If it is at all possible, you should have an extra cage set up as a hospital cage for emergencies. This is especially important if you have more than one bird. Each step of the basic emergency care is important! 

1. Incubator: "Hospital Cage" 
A. Put the food and water dishes where the bird is spending its time. That means that if the bird is on the cage floor, the dishes should also be on the cage floor. Jar lids make nice, stable hospital dishes. Whatever the bird is used to eating should be provided as well as a dish of water and a dish of Pedia-Lyte or Gatorade. (You should try to get your bird accustomed to the taste of Pedia-Lyte or Gatorade prior to any emergency if possible. That way the bird will be more likely to drink it when it's needed than if it has never seen it before. Find a flavor your bird likes. The electrolytes in these products will help in the treatment.)

 
B. Wrap the entire cage in clear plastic wrap to create a little, warmer bird room inside your normal room temperature home. Birds have a normal body temperature of about 104 degrees. When they are sick or injured we would rather have them exert energy healing than on maintaining that high body temperature. By keeping their environment warm we can help accomplish just that.

 
C. A heating pad fastened to the outside of the END of the cage, next to the END of a perch, with clothespins, or a clip on light with a 60-watt light bulb can be used to provide the heat. If you are treating a breeding bird, you may want to try to regulate the temperature without the light as a heat source, so as to not alter the light-regulated aspects of breeding, but sometimes one must sacrifice a breeding season to save the bird.

The bird will usually snuggle up next to the heat source initially and then, within a few hours, move a little bit away. If the bird does NOT move away from the heat after a few hours, it is trying to tell you that more heat is required. Either use a higher setting on the heating pad or a higher wattage light bulb. If the bird moves to the far end of the perch, less heat is required and the heating pad must be turned down or moved further from the cage, or the light must be moved further from the cage or a lower wattage used.

2. Food
A. A bird that stops eating dies. Therefore put the bird's food and water in dishes where the bird is sitting. Food in a dish at the top of a cage does no good to the bird too weak to get up to it.

 
B. If the bird is not eating even when the food is right there you can help sustain him with a mixture of 1 tsp corn syrup, pectin, honey or Karo syrup mixed into ¼ cup of Gatorade or Pedia-Lyte. By wrapping him in a towel to help avoid sudden chill and to help control him, hold him and give him a few drops of the mixture with an eyedropper every few hours until you are able to get him to your veterinarian. Remember that in order to breathe, a bird must be able to move his breastbone away from his backbone, so be careful not to wrap him up too tightly in your towel.

3. Droppings
Monitor the number, volume, color and consistency of the bird's droppings. Note any changes that occur between initial onset of problem and the time the bird gets to the veterinarian. Save the droppings for the veterinarian to see. Remember, there are normally three components to a bird's dropping: the color component (which is the feces, the result of eating food), the whites (the urates), and the clear liquid (the urine), both from the kidneys. A bird can produce urine and urates without eating. If you see no feces, the bird is not eating.