We think this foreign body would have to be a record size! We have had a number of facebook posts about cloth toys being a problem and how dangerous they can be but we felt this case was worth sharing. “Skippy” the Cockatiel presented to the clinic yesterday with vomiting and weight loss. We could palpate a large foreign body in his crop and performed surgery immediately to remove it. Even we were shocked by the size of this mass! “Skippy” is recovering well post surgery and feeling a lot more comfortable.
So how can we prevent this from occurring? Foreign bodies are commonly made up of fibres from happy huts, cotton toys, cage covers, fleece, curtains, carpets or even pet hair. The majority of owners are unaware that their birds are even chewing these items. They take small fibres which build up internally over a long period of time. We recommend using natural based toys such as sisal, seagrass, abaca etc. All birds should be monitored with new toys and if they appear to be ingesting any material then the toys should be removed and replaced immediately. We find many birds ingest their toys out of a lack of enrichment. When given options for food based foraging this can change their behaviour to prevent unwanted destruction and ingestion of these items.