Any Veterinarians out there?

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Nice try there. I hope all works out. My dog is always bringing us bunnies and baby birds. So far we are 0-10 or something like that on rescues. Normally the vet/rescue place says they are too young to survive or gravely injured from being "played with" by the farm dog.

My wife tries hard though...ever since we had a baby she really gets upset at baby animals brought in by him.

 
Best of luck. We found a Blue Jay baby that a cat had got in '88.

She's still here, 19 years later. Very personable, says a few words

and various animal calls. :rolleyes:

 
o/vfjr,

you've earned some good karma points on this one. i personally hate seeing anything suffer. good luck with how things turn out.

 
Cheapest solution would be to kill the bird and the cats. Over the long haul that should save many more birds and save you some money.

If you care about wildlife, keep the cats indoors.

 
hey andrew, did 'rocketdoc' set you up with any good ideas?

any updates on mr scrub jay?

send his cage linings to those that suggest he should be lunch...

 
haha, nah, the bbq sauce jokes are just for fun.

Update. When I got him, he was 3.1 ounces. That's three days ago. Now he's 3.4 ounces. I'm not sure how fast he is supposed to be growing, but I thought I better weigh him to see if the diet that I put him on would allow him to grow well. A tenth of an ounce per day seems pretty decent growth for a bird, but I'd have to have someone who knows tell me.

He eats well. I have a formula for hand fed birds, and to boost protein levels I'm feeding him egg yolk still, plus a few other things. I have learned that he knows how to take solid food. He loves egg yolk and takes pieces of it eagerly and gobbles it down in no time.

I introduced some foods to him (as far as I know). I had him try a small piece of ground sirloin (hamburger) today. His probe technique is to stab at it with the beak and then use the tongue to taste the residue. He did this once and quickly took the small piece I had, swallowed it fast and chirped with a gaping mouth showing me he wanted more.

It is really pretty neat to have this guy imprinted on me so fast. I put him on a perch behind me and he went through a pretty good series of jumps to get on the back of my chair and then to the top of my head. He does this anytime I sit here on the computer. It's kinda cool that he'd rather sit on my shoulder than anywhere else.

The wing is still a problem for him. I have tried to secure it in 5 different ways. I'm about to wrap the little shit with duct tape. I'll be darned if he doesn't just rip my slings off. One time when I used medical tape, he pulled the feathers that it was stuck to out one by one to get it off of him. Dang, they guy is resolute, he doesn't want anything on him.

One attempt had a pretty funny result. I wrapped him so much with a self sticking ace bandage that he couldn't keep his balance. Something about the bandage being too close to the top of his leg prevented him from wanting to, or more like being able to put his leg down. So he just kind of pushed himself around with one leg and rolled around. I wish I had a video camera. It was hillarious, but I wasn't mean enough to leave it on very long.

The cage should arrive tomorrow, the he'll get yet another change in lifestyle. His home has been a cat carrier. It's not a very good home for a bird so I got a branch from a tree and put it over the open topped cat bag and let him stay on the branch all day. At night I zip him into the carrier and cover him up for his sleep.

The feedings in the morning are really funny. He is HUNGRY. He aggresively goes for the food syringe just like you'd see a chick feed from it's mom in the wild. He can take 3cc's in one gulp! If you can't tell, I'm rather enjoying this and frankly, he seems pretty calm about everything now. He isn't very vocal for a bird and I figure that's because in the wild, being vocal can be a bad thing for a immobile bird. I am really glad he is taking solid food because that means that he's close to being easier to feed.

I'm concentrating his teaching now to manipulation of objects with his beak and feet. The beak thing came naturally, but holding a stick to a perch with his foot so that it wouldn't drop was foreign to him and it took me about 10 minutes to teach him how to do it. I figure that since scrub jays eat a lot of acorns, he has to be able to take them to a perch and hold them while opening it. If the mature jays don't do this, I guess mine will just be better skilled.

These skills, I presume, will have bearing on how well he can feed himself in the future. Here I go again. Did I mention this guy showed up at my house the night of my daughter's high school graduation? There I was thinking that only our youngest was still at home, and even she graduates next year. I was starting to feel a bit of the empty nest syndrome. Well...here's Jay!

 
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Thanks for the update. I've been wondering about the poor little guy. I have a zero success rate rescuing baby/hurt birdies. Next time I'll know who to ask.

 
Well great Andrew! I was wondering how all has been going.

Sounds as if he's old enough to make it. I know that really small baby birds are extremely difficult.

