My sad story, for your knowledge, but I hope to still get something out of it…hopefully not a disease outbreak. I had two new British type birds that I bought from a local pet shop. Luckily we seem to have better pet shops here, than is most of your expience. They told me they were from a breeder that had decided to give up birds. I picked out what I thought was the most healthy & active two. I decided to pair them up; the hen had eggs, when one morning I found her lying on the floor of the breeding cabinet. I suspected egg binding, as it had been cold. The eggs were cold, so I transferred them to the only bird that had eggs. It turned out that it wasn’t egg binding, but she seemed as if she had hurt one of her legs. I transferred her to a separate cage, as the cock was hassling her. She recovered.

Three of the eggs that I transferred hatched, but after a few days I couldn’t leave them there, as there were 11 eggs all told. I transferred two to a pair in an aviary that only had hatched 2 chicks. And one to another, which is doing well & is a Green Opaline Spangle.

Then the double whammy occurred, after a couple of days, when checking the 2 chicks in the aviary I found out all 4 chicks, hers & the fostered, had dirty behinds & then noticed that the hen had both her eyes streaming with liquid. I had some psittavet [antibiotic] so I started feeding it in the water. I didn’t know what else to do, as even if I had some spare batches, I wouldn’t move the chicks now, as it could spread what ever it was to others. I also had three pairs, colony breeding & a pair of cockatiels on eggs in this aviary. Hopefully it has worked, as the mother seems better, not completely, but better than she was…shows you like many have said that stress can bring out problems & of course breeding is stress. It seems to me also that you can see some things definitely have genetic connection [susceptibility] as a couple of days after starting to feed the psittavet, the foster hens two chicks died, but the two fostered chicks stopped scouring & are doing well. So far nothing else has showed signs of trouble, as soon as the chicks are old enough, I will remove the hen.

Good thing you had the psittavet Norm, as all symptoms sound you had Psittacosis going through. First sign apart from scouring being wet eyes. Highly contagious as you know. How are things going now ?

 

PS You still dont get "straight stories" through pet shops...the breeder may have sold off his remaining birds as he indeed had psittacosis go through and these birds even though they survived were carriers. Stress brought it out through breeding.

Edited June 8, 200718 yr by **KAZ**

It`s not a good thing,to buy from pet shops.The bird dealer come to our club & buys all the culls.Then sells them onto the pet shops.He picked up 346 on Monday night.He would take them home & most probely put them all into the one flight.The age of the birds would 6 months to 6 yrs old & could be carrying any number of deases.No never buy from a pet shops.

WOW what an experience, thank you for sharing with us.

I agree with Macka. At least when we buy and sell birds through our budgie club to each other, as club members, there is an accountability and a conscience with regard to sold birds. Everyone in the club says...."any problems, let me know" so they dont want to be seen as selling "bad birds". It's all good through the budgerigar clubs.

Hi Norm, as bad as it was, at least it was contained in the breeding cabinets. Best to lose a couple of chicks than an aviary full of birds. Very lucky you had psittacossis treatment too as you cannot buy the treatment now without having a confirmed case diagnosed by a vet :budgiedance: It is the one disease I was unable to treat my birds for before I started breeding. Now you need to get this lot healthy and make sure the breeding cabinets are totally disinfected.

 

Thank you so much for sharing this experience too, as many of us here can learn from it.

 

 

Feathers.

No this bird that got sick was a bird I bred myself. There was no problem with the young from the bought birds, which I transferred the eggs from. I have had no problems from birds I have bought from the pet shops in my town, as I said they are quite good. I have bought more than 30 without problems. In fact one of the birds that I bought from the breeder at last weekends sale is unwell, I wouldn’t have bought it as I didn’t think it looked good, but just took it with the last lot he offered me at discount price, thinking that if it died it wasn’t such a loss. I have it in the house near the fire & it seems to be responding, I think I got the last of his culls for the year & I suspect that they had done the rounds of sales in the last few weeks & had been stressed out, so I’m letting them settle in, even before treating them with Ivermectin, as I think even catching them for that is too stressful.

Kaz I agree with your thoughts that it’s a problem with Psittacosis, which I have had problems with before & I think it’s impossible to protect from, as I think the source is from mice that enter the aviary, even after all attempts to stop them fail, not from introduced birds. Even before I went back into Budgies about 2 year ago, I had cases of it, even after breeding birds for 10 years with almost no new birds.

The hen that got sick is from the same family, in fact a sister of the bird that had some runners, this family & another are the only two families of birds that I bred last year, that I have lost birds from. This is a problem that I have found once you start up again, using birds from others, soon through culling I hope to remove this problem.

Edited June 8, 200718 yr by Norm

Just an update on my problem. Things went pretty well, last week the oldest chick fell out of the nest, so I placed the two remaining chicks on the floor & removed the hen, who was better, but not cured [she’s no longer with us] the chicks weren’t being fed that good & were pretty hungry. Well once again I wasn’t that lucky, as instead of feeding the chicks as I hoped, the cock just went crazy over the loss of his hen & continually flew from one end of the aviary to the other calling out. I was worried as the chicks looked hungry & the weather was cold, but all was not lost, Budgie as sometimes [or mostly] are very tough. Maybe the cock fed them some times, it’s hard to know, but they started feeding themselves & improved in health so much in a couple of days. They are doing well now & up on the perches, only one of the chicks looks like from the show type birds, the other must be the parents own chick, the show type looks great, really buffy looking head, real show material, but you show guys don’t need to panic, as of course I didn’t have any rings & it’s unrung. ..(Laughing out loud)…I am still feeding psittavet in the water, but no other birds came down with it, so all look good, I don’t think all birds are so susceptible to Psittacosis as we often think, anyway fingers crossed.

well good to hear the babies got the hang of it....

it is sad to see them calling all the time for their mate

I remember when Pretty died Merlin called for him in the beginning