Keeping pets can be a lovely experience, that is until the animal gets sick, especially if the animal is young, like a duckling.
It would be reasonable to think that a duck that is foaming at the mouth is ill, this article looks into why your duckling is doing this.
Table of Contents
Duckling foaming at the mouth:
Any animal, when in infancy, is more fragile than it would be if it were an adult. This is why it is very important to take care of your ducklings as best you can so they can grow and become strong into adulthood.
Here are reasons why your duckling may be foaming at the mouth and what to do:
Blockage in the bird’s crop:
One reason why your bird may have foam coming out of its mouth may be that the bird simply has a blockage in its crop.
Your duckling likely gets very excited when eating to the point where it packs in a lot of dry food before stopping to drink some water.
If this happens then some of the bird’s saliva may also not go down the bird’s throat as it should.
Once the bird does finally drink some water this may mix in with the saliva and dry food and come up making the bird foam at the mouth
What to do:
The birds are usually able to just bring the food down on their own but if your duckling can’t do this then you can help the bird out.
Help your duckling by gently massaging the blockage of food and saliva down the bird’s throat. You can also drop some oil down the bird’s throat to help the blockage go down.
Avoid trying to massage the food mass upwards to get the bird to vomit, doing this can cause the bird to aspirate the food into its lungs as they breathe.
Crop issues:
Another reason why your duckling’s mouth may be foaming is that the bird has an issue with its crop.
Issues include crop stasis which develops when the bird’s crop does not empty in good time.
Your bird may alternatively have sour crop, sour crop develops when food becomes stuck in the bird’s crop and yeast starts to overgrow because the crop is not being emptied in time. In this case, the yeast will start to overgrow on the food.
If the bird regurgitates while having crop stasis or sour crop then the bird may release air bubbles as it regurgitates and this may look like foam.
What to do:
While it is possible to deal with this condition at home it is recommended that you rather take your bird to the vet for an examination and for treatment.
The vet will be able to quickly examine your bird, give a diagnosis and treat your bird accordingly.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other bird related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Duck Not Cleaning Itself, Duck Has Mucus Coming Out Of Mouth, Yellow Mucus Coming From Ducks Mouth, Why Does My Duck Sound Congested?, Duck Dragging Bottom