 Hello my fellow snippers, flighters, and hatchlings. My name is Marlene McCon once I got back with my emotional support bird. We had an accident in the house and one of our birds is in the hospital right now in fact. I am just going to get right into it and explain what happened and hopefully give you guys some tips to help prevent this from happening to you and also some tips and maybe some advice that you can gain from this in case you're ever in a similar situation because not everything is perfect, birds aren't perfect, we're not perfect, and things will happen. So anything that I can share with you, anything you can remember from this video, please watch it in its entirety because there may be some small parts here and there that you can take away from it and learn from either our mistake or how it was handled or what was said by the vet and such. So here we go. So in order to explain to you what happened, I need to explain a little bit about the dynamic of some of the birds in the house. There are three important birds in this story and that is Merlin, Blue, and Brando. Yes, so the story involves that crew. The one thing you guys do know is how absolutely protective over Brando, Blue is. Blue is literally like Brando's bodyguard. If I don't know where Brando is and I see Blue, then I know that Brando is close by. I just love their relationship and I love how protective he is over her. It's just the cutest thing to watch them fly together and have fun together and I mean at all costs. Blue is die-hard Brando. He also had a previous relationship with Leo and he hasn't forgotten about Leo. He just doesn't follow Leo around as much anymore but he does in fact give him head scratches and still hangs out with him in that way. The next bird in the story is Merlin. Merlin has run into some trouble. I got so cold suddenly. In all my experience with birds, specifically African graze actually, I noticed the importance of a pecking order. This has been also written about in Irene Pepperberg's book. She noticed this and observed this a lot with her African graze and for whatever reason Merlin, the more I started watching him, the more I started understanding that I felt like he had it out for Brando. Now keep in mind Brando came after him and Blue came after him for whatever reason. He leaves Jersey alone. He doesn't mess with Vinny. He also doesn't mess with Nellie and Monty which is kind of interesting but he has it out for Brando. So here are some things that I started noticing kind of recently within the last four or five months about Merlin with regards to Brando. And keep in mind I've had Brando now for almost two years and this behavior wasn't exhibited. But some small things that Merlin started doing this may help you guys is he was much more aggressive with Brando versus other birds if Brando kind of walked into his territory. He started to kind of pounce and go forth and make aggressions towards Brando. That just made me start to kind of not only separate them. Of course Brando is flighted so it's just easy for Brando to kind of just fly away which is kind of cool. But still when you see something like that a little can easily turn into a lot. I have a theory with birds with regards to safety. I'd love to make a video on this but something almost happening is usually a guarantee that it will. So you have to take precautions as if you know it's going to happen. So that can extend itself to your birds with the safety of them with other animals, a ceiling fan, a door open and other birds. After I started noticing Merlin kind of going for Brando in that way I started kind of adapting like a separate schedule. All the birds can be out at the same time. Merlin can be included in that but with supervision obviously. Your bird should be supervised at all times but you know sometimes you go in and out of a room. But Merlin specifically I always had to know where he is at all times for other reasons too like one he wants to eat the molding. Another reason I started becoming weary of Merlin was because Cody told me. I never saw him attack Cody but when I started putting Merlin outside in the aviary if Merlin was already out there Cody refused to get in it. And Cody likes the aviary so I knew something was off and the refusal kind of translated to me as fear and I knew she was scared of something. If your bird exhibits any kind of behavior of fear take them seriously. I did and I'm so glad I did because then those two birds could have been in there unsupervised not even in a free area to escape. So after the Cody situation I thought I really had it all under control because if Merlin went outside he went outside to a completely different spot than all of the other birds. He had a different schedule than the other birds as far as throughout the day either he's upstairs with me and they're downstairs or he might be in a different office with Megan or he might be showering with George but he had his time and also he actually stays up later than the rest of the birds. The birds they go to bed they start going to bed at about nine and Merlin gets to stay up later and he likes that. That is all done purposely for that reason. As of late something new started happening. Blue is very aware. Anytime Merlin would creep over to another bird's cage while I'm in the kitchen or anything like that completely aware with my eye on them blue would block Merlin. There's a spot on top of like kind of like a refrigerator but not that Brando likes to go to and if Merlin climbs up there then blue instead of them flying away blue started kind of blocking Brando from Merlin and then they fly away and everything's okay but surprisingly blue