Hidden Beak Issues in Birds: A Vet’s Essential Guide

Birds are masters of hiding illness, and dental problems, though less evident than in cats or dogs, can quietly wreak havoc on a bird’s health if left undetected.

As experienced veterinary teams, we know that even minor changes in a bird’s beak or eating habits can signal something serious. Educating clients and staying proactive with diagnostics can help us catch these issues early, before they lead to pain, infection, or systemic illness.

Let’s take a closer look at the common signs of dental disease in birds, why they matter, and how you can leverage the right tools to protect your avian patients.

Understanding Bird “Dental” Health

Unlike mammals, birds don’t have teeth, but that doesn’t mean they’re free from dental issues.

In avian medicine, “dental” problems typically refer to the beak- the keratinized structure that functions like a combination of teeth and lips.

Beak health is critical for basic needs like:

• · Eating

• · Grooming

• · Climbing

• · Interacting with the environment

Just like cats or dogs might suffer from periodontal disease or tooth abscesses, birds can experience overgrown beaks, malocclusion, trauma, or underlying metabolic issues that affect their beak structure and strength.

Common Symptoms to Watch For

Since birds often mask pain and discomfort, it’s up to the veterinary team (and a well-informed owner) to spot the subtle signs of beak problems. These may include:

Changes in eating habits (dropping food, slower eating)

• Beak overgrowth or asymmetry

• Cracks, peeling, or softening of the beak

• Drooling or food buildup around the beak

• Head shaking or reluctance to groom

• Weight loss or signs of systemic illness

Let’s look at an example:

A conure named Carl is brought in for “not eating his favorite seeds.” A quick physical exam reveals mild overgrowth of the upper beak.

On closer inspection, you notice a slight misalignment and a soft spot at the base. Radiographs confirm a beak fracture from a fall weeks earlier, now healing abnormally.

With timely trimming, dietary support, and pain management, Carl makes a full recovery!

The Role of Diagnostics in Early Detection

One of the best ways to catch avian beak issues early is to incorporate routine oral and beak evaluations into wellness visits, especially for parrots and other long-lived species prone to nutritional or traumatic problems.

Adding avian dental assessments to your wellness protocols doesn’t just improve care—it builds stronger relationships with bird-owning clients who often struggle to find knowledgeable, bird-friendly practices.

Diagnostic tools to consider include:

Dental x-ray: In small exotic pets, including birds, high-resolution dental radiographs can reveal trauma, infection, or bone loss at the beak base that’s not visible externally.

Endoscopy (if available): Helpful for inspecting the oropharynx or choana in birds with suspected infection or foreign bodies.

Radiographs: Metabolic bone disease or liver issues can impact beak health, especially in malnourished birds. Imaging the whole patient can reveal deeper problems.

Nutritional assessment tools: Chronic vitamin A deficiency is a common underlying cause of poor beak structure and secondary infections.

Client Communication is Key

Educating bird owners about proper beak care and routine checks can prevent many issues from progressing. Encourage clients to watch for subtle changes and to avoid DIY trimming unless they’ve been adequately trained.

Use wellness visits to explain how seemingly cosmetic issues, like a slightly long beak, may be signs of something more profound.

Tip: Sharing before-and-after images or case examples can have a significant impact.

Avian dental issues are often overlooked until they become advanced. Still, with the proper training, tools, and client education, we can identify early signs and intervene before a small problem becomes a life-threatening one.

By showing your commitment to early detection, you position your hospital as a trusted resource for exotic care, opening the door to lifelong patients and valuable word-of-mouth referrals.

Make the Investment

For practices looking to expand their avian services, investing in equipment such as digital dental x-ray units or specialty imaging tools can significantly enhance your ability to diagnose and treat beak-related conditions with confidence.

Would you like to learn more? Check out this article on essential oral and beak care for birds: a vet's guide to get a deeper look at common health conditions, and diagnosing and treating avian beak and oral health concerns!

Radiographing Reptiles: Helpful Key Tips and Techniques

If you work with lizards, snakes, tortoises, or other reptiles, x-rays are an important diagnostic tool for these patients.

