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Vomiting in the morning only

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I was hoping to not have to deal with an ill bird so soon as I'm new to their care but despite my fastidious cleaning of cage surfaces and attentive removal of old food/any bacteria sources like poop, Matisse has become sickly. We have contacted 2 avian vets so far today alone and left messages, waiting to hear from them still. One wasn't working at the clinic today and the other just came back from a vacation on the 15th supposedly according to her voicemail but didn't answer so I left a message. The latter vet mentioned also gave me advice when I started noticing the whole seed vomit in Matisse's sleeping area, she suggested it could be hormonal behavior since he's not showing any other symptoms other than the puking of a solid seed loaf and a little bit of clear liquid after but we weren't able to secure an appointment at the time as she was about to leave on the fore mentioned vacation. 😵‍💫

My main issue is, how do I help until we schedule an appointment for him? So far, I've been even more diligent with cleaning and sanitize the cage bars daily, offering only a single vegetable a day with pellet powder instead of their usual frozen chop to keep meals easier to digest, clean water, and pellets always on offer as well as their daily seed ration on only plain paper towel. I've also been offering Matisse more millet during out of cage time to be sure he is consuming at least something (I do see him eat just fine through the day). Matisse is the only one behaving in this manner, Picasso is completely normal and himself. The strange thing is Matisse seems to puke up that seed, then sit quiet for about 30 - 45 minutes, and then acts completely normal the rest of the day so far as to even try to court Picasso. 🙄 I appreciate any advice you could offer me and I'll be busy still calling around as I've been trying all week to find someone to see him. There's an emergency clinic we can visit but it would be immensely more expensive as they would charge an extra emergency fee and a new patient fee onto the bill (we've taken our rats there before but each individual animal is treated as "new" for the first time they come in). If that is what must be done, I will not hesitate. Thank you for reading my distressed post, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on what I should do next.
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FaeryBee
You are doing everything correctly.

If Matisse were my budgie, I would continue doing everything as you are until you can get him into see one of the "regular" Avian Vets.
I do not see the matter as an "emergency" situation as Matisse is behaving normally except for the early morning issue.

You can always contact an on-line Avian Vet, if you choose to do so, while waiting for one of the two Avian Veterinarians to have an opening to see Matisse.

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Please let us know how things progress.
I'm sending lots of love and healing energy for little Matisse.
💜💜
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Cody
There is a marked difference between vomiting and regurgitation, regurgitation is a controlled motion of bringing up seeds and can be hormone related, however vomiting is not, have you actually observed him bringing up the seed to be able to say which action he might be doing? Vomiting is uncontrolled and you may see him shake his head in an effort to expel the contents and it often is all over the cage and stuck to the cage bars.
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FaeryBee
Cody is absolutely correct.
Additionally, with vomiting, the bird usually ends up with a sticky mess on the feathers around the beak.
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FaeryBee said:
You are doing everything correctly.

If Matisse were my budgie, I would continue doing everything as you are until you can get him into see one of the "regular" Avian Vets.
I do not see the matter as an "emergency" situation as Matisse is behaving normally except for the early morning issue.

You can always contact an on-line Avian Vet, if you choose to do so, while waiting for one of the two Avian Veterinarians to have an opening to see Matisse.

Ask an avian vet - get bird care answers ASAP

Appointments, consultations, phone, skype, iChat, e-mail - Budgie Health

Just Answer Veterinarian for Birds

Please let us know how things progress.
I'm sending lots of love and healing energy for little Matisse.
💜💜
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Thank you so much for the reassurances! This put me so much more at ease. I know how easy it is for a sick bird to go down hill FAST, especially with losing liquids. I think my nerves may have gotten the better of me and I jumped to the worse case scenario immediately. 😅 I will update this matter, still waiting on vets to call back. Your wishes are most welcome. ✨️ ❤
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Cody said:
There is a marked difference between vomiting and regurgitation, regurgitation is a controlled motion of bringing up seeds and can be hormone related, however vomiting is not, have you actually observed him bringing up the seed to be able to say which action he might be doing? Vomiting is uncontrolled and you may see him shake his head in an effort to expel the contents and it often is all over the cage and stuck to the cage bars.
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Yes, I've seen him do both in the morning. He starts by regurgitating and it continues into an uncontrolled vomit. The cage bars are getting splattered with his vitriol and I've seen small amounts of the remaining spittle get caught on his cere and head, he usually rubs this off on perches pretty quickly though so it's hard to actually see if this happens every time. I really appreciate the insightful comments, would a video of his behavior be helpful if I could catch it? He's going the vet regardless, of course. But if I can learn more in the meantime, I'd like to. 👍
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FaeryBee
The fact that he is actually vomiting in addition to regurgitating means there is a condition that goes beyond just hormonal behavior.

If you do not hear back from either Avian Veterinarian by tomorrow, I would contact one of the on- line Avian Vets.

They can best advise you regarding what to do in the meantime and if they believe ithe situation warrants an emergency Avian Veterinarian visit.

