Vinny's Liver Problem
*** page being updated ***

Vinny (van Gogh) is a chocolate pied society finch. I wanted to buy Vinny in March of 2001, but hesitated because we were told a healthy bird might harass/kill our other rescue finch, Finchy. On August 5, I found Vinny puffed up on the bottom of the cage. The manager finally agreed to let us adopt this little finch. He was very, very sick.

That night, I placed Vinny in an AquaBrood incubator and noticed a number of problems with him. The most disturbing was his swollen abdomen. (At the time, we didn't know Vinny was male and wondered if the bird was a female finch who was eggbound.) In addition, whole seeds were passing through his system; he wasn't digesting food. The next day, Vet #1 confirmed that Vinny was malnourished with horrible feathering, had a swollen/infected oil gland, and was extremely stressed. She believed the swelling was a mass, not an egg. Due to Vinny's overall poor condition, she felt he would not survive the stress of X-rays or testing. She gave him one week to live--in his present condition--and presented euthanasia as one option.

On Tuesday, we started preparing for Vinny's passing. We took him out for play time and grooming. He stood splay-legged and his breathing was labored. He flew only about 8 inches off the ground because one wing had only a few flight feathers left, and his energy level was basically nothing. I tried many of the techniques in Rita Reynold's book, "Blessing the Bridge," and although Vinny seemed to be livelier after taking homeopathic treatments of Rescue Remedy, he still slept with his rear end up in the air. It didn't look good for him.

On Wednesday, I broke quarantine and brought Finchy in to play with him. I knew this was potentially dangerous, but he really NEEDED company, so I allowed them to see each other for a few minutes each day. Each finch had separate food and water dishes, and they were not permitted to touch each other or step in each other's poops. We learned Vinny was male when he stood on a perch, opened his beak, and belted out a canary-like song to his new girlfriend!

By Sunday, Vinny showed some signs of progress and made it clear that he wasn't interested in leaving us. I had sent in a fecal sample to Vet #2, who found that Vinny had a yeast infection. I fed him yogurt and waited for the next vet appointment. By Tuesday, Vinny had relaxed and gained enough strength to continue with testing. Vet #3 rated him a 3 out of 5 on a condition scale. She found evidence of a prior respiratory infection. X-rays revealed that Vinny had poor bone density and that the "mass" was apparently not a tumor or cyst after all; he had hepatomegaly (enlarged liver) and enteritis (intestinal infection, irritation and/or swelling). The enlarged organs left him with very little space for his lungs and air sacs, hence the labored breathing. The second set of fecal tests showed that although there was no yeast infection, he was harboring protozoa.

In the photos to the right, the yellow circle (arrow head) shows the extent of Vinny's abdominal swelling. The bottom of his ribcage is the white hortzontal line in the picture on the left. (This would be the top of the yellow circle in the picture on the right.) In a healthy bird, this area from the ribcage to the tail wouldn't be swollen. I took these photos while Vinny was still wet from his bath; that's why his feathers look so awful. He loved to take baths in Rescue Remedy! If you look closely at Vinny's tail, you can see new tail feathers growing.

The vet placed Vinny on medicated powder to help digestion and mash to gain weight. He also received an antibiotic for his infections. Finchy's annual exam revealed that she, too, had the same protozoa, which tends to be specific to finches and is transmitted by feces. Unfortunately, the test for protozoa was not conducted during Finchy's original quarantine evaluation. (The source of the protozoa appears to be the pet store since both birds came from the same store, and I saw a number of dead birds in the same cage.) Both birds were treated for their protozoa problems.

Although Vinny's (and Finchy's) recheck revealed that the protozoa were gone, X-rays indicated that his abdominal condition basically hadn't changed. He remained in the incubator and continued with medication for one month, then returned for another evaluation.

By October, x-rays showed that Vinny's liver was still enlarged. Finchy surprised us and laid a clutch of eggs, but they weren't fertile. We thought the infections might have made Vinny sterile until one of their eggs hatched in March of 2002. They had three more babies, but none of them survived.

Finchy passed away in June. Later that year, the vet found that in addition to a swollen liver, Vinny also had a swollen stomach.

[NOTE: Include April 2003 exam results and x-rays.]

Last updated: 4/18/03

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