So, how does the process of radiographing reptiles differ from dogs and cats? Here are some helpful tips for reptile x-rays…

Considerations for Reptile Radiographs

Many reptiles are small in size compared to the average dog or cat. Thus, good quality radiographs with sufficient detail are required for images to be diagnostic. High detail films such as those used for mammography can be beneficial here.

At the same time, many reptiles have highly keratinized scales, or, in the case of chelonians (turtles and tortoises), a shell. These coverings can mean a higher power beam is required, which can also mean loss of detail for internal body structures. Fortunately, motion blur is not a common issue, though.

As with other species of pets, good general rules of radiography apply. This means taking a minimum of two orthogonal views to get a complete picture of the part(s) of the body being radiographed.

Indications for Reptile Radiography 

With reptiles, clinical symptoms are often subtle, and exam findings are often non-specific. So, diagnostic tools such as radiographs are important for figuring out what’s going on and providing the best treatment.

With this in mind, full-body radiographs are beneficial for any reptile who is showing symptoms of illness.

Additional common indications may include evaluating…

• Bone lesions, such as osteomyelitis, traumatic injuries, or metabolic bone disease such as nutritional secondary hyperparathyroidism.

• The digestive tract, including looking for ingested foreign bodies or other digestive ailments.

• Reproductive issues, such as dystocia, egg binding, or yolk coelomitis.

• Abscesses and other soft tissue swellings.

• Lung disease.

• Urinary issues such as bladder stones.

• Problems with other organs such as the heart or liver, although these organs may be difficult to evaluate in detail for many types of reptiles.

• Assessing if intraosseous catheters are placed correctly.

Restraint for Reptile X-Rays

Fortunately, many reptiles hold still without restraint, or with limited restraint, for certain x-ray views. But it’s still important to have a plan in place to ensure quality, diagnostic images are obtained.

A few examples of restraint for different reptile species may include…

• For snakes, allowing them to crawl inside a plastic tube. This also prevents coiling (which may interfere with radiographic interpretation) and ensures the snake is evenly extended for their radiographs.

• Cardboard boxes or other radiolucent containers for smaller species, especially small lizards. Note that this may result in a minor reduction in details/image quality.

• Vagal response in large lizards, which means placing pressure over the eyeballs when the lizard’s eyes are closed. This stimulates the vagus nerve, resulting in a lower heart rate and a calmer lizard. A vagal response could be accomplished with gentle digital pressure, or by placing cotton balls over the eyes and holding them in place with VetWrap wrapped around the head. Dimming the lights and avoiding any noise stimulation will also help.

• Chemical restraint if indicated. This could mean sedation or general anesthesia, depending on how challenging the patient is to work with, what information needs to be obtained from radiographs, and the health status of the patient. Be sure to check the best sedative drugs and doses for the particular reptile species you are working with.

Common Radiographic Views for Reptiles

As mentioned above, it’s important to obtain orthogonal x-ray views. Often, due to the smaller size of many reptiles, this means orthogonal views (a lateral and a DV) of the entire body. 

It’s important to remember that reptiles don’t have a diaphragm. They have a coelomic cavity, rather than separate abdominal and thoracic cavities like mammals have. Because of this difference, placing a reptile (except for snakes) in lateral recumbency may result in coelomic contents shifting, which can confound radiographic interpretation.

To prevent this issue and view organs in their natural position, many veterinarians obtain lateral radiographs of reptiles using a horizontal beam while the animal is standing. 

For chelonians, it helps to place them on some type of stand by balancing the plastron on a block, overturned bucket, etc. This facilitates the horizontal beam view and encourages the patient to hold still and extend their limbs and head from their shell.

Additionally, the horizontal beam can be used to obtain a craniocaudal view in chelonians. This allows comparison of the right and left lung fields.

Contrast agents, such as barium or iodine-based contrast, may be used, especially when evaluating the GI tract. However, it’s important to keep in mind that digestive transit times are highly variable (within a day at the shortest, and weeks at the longest) depending on the species, their nutritional status, and environmental conditions such as temperature and season.

If more detailed radiographs of the skull or extremities must be obtained, it’s important to collimate. For some species, veterinary dental films may provide better detail. Anesthesia may be needed for chelonians to fully view the skull or extremities outside of the shell.

