Finding a Good Avian Veterinarian
Providing your animal medical care is vital to their wellness and survival. It is apart of caring for an animal, similar to a pediatrician to a child. Vets can be plentiful for dogs and cats and other domestic species, but undomesticated species, like a parrot, and an exotic animal can make it more challenging. To my understanding, in veterinary school, birds are talked about briefly, but the main teachings and practices are on mammals like dogs and cats. This gives every vet general information about birds, but specific information to be able to make the right prognosis involves a more specialized education and experience. Finding those vets can be challenging. Here are some tips to be able to find good avian veterinarians.
The first place to start is to formulate a list of all vets in your area that claim to see avian species and exotics. This is a lot of cold calling, but there is a website that does all that work for you depending on your location. The website is www.AAV.org. This is the Association of Avian Veterinarians, a database that gives you the contact of avian vets within your area. This is a powerful resource not only because it shows you all the individual vets that practice on avian species in your area, it also lists their degrees and certifications.
For degrees, the bare minimum for a vet is a DVM, doctorates of veterinary medicine. This is what every vet is given when they graduate and pass state testing. Something to always look for is further their education into MS, a masters in science, or a PhD, a doctorate. Certifications are also important. Certifications means that the vet is actively continuing their education and keeping up to date with new practices and knowledge to better help your bird. Notice how many they have and when they got them. Was it a long time ago or more recent? The more recent their certifications, the better.
Once when you find an avian vet, the next step is to look into their practice. Either ask for a consultation with the vet VIA phone, a walk-through, or communicate through email before you bring your bird in. Some important things to ask is are how educated and strained are the veterinary technicians at handling avian species? Vet aid’s will be also handling your bird and your birds’ workups, including but not limited to, restraining your bird, filling medications, biological testing like bloodwork and fecal samples, giving x-rays, and so much more. It is important to determine if the vet staff is experienced enough to handle your bird. Ask the vet if they see avian species regularly. If they have a larger client list of avian species, that means other people have worked and trust them. They also have more experience working with birds daily. One of the most important questions to ask is how they handle emergency situations after hours and where do they refer their avian clients to after hours for emergency situations if it is not them. Parrot’s health can decline suddenly and quickly, so having an emergency plan is crucial. Also, what kind of diagnostic tools and resources do they have in their practice. Do they have x-ray with a bird restraint tool? Do they have an oxygen chamber? Do they preform avian surgeries in house and if so what kind? Where do they send their lab work, do they do any in house? These are important to know because they more specialized equipment they have for avian species, the more experienced they likely are and the more they understand these types of testing. Finally, what are their procedures of diagnostic testing? If a bird comes in with signs of illness, do they just do a physical examination or do they call for blood work or gram stains? Do they put birds under anesthesia for testing and if so what testing? Of course, a single practice can’t preform everything for our birds, but understanding what they can do, what they outsource, and their protocols are important in determining if the vet will meet your standard of care.
The most ideal avian veterinarian to look for, and would be worth a traveling distance, is a board-certified avian veterinarian. These are highly trained and skilled veterinarians that specialize in avian species. Board certification is not easy to get and requires a certain number of hours in practice, a lengthy and difficult test, and proof of continuously furthering their education. They are the most respected in the field.
A great way to find a trusted avian vet is a bit out of the box. Joining a local bird group on Facebook, or meeting other bird people and asking where they take their birds in your area is a great way to hear people’s reviews about their experiences. Usually, if there is someone around with a larger flock, they might have tried many avian vets in the area and can give you the complete review and explain why they chose the one that they did.
Don’t get too comfortable on Facebook or social media asking for advice. It is never recommended to go to Facebook pages or groups, as well as contact anyone online that is not a licensed vet for medical advice. Personally, I get asked often by clients and people of the community about medical advice. I can share my personal experiences, and I disclose that they are my experiences, and I can suggest testing from my experiences, but I cannot tell people much because I am not educated in that field. I never give out medications that I have used or treatments specifically, but I do suggest when people should disease test or get bloodwork or x-rays done from a vet. If you take advise from someone who is not licensed, it can become a death sentence to your animal. It is also very unethical for individuals who are not in practice to be giving advice.
Another concern with getting veterinarian information from online is the person does not have your bird right in front of them. You can be describing symptoms, showing media, like photos or videos, and give a veterinarian a medical history but they still cannot properly diagnose your bird. Without a fecal sample, bloodwork, or imaging like x-rays, it could be a lot of reasons and different treatments to understand what is going on, which no one can do online. Professionals in the industry do not even give advice online or over the phone unless your bird is seen in their practice or you have recently gotten testing done at a local vet and you’re sending results out for a second opinion.
Finding an appropriate avian vet is important for your animal’s wellness. Finding the right one can be the difference between life or death. I want to end this with a personal note from my recent experiences with resident 30ish year old yellow nape amazon JoJo. I had to temporarily move back in with my mother with all of my birds and dogs. I weigh my birds daily to keep track of their wellness, as a drop in weight can be an easy sign to an illness. I noticed that JoJo was not eating and his weight was dropping fast. He was not talking, and JoJo never stops talking, sleeping a lot, but his cage mate and boyfriend Ringo was perfectly fine. I gave it a few days to be sure, then I immediately called my vet to get an emergency appointment. I found out that he was on vacation and would not be back for a period of time. I have backup vets on my list and all were booked and could not see him or was also out on vacation. Panicked I became desperate, as I had a bird that has lost 150g in the span of 4 days. I found an emergency vet that took birds that was open 24 hours. I just took him there.
The emergency vet did save his life and kept him stable. They were good in a pinch. But they completely misdiagnosed JoJo. They did all diagnostic testing including x-rays and said he had Pneumonia and that’s it. This was strange because he declined so fast and was not showing all major symptoms of that diagnosis. I asked for the images to be sent out to a specialist immediately. The results came back that he had pulmonary edema and vascular disease and the prognosis was not looking good. I contacted a trusted avian vet across the country with the results to get their opinion, which they gave me a long list of treatments I was never told about from these vets. I called in and asked them to fill prescriptions of what my vet friend recommended. We also took him to get an echocardiogram and they said they also found a heart murmur.
Finally, my trusted avian vet comes back from vacation and I see him second appointment that day. We redid all the testing and we found out something that no one suggested or saw. We found that he had what looked like sand in his intestines. Their outdoor aviary was on pavers with a sand filler. It was barely any sand visible through the very small cracks. I always sat outside with the birds and watched them closely when they were outside. But birds get into everything and are affected by the smallest things. Immediately we start the course for treating foreign bodies through injections and medications. JoJo is still going through treatment, but his heart concerns have disappeared, his weight is almost back to normal, his personality is back. I sat in the car driving JoJo to the emergency vet that first day with a bird almost dead crying saying “he is never coming home to his aviary” and “oh no, what will he mate Ringo and his buddy Crazy Bird do” to him being back to normal. I have already made modifications to my aviary, like putting vinyl flooring down under the aviary on top of the pavers so they have no access to sand. But this further showed the importance of why an avian vet needs to be educated because the emergency vet told me to euthanize him, and my trusted vet and vet network helped save his life.