I remember when I was much younger, we'd end up doctoring outdoor animals pretty often. It's almost like we had a vacancy sign blinking outside the door.

We once doctored a baby squirrel w/ a mangled front paw. What a cute lil' sumanobeotch he was! My niece named him Drew. Drew spent several weeks with us and one day escaped the cage that was once protecting him for his short stay. We had planned on re-introduction to the wild. It was just sooner than expected. I think that he was probably old enough to make it at that point.

The story about the 19 yr old Jay is great! Hahahaha!!! Birds sure do have quite a life expectancy, don't they? My cockatiel's expectancy is 18-20 yrs & my cockatoo is somewhere up around 80. She'll probably outlive me (barring sickness) since I was in my 20's when we got her.

 
Cheapest solution would be to kill the bird and the cats. Over the long haul that should save many more birds and save you some money.If you care about wildlife, keep the cats indoors.
Now, this is one of the better points made here. The cats tend to bring in quite a few animals.

The cats we have outside are adopted strays that we have had fixed. They have killed quite a few animals including:

Rats

Lizards

Squirrels

Birds

I put them in the order of most to least common. While I agree with you that cats should be left indoors, I have my limits of generosity. Only one cat can live inside here. Our neighborhood is quite full of cats and I took it upon myself to get 5 of them fixed. I think my attempt has been pretty useless considering the kitten factory across the street from us. Oh well, I tried to do my part. Shrug.

I think that for the most part, urban humans don't like killing animals and cat overpopulation is something that results from that. Not to mention, people don't take care of their pets so you get strays and from those you get a bunch of kittens. It always surprises me that people actually buy kittens.

Anyway, I wouldn't argue with the point that cats are bad for wildlife. They are one of the few animals that kill just for the fun of it.

 
My two kitties have never been outdoors-ever. They are actually askeered to approach the door should it be open. Not only do outdoor cats shorten the lives of many of the creatures in the area, their activities result also in a shorter lifespan for them. If one of my cats gets run over, we'll have bigger problems than just a flat cat.

 
I personally feel that people should keep their cats indoors.

I recently had a problem w/ outdoor cats. Somehow, the door to my crawl space under the house got opened. Cats had a field day taking pisses under there. Once discovered, it was really too late. It's been over 6 months and when it's been raining, I can still smell it in the house.

My neighborhood is rampant with cats. It's one thing when they are just running around loose... but doing monetary damage? I got a problem w/ that. I'm an animal lover but hate the cats in my yard. They even sleep on the roof of my convertible. THAT COMPLETELY INFLAMES ME!

Andrew, good on ya' for spaying/neutering your outdoor kitties. Can anything be done about them pissing???

Good luck with your little friend. Sounds like he's already bonded with you.

 
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Andrew, good on ya' for spaying/neutering your outdoor kitties. Can anything be done about them pissing???
yep, call animal control and report uncontrolled cats. Just like there's nothing that can stop you from having to take a leak, cats have to as well. It might make for a sad day around my house because you tend to get attached to things that suck your money away, but if someone called and my cats got carted off I couldn't complain. It seems to me that stray cats are a lot bigger problem than stray dogs - there's a lot more of them and they tend to screw things up more. There are only two reasons I don't let my outdoor cats in:

1) They piss everywhere and are not litter box trained and feel a compunction to mark everything

2) Sweeping up cat hair is bad enough with one indoor cat.

Yep, selfish reasons. So everyone else has to pay because I don't like the smell of cat piss in my house. Well, in my case, they'd be paying anyway because the cats would just be stray in the hood and reproducing too.

 
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I personally feel that people should keep their cats indoors.
I recently had a problem w/ outdoor cats. Somehow, the door to my crawl space under the house got opened. Cats had a field day taking pisses under there. Once discovered, it was really too late. It's been over 6 months and when it's been raining, I can still smell it in the house.

My neighborhood is rampant with cats. It's one thing when they are just running around loose... but doing monetary damage? I got a problem w/ that. I'm an animal lover but hate the cats in my yard. They even sleep on the roof of my convertible. THAT COMPLETELY INFLAMES ME!

Andrew, good on ya' for spaying/neutering your outdoor kitties. Can anything be done about them pissing???

Good luck with your little friend. Sounds like he's already bonded with you.
White vinegar will neutralize urine. I'd recommend bleach, but that could be deadly underneath your house. Check with a pet store as how to deter cats from your house or yard. There's gotta be something out there?

Good Luck!

My cats always jump on my :angry: or my neighbors :yahoo: :unsure: freshly washed vehicles!

Remember...................there just cats :rolleyes:

 
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