Tamlin was a little Budgie that came into our care after he was found as a stray bird that had hit a window. He had spent a few days at a vet clinic before being cleared to be released to a rescue. He has been bright, active, eating, passing normal droppings, flying with no problems and happy for the past 3 weeks.
Tamlin was completely normal when went out yesterday around 3:30pm and came home at 5:30pm to find Tamlin at the bottom of the cage unable to walk (only stumbling in circles towards the right side), vocalising (cheeping), and trembling/twitching/seizure-like-activity. We immediately provided heat, and a small padded cage., once it was clear that he was not going to have a proper seizure, we gave him a crop feed as his crop was completely empty.
We monitored Tamlin for a few hours, but he showed no improvement whether in my hands, cage, in the dark or provided with a box to hide in. He continued to circle to the right, having tremors and vocalising, so we called our closest emergency centre who referred us to another clinic as they were full of critical patients. We ended up going to VRH and consulted with a lovely vet who provided us with treatments to help control Tamlin's tremors until the morning when we could transfer him to an avian vet.
The treatments allowed Tamlin to get some sleep overnight under a heat lamp, and he was still fairly sedated and comfortable in the morning. Unfortunately, he had a seizure before the avian vet was able to examine him and he passed away shortly after in my hands.
We discussed with the avian vet and she did take a look at his brain on post-mortem to see if there were any obvious lesions or tumours (but without histopathology to see the tiny cells, which we cannot reasonably afford at the moment, we cannot get a definitive diagnosis). Tamlin's brain did have abnormalities, there were no clear tumours seen with the naked eye, but there was enough information there to say that the tremors/seizure were likely caused by a brain related problem (e.g., cancer, lesions, tumour, restricted blood flow, inflammation). We cannot rule out whether this was caused by the window strike 3 weeks ago, but we cannot be sure that it is the case.
Tamlin - we are so sorry we couldn't save you, but hope that in your final moments you were not aware of any pain or suffering. We hope you rest easy now, forever flying free.
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