He was a great bird and improved so much in the short time we had him.
We knew he had liver problems soon after his first vet visit and were given, “anything from a few months to a few years” for his prognosis, so we just chose to treat it with diet, milk thistle, and lactulose and focus on making whatever time he had with us the best time of his life.
He got a big cage, he got lots of toys, he got a better, varied diet (that he took to immediately!), and he got to live in a stress free environment for the first time in his life. His feather plucking stopped, and he regrew a lot of what had been plucked out in the time we had him.
In the end, his liver was just too damaged and he started having fluid build up (which was why he began breathing heavily) issues in his abdomen. Outwardly, it looked like he was just putting on weight, which we’d been hoping for because he was very thin when we got him; he DID gain weight for awhile, until his liver started actively failing at which point he started losing muscle mass and weight but we didn’t notice right away because the fluid build up kept him looking and feeling plump and kept his scale numbers steady.
When discussing it with the vet, she said she could drain it off and he might briefly improve, but in a matter of days to a week or so it’d just come back and we’d be back in the same situation, which is a physically stressful and painful situation for the bird to be in.
The vet said she’d try if I really wanted to but, in her professional opinion, his prognosis was poor and we’d only be prolonging any suffering and stress, and she recommended we let him go.
I agreed with her as I’ve had birds with liver disease before and, while it can be managed, it cannot be cured and when they get to the point Kiwi was at, there’s just nothing left to do but let them humanely go.
She also mentioned she could feel abnormal masses inside his abdomen as well, so it’s also likely he had some tumors; since we already knew his liver was failing and he had fatty liver disease, I declined to do a necropsy as--well--what good would knowing he had liver failure and cancer do?
She commented that I was handling it well, and honestly, my only response to that was that we knew it was coming, we just didn’t know when; his prognosis was pretty open ended, so we knew we might only get a few months with him or we might get a few years, but since he was already an older bird, we didn’t think it’d be the latter.
Plus, by the time I got to the only place that could see him--which was nearly 3 hours away--I honestly thought he had passed on the ride there, but he opened his eyes when I picked him up. I did get a final goodbye, but his breathing was so labored due to all the fluid in his abdomen and around his liver that I didn’t want to keep him there more than a few seconds as he was obviously struggling and in a lot of discomfort.
Fatty liver disease, for followers that may not know, is most commonly caused by feeding a high fat (all or primarily seed) diet, and is preventable the majority of the time by feeding your birds a low fat diet and saving the high fat/seed foods for rare treats and not as a regular part of their diet.
Some species are more prone to it than others, and in some cases it can be hereditary, but the majority of cases are completely preventable by simply feeding your bird a good diet.
Kiwi didn’t get that option for about 10 years before we got him, and was fed only seed and millet.
Please, if you keep parrots of any kind, feed them an appropriate diet that does not include a base of seed. Death from fatty liver disease is slow and often not noticed until it’s too late for any treatments to be effective. Your bird will seem fine for, many times, years and years, until they suddenly aren’t and by the time outward signs (or blood test signs) of liver disease start to show, it’s too late to do much about it.
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