We tend not to give the gizzard of the bird much thought – but without a normal gizzard the bird cannot use any of it’s food.

A young hen King parrot had not been well for some time. The owner had done all the right things – it had been wormed with a crop needle using Wormout Gel, it had been treated for Hexamita with Ronivet S, it had been separated and held in a hospital cage with extra feeds. Normally this sort of treatment would cure most of the things that affect King Parrots.

In this case the bird got progressively worse. Eventually it came into the Clinc. The bird was greatly underweight and very weak. King Parrot hens hate being handled and let you know all the time – but this hen yelled a couple of times and then was quiet – not good!

A dose of Polyaid Plus via crop needle and into the heated hospital cage until we get organised. Within an hour the bird was worse - it was obvious she was not long for this world. It died within 2 hours of coming in.

At post mortem examination it was amazing how emaciated the bird had become. Birds have an unbelievable ability to mask disease until the last moment – making early diagnosis and treatment very difficult (who’d be a bird vet!)

The most startling thing was the extreme distension of the gizzard of the bird. Normally a gizzard is small organ with an extremely muscular wall and a small amount of grit in it – here was a distended organ with a very flimsy wall full of quartz grit and obviously not functioning normally.

When the gizzard was removed and washed it was easy to see that the gizzard lining was very abnormal. The normal lining was gone and replaced by a very soft, mushy tissue that could not possibly process food.

The lab results show that the gizzard was completely overtaken by a form of cancer. There was no normal tissue remaining the gizzard lining was completely replaced by cancer cells.

Cancer can affect any animal, young or old – this was an unusual site to see cancer but the rule with cancer is “… cancers do not obey rules”!