would go forth. Blue would put his effort in protecting Brando before anything happened and not just Brando but other birds. I felt like blue did not trust Merlin and I felt also that he had every right to not trust Merlin. The other day I get a call from George and he was with blue and Brando and Merlin and Jersey and Merlin has his own spot in the shower. He separated from all the other birds and George told me that blue and Brando were being so cute and flying around and I was like well don't let them touch my stuff you know like be aware and then upon closer investigation he noticed that blue's beak was split and possibly cracked. I heard the fear in his voice. Blue was in good spirits like he flew up into the room to follow George to shower and so he was still right behind Brando but I could just hear it in George's voice. I knew that this situation was going to need without seeing a picture without seeing blue I just knew in my gut of guts that blue was going to need a surgery. He obviously didn't see it happen but it happened. I feel like what must have happened is this I bet Merlin went for Brando and blue went in the middle to protect Brando and just was able to grab onto blue's beak. As crazy as that sounds blue is a lot smaller than Merlin and Merlin is heavy. When birds attack it's kind of similar to like when a duck attacks on if you ever seen like a duck attack um they're actually really strong and I'm not exactly sure that this would happen because blue had no damage anywhere else but birds can in fact pounce on their subject okay and then they'll spread their wings and cover their subject so there's almost no way out and then use their beak to attack their face. I'm not saying it was as dramatic as that but I'm saying that it's it's what a bird can do to another bird so I want you guys to be aware and in a nutshell the honest truth is that somewhere somehow Merlin was unsupervised with the other two birds who are flighted and can fly yet this still happened so I want you guys to be aware of that mistake so serious decisions are going to need to be made. I don't want to blame anyone I was not there when it happened which also goes to show that sometimes you know you can never be too overprotective and you can never be too careful. I don't blame George for this I don't know specifically how the birds got unsupervised or how this was missed because I wasn't included in this but it's something I want you guys to be able to learn from don't be afraid to be too overprotective don't be afraid to have very strict rules and don't be afraid to make everybody in your house aware and follow them and sometimes you just don't have control over every single thing and in this case I didn't and I couldn't but what I can do is do my best to convey to you and show you guys that yes mistakes can happen no matter how aware you are and no matter how experienced you are and even if you can foresee it I'm also going to be looking into trying to rearrange a certain area and maybe get Merlin a little more isolated in general from the other birds so while I was on the phone with George and found out about this it was actually pretty late at night and there are a few things I knew instinctually right away and there are a few things I knew factually instinctually I knew he was going to be okay instinctually I knew that he was probably attacked by Merlin instinctually I knew that he was defending Brando and instinctually I knew this was a different situation than any beak situation that I might have experienced before I knew that I was going to want him to go to a vet a lot of beak injuries can heal on their own but if you don't have any experience with them you should always take your bird to the vet because you want your bird to have the best chance of eating properly later the beak is kind of like a nail there are many many parts that will grow back and the beak can fuse together as can bone but for me it was just so important to make sure that this bird gets the best and proper treatment and I don't advise if you see any blood any crack in a beak or anything I don't advise you to not take your bird to the vet I knew that I wanted him to have a surgery what I did was I started calling around because the middle of the night to all the vets the vca vets um access um every vet that I knew personally the problem is that there are not many avian vets in general let alone avian vets that work at night and I was not going to rush my bird to a hospital and put the bird in the care of someone that a didn't know what to do didn't have the tools to know what to do was in a specialist and in the end of the day although it was in the middle of the night I wanted this to get taken care of I had a specific person in mind that I know is good with surgeries on birds he's an avian specialist and my sister worked for him for a good amount of time and they have a good relationship and so she's seen like how amazing he is and I've personally seen too because we've had birds go there for different reasons there's something I learned that I already know but now I'm going to push this more than ever we need more avian vets any of you kids out there that want to study to become a vet please please please get avian certified but even that is not enough I really think that you need to be an avian certified vet with your own birds that you understand and can identify behavior in parents I live in Los Angeles so we have a decent amount of avian vets available in the California area as well as the Los Angeles area compared to the rest of the world but in the middle of the night when you want emergency vet care nobody had an avian vet and there's so