Valli Parthasarathy, DVM, PhD, DACVB, discusses how veterinarians can evaluate feather loss, self-mutilation, and vocalization in pet parrots and identify when medical and behavioral factors may overlap.
|Articles|November 10, 2021
Treating behavioral conditions with dietary supplements and herbal remedies
Author(s)Julia Burke, Associate Editor
In a recent dvm360® interview, Christopher Pachel, DVM, DACVB, CABC, offers insight on treatment approaches for patients with behavioral problems.
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In an interview with dvm360® at the 2021 Atlantic Coast Veterinary Conference (ACVC), animal behavioralist Christopher Pachel, DVM, DACVB, CABC, shed light on the importance of an individualized treatment approach when prescribing dietary supplements or herbal remedies to pets with behavioral conditions.
View the video below for the entire discussion. The following is a partial transcript:
Christopher Pachel, DVM, DACVB, CABC: I’m looking at the practitioner’s comfort level to make sure that they know what they’re doing...then I’m also looking at all of the individual options that are available on the market…where we can really try and observe the individual responses to say, ‘Oh, we tried something with L-Theanine as the ingredient and this is the way the animal responded,’ and then if we switch our focus to 1 of the other ingredients, what did that look like? It’s ultimately…almost impossible to predict exactly how an individual animal is going to respond to any of those interventions other than assessing our baseline, putting that intervention in place, and then assessing the response.
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Related to this article
Valli Parthasarathy, DVM, PhD, DACVB, discusses how veterinarians can recognize and manage common behavior problems in pet parrots, from excessive vocalization to feather-destructive behavior. She also offers guidance on treatment, behavior modification, referral, and meeting the behavioral needs of these intelligent birds.
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Valli Parthasarathy, DVM, PhD, DACVB, breaks down the "3 Ms"—management, modification, and medication—for treating behavior problems in parrots, and explains why sparse species-level drug research makes the first 2 her starting point for these birds.
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