Center for Avian Rehabilitation & Education

It’s been a few weeks since we’ve posted an update about Mango (see here when she first came in and here a few days later). She has been in for several vet visits and procedures since then. We wanted to wait until we had a better idea of what’s going on, but we finally decided to do an update with what we know now and we’ll continue to update as things progress.

We did a biopsy on her mutilation site. We were very relieved to find out that it was not cancerous. However, the tumor is very bony, and, in consultation with our vet, have decided that the best course of action is to remove the tumor. Because of the nature of the tumor, this will be a difficult undertaking. In the pictures below (warning: rather graphic), you can see how much the tumor is raised from her chest.

Since this is a procedure that is done very rarely, our vet is in the process of consulting with other avian vets to find out what methods, if any, have been successful in the past.

In the meantime, Mango remains at our Center. She loves human attention and playing with her toys. Unfortunately, because of her mutilating, she needed to be collared. We just removed the collar again this morning, as we want her to be able to preen normally, and are monitoring her situation to make sure the mutilating does not do additional damage.

Everyone has fallen in love with Mango, and we are doing everything possible, as we do with all of our birds, to restore her to health.