We certainly don’t want to take any chances with Matisse’s health
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Cody
Is this happening first thing in the morning? I am thinking that if it is maybe he is gorging himself first thing in the am and it's too much and he vomits it up. One of my birds gets milk thistle every morning, I give it first thing but if he has been eating before I get to him he will sometimes vomit up the seeds and the milk thistle.
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Cody said:
Is this happening first thing in the morning? I am thinking that if it is maybe he is gorging himself first thing in the am and it's too much and he vomits it up. One of my birds gets milk thistle every morning, I give it first thing but if he has been eating before I get to him he will sometimes vomit up the seeds and the milk thistle.
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Cody, you're a genius! Of course! I am guilty of providing my boys a couple nuggets of millet before I get them all ready for breakfast (chop and pellets, seeds a little later after I take the chop away) to distract them while I quickly use the toilet, prepare coffee and a small meal for myself. It now occurs to me that Matisse may be hogging and eating all these bits by himself and maybe this is the cause. Picasso tends to feed Matisse in the morning as well, so I think this is the recipe for disaster! After reading what you wrote last night I decided to not do the millet this morning. He didn't puke! I feel really embarrassed I hadn't thought about that at all and panicked immediately 😅. I'm used to rats who cannot vomit so I took it as extra serious. Oh man, what a relief!
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Cody
Keep a close watch if he continues not to vomit then maybe all is well, but if you see any signs of puffing up or lethargy or additional vomiting then there is problem. I did not know rats could not vomit, why is that, I assume something with their anatomy. I had a rat named Ott, decades ago, he used to love to sit on my shoulder and eat grapes.
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Cody said:
Keep a close watch if he continues not to vomit then maybe all is well, but if you see any signs of puffing up or lethargy or additional vomiting then there is problem. I did not know rats could not vomit, why is that, I assume something with their anatomy. I had a rat named Ott, decades ago, he used to love to sit on my shoulder and eat grapes.
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Will do on monitoring! So far Matisse ate some veggies, a little seed and some crushed pellets, drank, had his training millet in the afternoon. No signs of anything unusual. Taking his afternoon nap at 1 PM ish now, heh. Ott sounds adorable. It's an unpleasant subject and the site I learned from goes very in depth. I used to read stuff like this when I was bored at night, having taken care of all sorts of rats with different backgrounds and researching beyond vet care instructions for the well being of my pets. So click here with caution. Hopefully don't eat and read that please. It's pretty interesting though!
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ShleeTheRat said:
So click here with caution.
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".. they don't experience heartburn"
OMG I wish I was a rat-bird hybrid then I could eat all the spicy food in the world. 😭
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S
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Update: he continues to bring up food every morning except for that random one off day where he didn't. I was checking his droppings this morning and saw he did so again. I'm very concerned about some of the droppings I've seen, however I'm unable to tell if the "seed" in the dropping was there before he pooped or not. The photos attached are from this morning.

The regular vet who was on vacation called back and suggested we continue to observe since it seems to be in the mornings only still, we are scheduling an appointment for Wednesday if available. I'm so frustrated and worried, it's making me lose sleep and a lot of tears. 😞

Overnight droppings and some seeds he threw up, I feed them the Higgins Vitaseed.
Insect Pest Parasite Invertebrate Soil


Concerning droppings this morning
Insect Plant Pest Terrestrial plant Pattern

Terrestrial plant Circle Fashion accessory Metal Macro photography
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Cody
At this point I would get the first appointment you can, if the appointment is not within the coming week I would ask if they would be willing to at least run a gram stain test on a fresh dropping if you bring it in, that at least would get you a head start.
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Cody said:
At this point I would get the first appointment you can, if the appointment is not within the coming week I would ask if they would be willing to at least run a gram stain test on a fresh dropping if you bring it in, that at least would get you a head start.
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Thank you so much for your reply. I'm currently calling and contacting vets in my area. We have one confirmed appointment at the usual vet for Wednesday at 1PM and are in contact with another vet who may be able to squeeze us in on Monday. Waiting is the worst part of all this. I want to help my poor guy so bad. 😢
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Cody
I know the feeling all too well. Keep in mind that no one can diagnose just by looking, so when you get to the vet I would request that a gram stain be done on the droppings as well as a crop swab, without that test you cannot know if there is an overgrowth of bacteria, or a fungal or parasitic issue. If those tests do not show anything, talk to the vet about malabsorption issues, sometimes you will see seeds passed in the droppings due to an enzyme problem and adding a digestive enzyme may help. Also keep in mind that AGY (avian gastric yeast) does not always show up in a test, so talk to the vet about that as well.
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Cody said:
I know the feeling all too well. Keep in mind that no one can diagnose just by looking, so when you get to the vet I would request that a gram stain be done on the droppings as well as a crop swab, without that test you cannot know if there is an overgrowth of bacteria, or a fungal or parasitic issue. If those tests do not show anything, talk to the vet about malabsorption issues, sometimes you will see seeds passed in the droppings due to an enzyme problem and adding a digestive enzyme may help. Also keep in mind that AGY (avian gastric yeast) does not always show up in a test, so talk to the vet about that as well.
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Noted. I am at my wits end so I'm very glad to have this forum to ask and rely on more experienced budgie keeper knowledge, it's the only thing keeping me from losing it.

Good news: we can see an emergency vet today that has also stated they can be in contact with my usual vet with any treatments or diagnosis and he's listed on the AAV. Bless this site and your helpful links. 🙏
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Cody
That's great, I know hard it is, but just relax a bit so he does not pick up on your anxiety. Keep us posted.
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Update: just got home from the emergency vet. After a once over, tests, and the robbing of my wallet; turns out Matisse is just hormonal after all. I'm super relieved and also annoyed that I worried so much over essentially nothing 🙃

Better to know than not to know! Phew. With all this craziness behind me. I think I'm just going to go to sleep now. Wake me up when my wallet recovers. 😴 😩
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Figaro22
ShleeTheRat said:
Update: just got home from the emergency vet. After a once over, tests, and the robbing of my wallet; turns out Matisse is just hormonal after all. I'm super relieved and also annoyed that I worried so much over essentially nothing 🙃

Better to know than not to know! Phew. With all this craziness behind me. I think I'm just going to go to sleep now. Wake me up when my wallet recovers. 😴 😩
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Well I’m sorry about your empty wallet….but so glad to hear everything is ok! What a relief! I hope all returns to normal soon😊
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