Here we go again

This morning I took some photos of the three little girls perching together on the high perch.

The three little girls like to perch high up

A close up on a high perch

It has now been two months since we lost Caramel. It has been one month since I gave Pebbles the baytril antibiotic for a week after I noticed that she was wheezing.

Her wheezing got better and after some research I found that some people had this with their girl and thought that they had something stuck rather than a respiratory problem.

Pebbles always used to get hiccups after food from the day she came to us but after this bout of wheezing she has never hiccuped again. I started to think there might be a connection. Recently the wheezing started again and I wondered if she had something stuck somewhere and it had moved a bit.

She has been lively, eating well and showing no other symptoms, so I thought that I would just keep an eye on her.

I got home at lunch time today and my husband said that he had noticed that sometimes Pebbles had one eye closed. This alarmed us both because of Caramel having a swollen and closed eye before she got really very ill.

I kept checking on Pebbles and sometimes she would be sitting with one eye shut and then they would both be open again. She was still wheezing and later in the afternoon she was occasionally rubbing at her eye.

We decided it would be best if I took her to the vet. After what happened with Caramel I am a bit paranoid about leaving it too late to catch a potential problem. I managed to get an appointment at the end of the afternoon.

The vet said that it was possible that Pebbles started to get better after a week of antibiotic but that it wasn’t long enough and therefore she had relapsed again. She said it can take two or three weeks with anything respiratory to clear completely. She said the wheeze appears when Pebbles breaths out but she couldn’t see a blockage. She took her temperature and said it was the high side of normal but still within the normal zone.

She said it seemed unlikely to be connected to Caramel’s illness because of the time lapsed and because Caramel didn’t have any wheezing but that the eye connection seemed odd. She recorded Pebble’s breathing and said she would talk to a specialist as she was at a loss with the symptoms of a respiratory problem and a possible eye problem.

She gave me more baytril and said to give it twice a day for three weeks and she would call me to let me know what the specialist thought. She said to call her if any of the other girls showed any symptoms.

I asked about treating the whole flock but she said that she preferred to treat only the girl with the symptoms unless there were symptoms appearing with more of the flock.

We gave Pebbles her first dose of the baytril before I returned her to the bedtime perch. It’s a shame I didn’t know before that the baytril needed to be given for a longer period of time as I could have continued after a week last time.

I just hope that we have caught it early enough to treat this time. Pebbles has been eating well and behaving normally in all other ways. I do find it odd that two girls from the same breeder have gone down with a similar problem and my biggest fear is it spreading throughout the flock. I can’t even bare to think about that.

I am keeping everything crossed and will be watching the whole flock very closely.