but it looks like she has some kind of control on the two middle (forward) toes. We give her now vitamin supplements (Nekton B and Nekton S) and hopefully she will keep recovering. Today fot the first time I saw her right "back toe" in the good position twice, but it was maybe simply that she hooked it in the paper lining the bottom of her box, so let's not get overexcited. At least she is back to her normal weight of around 44 grams and she looks like a happy camper.
 

budgieluv3

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Hope everything works out!
 
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