Tips on giving medication?

[Vega]

Hey all, need some help here. My vet gave me 2 different meds to give my conure Harvey for feather pulling. 1 is an antibiotic to eliminate infection. The second...not sure what it's for exactly, just says to keep giving it until the feathers start growing back in.

Backround:
I believe he pulled due to stress. He's had a LOT of changes the past few months. First we moved, then a week later I "left" for 4 days (surgery), then when I came home I was unable to get them out for a couple weeks. (standing up was hard enough, never mind setting them up outside of their cages!). Things got back to normal for a bit, then BAM! I couldn't touch them/their cages/the food for close to 2 months. Poor baby hasn't had anyone but me care for him since he joined the family 1 1/2 years ago...until May that is. SO I have no doubt the pulling was due to stress...especially since it didn't start until a few weeks after I wasn't allowed to touch them.

Ok so now I have to give him 2 meds, twice a day. I was given syringes to do this with. I have backround hand feeding birds...much easier when the bird WANTS to take what's in the syringe!! I know he's getting a little of the meds, but he's holding a lot of it in his beak until I let his head go...then he spits it out (shakes his head).

ANy tips to make this easier on both of us? he doesn't take to new foods easily and I'm only giving .3 cc's of each med so there's not enough to mix with his water...I dunno what else to do! Help?

[CALVINS MOM]

Aww- poor little guy. Hope he is feeling better soon. Does he like bread? I had to give meds to my grey several years ago. Bread worked fabulously. I drizzled the meds onto the bread and fed him the side with the meds and then let him eat the rest as a reward. I used a very small piece - the size of my thumbnail.

[Tiki]

I've had to medicate Chaska and the 2 Princesses when they were babies. I was lucky, the stuff must have tasted ok, because Chaska let me dribble it into her beak and she licked it up. I used a crop needle with the babies but you need hands on instruction from an avian vet or experienced breeder to do this.

[Freedomoflight]

My amazon get deathly sick a while back and was on 5 different meds a day, including handfeedings.

Does your bird like any sort of juice at all? Or something like soymilk? My amazon will drink soymilk anytime- all of it. So for the largest amount of med I would take like half a teaspoon of soymilk and squirt the med in the milk and mix it up. He saw me take out the soymilk and get all excited, and would lap it up. Still works to this day- he is on daily probiotics and painkillers.
You can also squirt a few drops of say, orange juice, apple juice, etc into a small bowl, mix the medicine up with it, then put it back into the syringe and offer it to him. The juice makes it taste a lot better and he might just take it (it does work!)

Dribble the med on the very end of a piece of bred and offer him that piece- he sees you eating the rest of the bread and he will eat his piece with you.

Mix up the med in a small portion of his favorite cooked mash- oatmeal, cream of wheat.



If you end up having to force it down him- which I also had to do- I found the most effective way of holding was holding both sides of the jaw verses around the neck, then give him the meds. He will hold it, like you mentioned... I still have medication on my walls, LOL. Tip his head back a smidge, rub his beak, kiss the top of his head... and keep holding him. By rubbing his beak, etc it will distract him and make him swollow... if he doenst I did have to tip my amazon back a bit to make him swollow.
You can also take a popsicle stick- I dont know what species your conure is, so either a regular size, or a jumbo, like I used for the bigger beak, and use it like a wedge. Place it on its side in the beak, so it holds his beak open, quickly squirt the med into his mouth- by then he will probably have either be rid of the popsicle stick or closed his mouth and crushed it- but swallowed the meds in the process.

Many creative ways you can go about this :) Good luck.

[Lisa B]

See if you can mix it with juice and offer it in a syringe. This is how I get all my guys to take thier meds, no problem.
cranberry/raspberry worked great..and its good for them too.

[Darlie]

I used the toweling method when I had to medicate my grey and my macaw. Luckily I've never had to medicate my conure. Maybe this link will help you some.Try placing the syringe at the side of the beak where there is a natural opening instead of head on where they can grab or bite the syringe.

http://www.tailfeathersnetwork.com/b...tingorally.php

[FeathersNFur8]

Try placing the syringe at the side of the beak where there is a natural opening instead of head on where they can grab or bite the syringe.

Macaws apparently have a very humorous side to their personalities. With having to medicate twice a day for just short of 4 months, I had come up with every way conceivable to get medication down as easily as possible for both of us.

One of my trial and error tests was to put the syringe in from the side. Ms. Thing learned that if she put her tongue up against the end of the syringe everything spurted back out at me. The funny part was that it took me a few days to figure this out, she knew what she was doing from the start!