Conclusion

Radiographs are a key tool when assessing reptiles for disease or injuries. But it’s important to understand the wide range of species variations in anatomy and become familiar with what’s normal and what’s not for each type of patient. This could mean having a good reference text, obtaining additional CE, or radiographing a healthy patient of the same species for comparison.

Once the best strategies and techniques are incorporated, diagnostic images can help a practitioner evaluate these unique pets and form an appropriate treatment plan. 

Written by: Dr. Tammy Powell, DVM

Radiographing Exotic Pets: avian patients

When it comes to avian patients, many general principles of radiology still apply, just as they would for a dog or a cat.

For example, proper technique and a systemic method for looking at the entire image are important.

However, birds also present unique challenges. For example, their small size means that fine details must be visible on radiographic images. And a bird’s rapid breathing rate can create motion artifact and blurriness, which can compromise radiographic details.

Here are a few strategies and tips for radiographing an avian patient…

Restraint of Birds for Radiographs

Appropriate positioning and stillness of the patient are both crucial for obtaining x-ray images with enough detail to be diagnostic. Because of this, sedation or anesthesia are usually necessary, with appropriate patient monitoring.

Of course, the decision to administer anesthesia depends on the stability of the patient and whether they can handle anesthesia. But even with ill birds, light sedation may still be beneficial to reduce stress, discomfort, or injuries that could be caused by physical restraint. 

When administering sedation or anesthesia, be sure to check the best medications and doses for birds, as these may vary from those used for dogs and cats.

Radiographic Technique for Avian Patients

It’s ideal to use the shortest possible exposure time. This helps minimize motion blur due to a bird’s fast respiration rate.

For small patients, tabletop technique is used. A grid is not needed, thanks to a bird’s air sacs which don’t cause significant x-ray beam attenuation or scatter radiation. However, a grid may be considered when radiographing an area wider than 10 cm.

Also, appropriate collimation should be used.

Positioning Avian Patients for Radiographs

Whether a patient is canine, feline, or avian, orthogonal x-ray images are more useful and accurate than single-view x-ray studies. So, whenever possible, try to obtain both a lateral and VD view.

A common view for studies is a “whole bird” radiograph for small or medium-sized birds, which means a head-to-tail view including the coelom, pectoral limbs, and pelvic limbs. However, it’s beneficial to focus on areas of interest, too—whether that’s examining organs in the coelom, evaluating a fractured limb, etc.

To visualize the coelom, it’s best to pull the wings and legs away from the body. That way, there’s nothing overlying the coelomic cavity that could complicate interpretation or cover up important details.

When positioning, it’s best to be gentle, especially with small birds that can be fragile. Pulling the wings too much can cause pain or injury, or lead to over-rotation and improper patient alignment. Tape may be used, but it should have minimal adhesive in order to avoid pulling feathers. Other positioning aids made from clear plastic can also be very useful.

For patients in poor condition, it may make sense to first do a “screening” x-ray via a horizontal beam. For this shot, the bird could be standing on a perch on the x-ray table. Sometimes, this gives enough information to rule out certain conditions (such as egg binding or heavy metal ingestion) and develop a preliminary treatment plan. Then, if needed, more detailed imaging could be pursued once the patient is more stable.

A Few Tips for Bird X-Rays

Here are a few more things to keep in mind when it comes to bird radiographs…

• If possible, it’s helpful to fast a patient prior to radiographs of the GI tract. This allows better visualization, and it reduces the risk of regurgitation and aspiration pneumonia. However, keep in mind a bird’s fast metabolism. For very small patients, fasting beyond two hours may be detrimental.

• Have a good reference guide available to use as a point of comparison for your patient’s images. This will help not only with distinguishing what’s normal and what’s not for an individual bird, but also for anatomic variations between species.

• Consider a referral or consult as needed. There’s nothing wrong with referring a patient to an avian and exotics specialist. Or, if you take the radiographs yourself, consider sending the images for a teleradiology consult.

X-rays can be a very important part of the diagnostic plan for birds. With knowledge and some practice, bird radiographs may become faster and easier for the team, leading to prompt diagnosis and treatment of ailments and excellent avian care. 

Written by: Dr. Tammy Powell, DVM