Veterinarian Leung Pei-tsz at Jurong Bird Park in Singapore is the only veterinarian among the four veterinarians in the park with knowledge of TCM treatment.
Animal therapy needs to be diversified, she said, and "when general therapies don't work, we have other treatments."
Previously, an 8-week-old macaw was very weak, had no appetite, and lost half of its weight in 4 days.
The veterinarian also exhausted the method, but its situation did not improve.
Just when everyone thought that this macaw had "no hope", TCM acupuncture point massage saved its life. Liang Isici is one of the veterinarians responsible for treating the parrot.
Not long ago, keepers found that a snowy owl had no appetite, lost weight, and physical examination did not show anything unusual.
The keeper can only feed it by hand to ensure that it is getting enough food and nutrients.
After Liang Peici learned that the snow owl had a bad appetite, she gave it a few injections at the acupuncture points that promoted its digestive system.
After the third treatment, the snowy owl began to feed on its own. This is a relief for everyone.
The Bird Park has also cured other birds through traditional Chinese medicine. For example, ducks sometimes trample on their own kind when they are fighting for food, especially those who have just been born.
Veterinarians usually prescribe formulas to try to save them, but the ducklings often die anyway.
However, through traditional Chinese medicine treatment, such as after acupuncture in the acupuncture points and Baihui acupuncture points of these little ducklings, the injury will gradually improve.
When it comes to whether TCM treatment can replace Western medicine treatment, veterinarian Liang Peici said that birds are very good at covering up their illness, so when they arrive at animal hospitals, veterinarians generally have only about 20% chance of rescuing them.
With TCM treatment, it takes a while to see the effect, but with Western medicine treatment, we can see the effect faster.
Therefore, we will still prefer to use Western medicine first, and then adjust through Chinese medicine to achieve complementary effects.
Many cases of TCM treating animals focus on dogs, cats or horses.
Dr. Liang Needs to learn from this in order to apply the same treatment to birds.
Although TCM treatment covers a wide range of areas, Liang Peici generally only uses acupuncture.
If you use soup medicine, the amount that needs to be taken is generally very large, but the birds do not cooperate with drinking, and it is impossible to force feeding.
Hopefully, after further research, our veterinarians will be able to overcome this barrier so that birds can also condition their bodies by taking Chinese herbs.