Carrier of disease? Best quarantine practices
Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2013 10:52 am
I recently acquired several new birds. They were all in quarantine for 3 weeks. None of the birds exhibited any signs of illness - all were bright eyed, perky, active, no puffiness or visual signs of any illness. I treated them all with AIL when I first brought them into the house, just to be safe.
Now here's the scary part - when I added the male gouldians into the mix with my others - about 80% of them immediately got sick within the next day or two. The only ones who didn't exhibit any symptoms were the new birds. After moving all the birds to hospital cages with heat lamps and adding Thrive to their food, thankfully all have recovered. But that was pretty terrifying as I potentially almost lost all my males!
Second case is my new female lavender hen. Same thing, after 3 weeks moved her into breeding cage with my existing male. The two immediately bonded and got on fabulously. Over the next day or so, I observed slight puffiness in the male. Treated with heat lamp and after a day or two, it seemed to be gone. He was eating and drinking normally the whole time, seemed to be fine. A few days ago, I noticed him in the food dish eating rather than standing on the edge (it's a rather large dish) and didn't think much of it really. I had to work until 10pm that night unexpectedly and had come home and did a rush job of feeding the birds (still kicking myself for this thinking maybe if I hadn't been in such a rush to get back to work I might have noticed something more). Two days later, I'm feeding again and when I put my hand in to put the dish in, the male flies right into the dish while I'm holding it (a little strange) but then goes right to work eating while I'm holding it. This is not usual behavior for him at all - I reached in and was able to easily pick him up. This made me cringe as this is never a good sign. Moved him to a hospital cage with heat and noticed he seemed to be having trouble balancing. Kept falling to the side after a minute. He immediately went to sleep after eating some seed. The next morning I woke up and he was dead
I can't help but thinking these birds were somehow a carrier of disease even though they did not display any signs of illness themselves. What can be done to prevent this? If a bird appears healthy after a few weeks, how can you know when and if it's safe to move them into your flock? I've never had this situation before. Do you normally treat with other meds even when the bird appears healthy? I've always heard it is best not to try to medicate a bird unless you are certain of what you are treating as it can be dangerous for the bird.
Now here's the scary part - when I added the male gouldians into the mix with my others - about 80% of them immediately got sick within the next day or two. The only ones who didn't exhibit any symptoms were the new birds. After moving all the birds to hospital cages with heat lamps and adding Thrive to their food, thankfully all have recovered. But that was pretty terrifying as I potentially almost lost all my males!
Second case is my new female lavender hen. Same thing, after 3 weeks moved her into breeding cage with my existing male. The two immediately bonded and got on fabulously. Over the next day or so, I observed slight puffiness in the male. Treated with heat lamp and after a day or two, it seemed to be gone. He was eating and drinking normally the whole time, seemed to be fine. A few days ago, I noticed him in the food dish eating rather than standing on the edge (it's a rather large dish) and didn't think much of it really. I had to work until 10pm that night unexpectedly and had come home and did a rush job of feeding the birds (still kicking myself for this thinking maybe if I hadn't been in such a rush to get back to work I might have noticed something more). Two days later, I'm feeding again and when I put my hand in to put the dish in, the male flies right into the dish while I'm holding it (a little strange) but then goes right to work eating while I'm holding it. This is not usual behavior for him at all - I reached in and was able to easily pick him up. This made me cringe as this is never a good sign. Moved him to a hospital cage with heat and noticed he seemed to be having trouble balancing. Kept falling to the side after a minute. He immediately went to sleep after eating some seed. The next morning I woke up and he was dead
I can't help but thinking these birds were somehow a carrier of disease even though they did not display any signs of illness themselves. What can be done to prevent this? If a bird appears healthy after a few weeks, how can you know when and if it's safe to move them into your flock? I've never had this situation before. Do you normally treat with other meds even when the bird appears healthy? I've always heard it is best not to try to medicate a bird unless you are certain of what you are treating as it can be dangerous for the bird.