Medical
Medical disclaimer
Plain language: AvianVets.org publishes bird-health information. We are not your veterinarian, and reading this site does not create a veterinarian-client-patient relationship.
Maintained by the AvianVets editorial team.
This site is education, not medical advice.
Emergencies go to a vet, not to us.
Every dose you read here describes what a licensed veterinarian may consider; it is not a home protocol.
In this policy
AvianVets.org is an information resource for backyard poultry keepers and pet bird owners. We publish care and husbandry guides, cited treatment articles that will move under vet review once our credentialed reviewer is engaged, and honest reviews of televet services and avian products.
We do not deliver veterinary care. We do not sell medications. We do not diagnose your bird. Reading a page on this site, contacting the editor, or booking a televet through a link on this site does not create a veterinarian-client-patient relationship (VCPR) between AvianVets.org and you or your bird. A VCPR is a legal and clinical relationship between a licensed veterinarian and a specific animal they have examined. Only your bird’s actual veterinarian can hold that relationship.
This article is for information only. Nothing on AvianVets.org is a substitute for hands-on veterinary care. If your bird is showing urgent symptoms (labored breathing, sudden weakness, bleeding, seizures), contact an avian vet now. Medication doses on this site describe what a veterinarian may consider; do not medicate your bird without a diagnosis.
Commitment
No article on this site makes a medical claim that wasn’t written or reviewed by a named human.
If your bird is in a life-threatening state right now, skip the reading and get help. Emergencies include labored or open-beak breathing, bleeding you can’t stop, seizures or sudden unresponsiveness, prolapse, trauma from a predator or a fall, or a hen who has been straining for hours with no egg.
Two paths:
- Same-day televet for triage, care advice, and, where legal, a prescription: our televet referral page lists the services we’ve reviewed.
- In-person avian vet for anything requiring hands, imaging, bloodwork, or a hands-on procedure: the AAV find-an-avian-vet directory is the fastest way to locate one near you.
Where dosing information appears on this site, it’s written the way a veterinarian would think about the drug: the class, the concentration, the route, the frequency, the species-specific cautions, and the citations to the veterinary literature the dose comes from. That is a description of what a licensed avian vet may consider for a bird with a given condition — it is not a prescription and not a home protocol.
Many of the medications you’ll read about here are used extra-label in birds, meaning the drug is being prescribed for a species, condition, dose, or route not on its FDA-approved label. In the United States, extra-label use is legal only when a licensed veterinarian prescribes it inside a valid veterinarian-client-patient relationship. The rule exists for a reason: an off-label dose that is correct for one species can kill a bird of another. Nothing you read here removes that requirement. If you don’t have an avian vet, the section above tells you how to reach one.
Commitment
Medical content is drafted from primary veterinary sources and, once our credentialed reviewer is engaged, is read and approved by a licensed avian veterinarian before publishing.
Until the reviewer is in place, medical articles carry a “review pending” note and no reviewer badge.
Articles on this site link out to veterinary schools, professional associations, primary literature, product pages, and televet services. External sites are not under our control. We link to them because they are useful or because they are the source we cited, not because we endorse everything on the destination. If you follow an external link, you leave AvianVets.org and are subject to that site’s terms and privacy policy.
If you believe a page on this site contains a medical inaccuracy, email editor@avianvets.org with the URL, the passage you’re flagging, and the source that supports the correction if you have one. Medical corrections are addressed within seven days; non-medical corrections as we see them. Updates are logged on the affected article and the “Updated” date moves accordingly.
For the full policy, see the editorial policy. If your bird needs one now, reach an avian vet.