Our big feathered friend, Rabushka, (redhead), was brought in the other day because her crop was impacted. This is a serious problem for birds. The crop in birds is used to soften the food and as a storage pouch and regulates the amount of food that continues its way through the digestive system.
Rabushka had stopped eating for several days and was in danger of damaging the crop either by inection or by perforation, so we needed to come up with a plan to relieve her discomfort.
We did not think that anesthesia was safe at this point, so we wrapped our feathered patient in a big fluffy towel, and very gently passed a soft rubber tube into the crop and flushed several times with warm water, slowly drawing out small bits of impacted food, and gave her an injection of antibiotics.
We did this several times over the weekend, and by Monday we noticed that Rabushka was defiantley feeling stronger but there still was a good deal of impacted material in the crop that we needed to remove.
We wrapped Rabushka in the towel again, and used a rapid acting gas anesthesia to quickly anesthetize her. We passed the catheter into her crop again and while massaging the outside of her chest (where the crop is), we were able to remove a great deal more of the impaction.
Rabuska is going home today. She is finishing up her chicken food and making quiet clucking sounds in her hospital kennel. She will go home on antibiotics and with all our well wishes. She is a great patient.
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