Administering Medication

[Budgiekin]

I was wondering if anyone has any tips on giving budgies medication. Skyla had surgery recently and we need to administer anti-anflammatory/pain medication twice a day. We have a syringe-type thing and the medication is a liquid so we are supposed to squirt it into her beak onto her tongue. She's so squirmy and her beak doesn't open like it did when the veterinary technician demonstrated the technique. If you have any tips for capturing budgies too, I'd be interested in hearing about them.

[Dave]

I'm not sure if you'd want to try this with medicine. It might not work. But with our old budgie Budgie, when she got sick once (not very sick at all, hardly anything), the bird store said to feed her tea. So what we did was we warmed up some water (not too warm), made the tea, and dipped our finger in the tea and she'd bite our finger and at the same time get the tea off of the finger. Again, this was only tea so it didn't matter if half of it dripped off of our finger, but medicine might be a bit different.

[Bea]

With the syringe you need to put it against the right side of the beak and then press gently, as soon as that little beak opens quickly squirt a little medicine into the mouth. Don't ever squirt directly down the birdies throat cause it could go down the windpipe and cause damage. As for catching, use a towel and wrap him up gently holding his head between two fingers, you may find administering medicine is easier with two people.;)

[Budgiekin]

Thank you so much for replying. I think you are right Bea, two people makes it a lot easier. My mom held Skyla in a cloth and I gave her the meds; much easier! You are also certainly right about pointing the syringe on the right side of her beak and pressing gently; her beak opened a bit just like you said it would. Thanks for that tip! And Dave, that's neat how you were able to give your little budgie tea using your finger. I don't doubt that Skyla would bite and get the stuff in her mouth! I would only be a bit worried that she wasn't getting her full dose of meds that way, but that's a great idea for giving the little sweeties tea, or water, or carrot juice . . . . now that's an idea!

Thanks again!