Sunday, June 14, 2009
Twist of Fate
After a normal day of hopping around in the weathering yard, taking a bath, eating a sparrow and a quail, Moa had a "fit" of some sort and died around 11:00 at night. He went from acting perfectly normal to dead in about 15 minutes time. I took him to the vet for a necropsy the next day. After a very detailed inspection, there was no sign of trauma, air sacs were clear, all the organs looked normal, there was no punctures in the stomach or crop, mutes in the GI tract looked normal, in short everything looked pretty normal except for a small dark spot on the heart. The vet's best guess was that it was some sort of heart defect, but she did not sound too convinced of that either. So his very abrupt death is unsolved at this time, until we can talk to the avian pathologist on Monday. Maybe he'll be able to give some insight. Needless to say, I'm very dissappointed in this turn of events.....
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6 comments:
Ryan, that sucks. Im sorry for your loss. We were all really excited about seeing you fly a coop.....maybe next year.
This sucks i was really looking forward to see how you got on with this bird
Sorry about the bird. It happens in this sport, but it still sucks. What are your plans for the coming season?
Doug
Harris' Hawk Blog
I'll still be plenty busy. I have a Gyr/Peregrine who has only been flown for about 3 weeks at the end of last year. Pulled from the chamber very late, and I've got a Gyrkin that is a 4 year old imprint. He is pretty green too; meant for breeding but never panned out at my friend's project.
-Ryan
Ryan, sorry for your loss. I had a similar experience several year back with at tiercel Coops. Some of the literature on the subject of "fits" or "seizures" point to nutrition deficiencies as the culprit (in particular calcium deficiencies.) However, in my case the bird was supplemented with vitamins and given whole bird diets. Even in the early stages, he was given whole bird diets of starlings that had been ground up with bone and all. Like you, I also had a full work up of labs, but to no avail. I'm interested as to what your pathologist concludes. Please post his findings.
Bret
Bret, I have heard the same thing about calcium deficiencies, and I too fed whole bird diets, bones and all, of mostly House Sparrows and some Starlings. I also used Vitahawk daily. It was still inconclusive after all the tests had been done. I also talked to Dr. Redig and he didn't have any other ideas either, other than calcium deficiencies, but agreed that shouldn't have been the case with the diet that he was fed. Unfortunately, one for unsolved mysteries.
-Ryan
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