Post mortem

Novice · November 17, 2009

If you can get a live bird to Scottish Agricultural College at Auchincruive near Ayr and speak to Tom Pennicoat he will arrange for the PM to be done at the place King Billy speaking about earlier.

You will get an accurate diagnosis and Tom will give you good advice when he looks at the results of the PM but you may be better just eliminating the sick birds.

November 17, 2009

Years ago when we had problems in the loft with birds dying the local vet advised doing a PM.
He said a 'newly deceased' one would be best so the illest looking one was put out of it's misery and the Vet sent it off for a PM.

The result???? The pigeon had died of a broken neck!!!!!!

Needless to say the Vet didn't charge us for the Report lol :-/

Same thing happened to mav ;D ;D ;D from the one in Edinburgh :-/

November 17, 2009

Hi Pete,I might be totally wrong here mate ,if I am someone please put me right,I thought a blood test on the birds would sort your problem,also save a lot of cash. Lindsay

My first experience of a 'mystery illness' goes back a wee bit earlier than Pete's, 2004, a late bred hen I bought in became lame in one wing within weeks, eventually couldn't get off the floor. Wet behind ears, hadn't isolated any new birds.

Thought I'd paratyphoid, and expected dropped wings all over the place. That never happened, but I did take her to the vet, because I wanted to know the score.

Wasn't paratyphoid, that's salmonella, and I knew it wasn't salmonella as soon as vet gave me the result. The bird's shoulder joint had been infected with unknown bacteria, lab had been unable to culture it, but it was one of the dot-shaped kind, 'coccus, and salmonella is one of the rod-shaped kind, 'bacillus. Was also told paratyphoid doesn't affect just one bird and one joint; it affects all the birds and invades their whole body.

Got 6 youngsters off that hen the following year, and one day found one of those youngsters in the garden, unable to fly. What's going on here? Wondered if it was genetic, hen passed on a weakness, or a disease? again, wanted to know score and took that bird to vet too. Not illness. Injury. Broken wing [radius] strapped up for 6 weeks confined to box, took bandage off - flew up to perch right away.

So its very easy to jump to conclusions. Learned a few things in that period. Lots of diseases have similar symptoms, yes, lameness can be caused by paratyphoid, but so can paramyxo, streptococcus, staphylococcus and any of the gut enterococcus getting into a joint. Only one person can tell you for sure what it is, and maybe where it came from.

chickadee · November 17, 2009

I think most vets know very little about pigeons because they rarely see any as fanciers tend to deal with problems themselves. The more any vet gets to deal with any animal the more they become experienced in them. We had a post mortem carried out on a pigeon by DEFRA at the Bush estate in Edinburgh and it came back as meningitis which our local vet knew nothing about but now he does

This a good place as well and good luck Pete

http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/vet