Sneezing Budgie post-antibiotics

[fallbeak]

So, I have a 5 year old budgie called Cloud, and for about a month now I've noticed the poor little guy gets sneezing fits, ranging from a couple times a day to once every few days. We did a deep clean of his environment to rule out any dust or dander that could be irritating him, and so we took him to the vets once the sneezing fits got to the point where he was doing a few sets of 10-15 sneezes in quick succession.

The vet wasn't all too helpful in providing potential causes to Cloud's poorliness, and just prescribed a 5 day course of baytril and an anti-inflammitory. So we did that, and Cloud for the most part seemed to be doing a little better. However, I noticed he was still occasionally having smaller sneezing fits of 3-5 sneezes, sometimes early in the morning before sunrise, when he should be sleeping.

So I called them back, and currently he suggested putting Cloud on a further 7 day course of baytril to see if it fully clears up. I just want to know if anyone has any ideas what could be wrong, as I finally got a video of Cloud having a small sneezing fit. His Ceres appear to be clear, and he's otherwise very vocal, with a normal appetite and droppings, so I'm unsure what more I could do without looking for another vet who more specialises in birds (something not too common where I live).

Here's the video of him chirping away before sneezing (at around the 30 second mark). I'd really appreciate any advice or insight people have.

[Marianne Marlow]

I've watched it several times and I cannot work out if he's sneezing or imitating a noise.

When my budgies sneeze they sound like a sort of tut noise.

[jellybean]

I see you have a wooden toy on the left, does he make the sound after having shredded or picked at the wood?

My boys have balsa wood toys and they occasionally make a sneezing sound when they've been busy shredding.

[Marianne Marlow]

Yes jellybean mine do sneeze when they shred balsa too!

[fallbeak]

I'm fairly certain it's sneezes, as he's made that noise early morning before in the past few weeks before sunrise, while the room is pitch black and everything's silent. Also, when it was worse (longer sets) he would breathe very heavily afterwords, like it took a lot out of him. That's the main improvement I've noticed post-baytil, that the sneezing doesn't seem to be making him breathe as hard

[fallbeak]

It could be the toy, and I'll remove it for the moment to check, however he's never really had much interest in it beyond ringing the bell a couple times. He's more interested in the plastic bell toy on his top perch

[fallbeak]

Feb 20, 2022 9:13:19 GMT Marianne Marlow said:

I've watched it several times and I cannot work out if he's sneezing or imitating a noise.

When my budgies sneeze they sound like a sort of tut noise.

I really appreciate you giving advice though. I'll still be giving the vet a call in a week, and I hope the extended antibiotics work, but I just can't relax knowing the little guy's going through this

[Marianne Marlow]

Hopefully it's an avian vet as ordinary vets know next to nothing about birds and will more often than not just give you baytril.