John: Hey everybody it's time for Avian First Aid Episode 12. Egg Binding can be a real problem for bird owners, that's the topic for this episode.
Dr. Pam Gordy: Okay, Egg Binding is an another emergency that we would commonly see. Egg Binding means a bird is unable to pass the egg that's in the uterus and it is just like child birth, it has to come out, it can't just stay there. There is multiple possible reasons for that, one could be that the egg is just too big for the pelvis and that could commonly happen with birds that were quiet young when they started laying. Another possibility would be that there wasn't enough calcium in the diet, calcium is required for muscle contraction. So if they don't have enough calcium, sometimes the muscles aren't strong enough to push the egg out or they might be too weak from some other condition, food nutrition or whatever. So for whatever reasons the egg has been there and it isn't coming out and we see every presentation from the contract owner who saw that his bird might be laying an egg and rushed to the end, we will talk about later, to one that has a huge distended belly and just can't have it it's at the bottom of cage because it's calcium deficient.
So we see that full range it can be not serious at all, it can be so serious that they die. Some of them and many of them you have to stabilize prior to moving them or prior to treating them. There should be one of this situation that would fall under the -- your bird too shocky and has low blood sugar, he may also have low calcium so if this bird is able to swallow, it would be better to choose one of the electrolyte solutions to give them orally rather than to sugar solution, sugar solution corn syrup it will give them blood sugar, but it doesn't have any calcium in it. However if your bird isn't swallowing because it's so weak, don't try let it because you might drown them with it. So supplemental heat is important, you probably have all read about steaming their butts to get the egg out. The reason that sometimes it works is it warms up the bird and sometimes they are colitis gets too dehydrated and when the egg comes out the colitis is very very thin membrane and it has to be able to move around the egg and then come down. I have seen somewhere it got too dry because the bird was too dehydrated and it stuck to the egg and couldn't move. So if that happens, a little bit of steam is good, but I have also met clients who burn their birds bottom while steaming them to get the egg out it so if you are going to do that be really careful and what I can prefer rather than steam is to lubricate with K-Y jelly or a hot bread. Make sure we are not going to burn the tissue and create another problem because what we are doing is to warming the bird up and hydrating them, hoping that their uterus will be able to expel the the bird.
If the bird is straining and you can see that there's a swelling there but still walking around, they are looking chipper you are probably okay to do supplemental heat and wait for a little while. If you think that they are very shaky unable to stand kind of wobbly, then I would get some food into them, warm them up for ten or fifteen minutes and then get them in because the longer you leave the egg there, there is pain to deal with and then there is also the dehydration. When they come in often when I first see them, I don't even do everything all the way. There are some of those birds that I take in the cage, put them in an incubator, give them warm, give them oxygen if you probably even touched them because some of them are so stressed if you touch them up just handle them, they die right there. So I would give them ten minutes of warming up in supplemental oxygen, then a bird like that I would pick it, pop in the egg quickly, I would already know it for a place therefore I would have substitute fluids and calcium injectable available, given an injection like give another ten minutes in the incubator warming up before it starts to extract the egg.
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