I am SO relieved this year is totally different from last year and all those years before. In those dreaded molting seasons of the past, his old feathers would not just fall out. First of all, whatever old feathers had remained on his body were usually damaged. Plus the new feathers would break as he was grooming the protective keratin off the shaft. Or he would be itching so badly and act so agitated, he would literally be aggressively attacking both the feathers and his skin.
He was miserable. And so were we.
So years ago, the vet decided he needed to be put on an anti-psychotic medication for his agitation. It made him pretty placid (and sleepy) most of the day but, as it wore off, his agitation resumed. So, while it may have seemed on the surface that the medication was helping reduce his agitated behavior, I couldn't help but wonder if there was something else going on...some underlying thing that was causing Ollie to itch and attack his skin and feathers with such fervor.
Things got SO incredibly bad in spring and summer of 2017 we literally reached the end of our rope. The nonstop agitation, nonstop eardrum splitting screaming and his total inability to ever just relax turned my sweet parrot into an unrecognizable creature. His hormones went totally wild. All he wanted to do was have sex. He wouldn't eat and barely slept. The look in his eye was not that of the Ollie I knew but that of a wild creature in extreme discomfort and literally on the verge of total insanity.
We had two choices. Either rehome him with avian experts who could figure out what to do with him...or figure out this complex issue ourselves and resolve it without losing our minds in the process.
Initially, we began the rehoming process. What we discovered, however, was the financial surprise of rehoming. Our local avian shelter required we had extensive (and expensive) blood tests to confirm he didn't carry any diseases. The other route was to ship him to the sanctuary in Oklahoma where experts in Eclectus were located and were willing to work with him and keep him there until and if we decided to bring him back home. That seemed the better option for us, although the entire situation was breaking my heart.
The first thing we needed to do was to slowly wean Ollie off the anti-psychotic medication. That process increased his agitation temporarily since he was basically going through withdrawal. But he made it through in a few weeks and was then ready to leave us.
What happened next was pure karma.
Before we could ship him, the soaring summer temps needed to drop significantly. So, we had to wait to purchase our flight ticket and get the carrier sent here. While we were waiting for that to happen, I decided to try some other ideas.
Like all pet bird owners, we had been giving Ollie treats from our meals since that tended to distract and quiet him down. And we also gave him tons of good natural foods--including things like fresh corn on the cob. We tend to eat pretty healthy food but didn't realize that many of those "healthy" foods still contained added vitamins, preservatives and other surprises.
For a while I had noticed that Ollie seemed more itchy after he had feasted on fresh corn...or popcorn. And that agitation seemed to increase if he also had been given treats of corn chips, tacos and other things that I later discovered were made with corn oil. So I decided to eliminate ALL corn from his diet. And that is when everything started to change.
More to report in the next post.....stay tuned!
No comments:
Post a Comment