Keet Shivers and has Odd Stool

User Question
I am having a problem with my 5 year old (give or take a year) budgie, Flipper. I have taken her to a vet several times over a three month period but she is still the same. I took her in when I noticed her stool was not at all what it should be and she seems to shiver all the time like she's cold. I have another budgie, Crooner, who is doing fine. The vet prescribed antibiotics, the liquid kind that is used exclusively as her drinking water until it is all gone. When her condition did not improve, the vet thought we should keep up with the antibiotics. This went on two more times (one of those times with another vet, for a total of four times), which means this was the only thing she had to drink for three months. A few weeks ago, she seemed to get better, so I stopped taking her to the vet. But the stool is still odd looking and she still shivers, plus she is no where near as active as Crooner. I keep my place nice and warm all the time (78 degrees) and I put a heating pad on top of their cage at night. I have had her nearly all her life. She was doing great the first four and a half years, with no problems whatsoever. I hate seeing her like this. It's as if she's always miserable. She does have her moments, like when she and Crooner play, or when she eats her millet spray or treat stick, but other than that, not so great. I am at the point where I want to find some refuge place or something, to take her to so she can the kind of treatment she needs to get better.

Lisa's Answer
Well first it is GREAT that you are taking the keet to a vet, watching the cage temperature, and using a heating pad. You really are doing everything you can to keep your keet healthy and you deserve great kdudos for all of that. Thank you thank you for being such a caring keet owner!!

If you've been on antibiotics for 3 months and the keet only started to seem better recently, then I would have to guess that antibiotics weren't really helping. Three months is a really long time for a tiny bird to be on them. On the other hand many vets don't specialize in bird health so if they don't know what is really wrong, antibiotics is a pretty good cure-all for various issues.

Hopefully at this point you've ruled out that she really IS cold. I suppose a way to test that would be that for a week, you crank up the heat in that room to something balmy, like 85F and keep all the doors and windows tightly closed so there is no draft at all, and keep the back and sides of the cage covered. See if that heat-rock situation makes any difference at all. If it does at least you have somewhere to start with. But if it doesn't, you know for sure that the shivering is not cold but some sort of a muscle tremor.

Keets do have a tendency to develop tumors in their middle age and it could be that your keet is getting one somewhere that it is bothering a muscle. Or that your keet, when you weren't watching, managed to fall or slam into a wall or something and damage either a muscle or part of the nervous system. It'd be pretty hard to figure out either of these things. So if you do rule out cold completely, it might come down to something that can't be "fixed" but just something the keet is going to have to learn to live with. In that case it would be as if your keet lost a foot or something. The keet isn't necessarily thrilled to have this problem, but it goes on with life and enjoys it as best as it can. So I'd say especially since your vets are not coming up with anything, that you might want to accept that your keet is getting a little old and trembly and find her toys and chewies that she can play with without having to be too active. I suppose you could always look for a third vet, but again, whatever wrong is going to be pretty obscure at this point if 2 vets couldn't find it - and is probably going to be non-fixable. So you just have to go forward from there.

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