Not sure what happened to my female budgie bird

Question
Hello,
I had a female budgie bird and she died last week.She was three years old and she had several eggs since November of last year.She was not feeling well two weeks ago and she was red and swollen on her tummy.Then,she got sick and I think,she had a cold.Or,was it something else? She was sneezing and spraying up this green stuff!Her feathers were sticking up and she was weak.She hardly ate or drank her water.I took her to a vet the week before but,she wasn't an expert on budgie birds.She looked her over and said she wasn't egg bound.She gave me calcium for budgie birds with a eye dropper.I gave it to my bird and I think,she took a reaction!I really want to find the reason or reasons for her death!Can you please help me with this? Thank you!

Answer
HI Margaret,

I am very sorry for your loss. I know this is hard for you.

I am not a vet and don't know how much help I can be as I can not diagnose your bird. Really the only way to truly know why your bird died would have been for a vet to perform a necropsy immediately after she died.

I can make some suggestions based on experiences I have had. When birds get sick they need to be seen by an AVIAN veterinarian immediately. Birds are wild animals who hide their illnesses. In the wild a sick bird will get eaten or pushed out of their flock. So by the time we see any symptoms they are often very close to death. It is possible that by the time your bird got treatment it was too late.

I am not clear as to the treatment your vet provided. Calcium would be used to treat an egg bound bird. A bird becomes egg bound because their body is lacking calcium, the shell of the egg is too soft to be pushed out. If left untreated the egg eventually breaks inside the bird (at this point you would not feel the egg on a physical exam). Once this happens an infection can take over the entire body leading to many symptoms. Now the bird would need strong antibiotics. Does this sound like a possible scenario for your bird?

Again, I am very sorry this happened to you and your bird. Often becoming egg bound is untreatable as it gets out of control fast. I have also lost a bird to this despite my best efforts to prevent it. I encourage you to continue researching about this subject, budgies are well know for this. Hopefully what you learn will greatly benefit your next bird. My website has links to some excellent resources.

Jennifer
www.feathersandscales.com