John: Hey everybody! It's time for Avian First Aid, Episode 11. This episode is going to deal with the types of burns; chemical burns, and thermal burns.
Dr. Pam Gordy: So the next category of emergency that we are going to see is burns, and you can have thermal burns, which is by heat; or you can have chemical burns where they are going to be exposed to a caustic chemical. The most common burn that we see is on the feet and it's in the kitchen. For some reason birds think that those little burner things on top of your stove are perches and many times birds that are flying in the kitchen decide to land and shoo them away from your cookie dish or whatever so they land on there. And the unfortunate thing is when they first feel the burn unlike us who pulls away, lots of them grip tighter first and then let go.
So bottom to the feet are a common area where I will see burns. I have also had birds that flew into a kitchen when there was hot soup and land in it, hot floor water if you are doing floors. So if there are things that are going to be -- if you are dealing with your bird don't do them in areas where there's heat. My bird gets to come with me when I am mixing with cookie dough, but as soon as I start baking he is back in his cage because I don't trust that one day he might not decide to hop down and I will pick him back or whatever.
Crop burns are another type of burns that we will see and that would be in a baby bird that's being handfed and the formula is too hot. Because when their motivated to eat, they glug it down way before they realize that it is too hot. Particularly if you are using microwave to heat your formula, it can have hot and cool spots; so even if you have thermometer and you put it in and it looks like its good over here, there could be a hot spot. So be extremely careful with that and our hands, if you use everyday to do things, you know to touch it isn't an indication of how hot it is because this skin is pretty thick and compared to her. So you want to either take the temperature and it should be 110 degrees for a baby or you can touch it to the more delicate skin on your wrist or on your lip to assess it a little bit better before you feed the baby.
Burns, usually when it first happens, it doesn't look too bad. Burns get worst for two weeks afterwards because as the tissue that's been burned dies, it lefts its blisters off and swaps out. Usually if you see it happen what you want to do is cool it down as much as you can as quickly as you can. So we are running it under cool water to drop the temperature of anything that you know could be in there, in there deeper for a minute or two it's probably all that is going to be a benefit after the burn happens. Then what you want to do is, a bunch of that burned area, the skin is probably going to peel off not right now but it will. So you want to protect the body from loosing a lot of fluid, the skin is a barrier to fluid loss so that's where your dressings come in.
I like using non-stick dressing which is also a pad and one that I like the best for burns is silver salt is the generic name for it, Flamazine is the tradename and its going to go to the burned patients and people it moisturizes, it has an antiseptic effect and it may do some sparing as well. So that's my favorite one, specifically for burns. You can use it for other things as well but its just expensive so you know its probably not huge advantage for other things but that's the best treatment. Then put your dressing on and you are probably going to want to change the dressing initially in three days, again in three days and then you are kind of going to know where you are at. If its mild and its just a tiny little bit, that might be enough, that might be healed by then.
If its extensive you are going to be doing dressing for months, it takes a long time to cover that burned area. With a crop burn usually what happens is nobody knows that its happened until a week or two later when we start to see formula draining from here on the baby and the reason is when they open it up they see this big scathe. But what happened is piece of the excess burned, from the inside out and now when you put the formula then there is a hole up on the crop, the outside. So two things you need to wait until you are sure how extensive that area is before you sew it right up because you cant tell for sure of how much tissue is dead in two or three weeks.
If you sewed your dead tissue it just falls out with the stitches. Sometimes if the area is extensible then you might have to stitch it once and then redo it later and the reason is, is that you have to keep that bird alive and he has to be able to eat and if the burn is really extensive any food that it eats just falls out and doesn't get into his stomach. So you may have to stich up with care continue feeding them and then they have more slashed out, and stitch it up gain. So obviously the prevention on that one is particularly you want to care with your formula. It could also potentially happen with a bird when he swallow something caustic like Draino, usually they wouldn't eat enough of that and usually if they have those kind of chemicals burn, it would be predominantly low, it wouldn't get as far as the crop.
Chemical burns, clinic solutions, that type of thing would be what they would get into. It can be on the feet if they walk in them or sometimes birds are curious and they will chew a bite and then get it in their mouth. If you see it happen immediate action is to get as much of it off the body as possible as fast as possible. And using soap is a good idea because some of these things are a bit oily and just run it under water, doesn't going to get it all off. So wash it up as soon as you can and then I usually don't wrap those until I know how extensive they are. They are usually not as bad as thermal burns. If they are in the mouth, don't use soap you want to just rinse it out with as much water as you can to get it off tongue and around. Usually if you are rinsing your birds mouth you don't want them in this position because if he start to choke and spatter, it will get in lung. When I am rinsing it out, as you pull it over the sink and rinse it so that it just falls down because that way it won't get into the lungs.
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