many people that recommend great avian vets I have mine um Megan has hers but those guys do not work in the middle of the night they're not emergencies they're only emergencies during the day so that kind of like leaves one for a 70 to 100 mile radius there was one avian vet that um their assistant answered the phone and they were actually very nice um and they asked me you know what the issue is and they said they're at capacity so they can't take a bird I took that as a sign like that my bird is meant to go to you know my doctor on Monday but I want to say that I appreciate that vet because they did take the time to say what is wrong with your bird and um let me take that to the doctor and when the doctor came back and said you know they're still at capacity even under those circumstances I also understood that like this is not a life or death thing which I already knew but it was just really nice in like that moment to have that that confirmation gave me some steps to take to ensure that the bird is safe some of the things they said it feels like you guys would already know and I would already know but let's just go over it they said obviously keep that bird separated from the rest of the birds keep that bird relaxed and calm and keep that bird in a smaller space near food and water obviously soft food that the bird can eat and water so that's exactly what we did and that was also a sign to me that like okay this is something that although I would hate for it to wait it can wait so finally we made an appointment with the vet that I feel like I trust and although they were booked up they my sister went there took the bird and the bird was in really good spirits in general but my sister did say she could tell that he was in pain just because he had a different kind of a cry than he usually does so let that be a tip to you guys to kind of detect pain in your parrot the options were obviously to let it heal on its own and there is a chance that you could let something like that heal on its own and it would be fine but I just didn't want that because I wanted there's a few reasons one I wanted blue to have a full chance of eating nuts with the shell and just be comfortable and confident in eating I also wanted to eliminate the chance of him ending up with a split beak sometimes when a bird gets a cracked beak even though it heals normally and naturally then the beak still grows and it can start an overgrowth and it can also grow split so I wanted to try to avoid that if we do the surgery they would wire the two pieces wherever it's cracked together and then it would be bonded and then there would be an acrylic over it if the surgery goes well in a month he might need another coat of acrylic over it and then he'll be fine if it doesn't go well then what that would mean is even after the entire surgery there could still be an overgrowth which actually is not such a bad scenario just because you know it's just then become something that you trim every four weeks the main thing I wanted to know and this is a good question for you to ask your vet and I appreciated so much him taking the time to call me I wanted to know like what are the chances that he wouldn't make it through the surgery just by default that it's a surgery if that makes sense you know you're putting your bird under if anything happens a surgery um I don't know what kind of mistakes could happen I just kind of wanted to know like more of his chances of making it through if he can make it through you know and it's very procedural for them and he's done it a million times then absolutely he called me and he said a few things one that the surgery will be no problem that's something he'll make it through the only thing I need to worry about is like how it will heal there's no guarantee however he did say that if it was his bird he would do it because he always wants to give his birds a fighting chance at eating properly they obviously were going to put him under give him anesthesia do the surgery and then he was going to wake up and then he's scheduled to be at the vet for two more days so that they can hand feed him and make sure that he's fed and eating properly which was another one of my concerns I will say that even through the cracked beak George did say he was eating apple and things that he and rice and things that he fed him so he had an appetite right now blue is at the vet I'm going to be picking him up today once he's released um a couple hours after I spoke to the vet I guess he did the surgery pretty quickly he said that blue was coming out of the anesthesia and that he seemed to be fine the vet called us the next day and said that the bird was doing well and today I'm going to pick him up once again guys thank you guys so much for watching this video I'm here for you and for the birds these guys are my goal and we do a lot of entertaining things on this channel but that's so that you guys can learn from us and living with the birds as family I guess the last thing I would leave you with is stick to your strict rules on how you do things and maybe what I could do better is definitely going over all of those with the people in my house and making sure that we're all on the same page so maybe you guys need to do that too I hope this video helps somebody and um whether it's preventative or any other way I love you guys so much don't forget to subscribe you just went to the hospital that's all you went to the hospital and then you came back to mommy I always get worried that you know they think that they're being left somewhere you know like dropped off but he knows like he's he's looking like he must watch the outside of our house on youtube