Bio security fun and avian diseases

Taprock

Member
Oct 22, 2015
279
2
Northern l.p. Michigan
Parrots
Buzz - CAG,
Ziggy - Nanday/Sun Conure,
Jasper - Goffin
Loki - Starling
Gloria - Foster CAG
This may be the wrong place because it involves nonparrots also.

This week has been a tough bird week. Three days ago my Two year old, spoiled Tom turkey became sick with what appeared to be Histomoniasis. I kept him separate and handled him last, wore outside clothes, but since itā€™s a turkey disease wasnā€™t too worried. Two days ago I was missing a small target trained Serama. I spent hours looking for her and finally had to give up. Thankfully I found her the next morning in the rafters of a coop she shouldnā€™t have been in. It made for a good morning after a rough night. Yesterday my favorite young Polish was under the roost in the morning unable to stand, eat, move, with what appears to be Mareks. I tube fed him twice yesterday and this morning heā€™s drinking on his own so while it still looks like Mareks they rarely get better from it. When I handle him I wear coveralls, outdoor shoes and gloves. I sanitize everything that touches him and have him separated. Great fun, several times a day, but I have the indoor birds to worry about.

My question is has anyone ever seen a list of diseases that ā€œlivestockā€ or farm birds share with parrots? Since they are in a different family I wasnā€™t sure how many they have the same. Itā€™s something that may help me in the future.
 
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EllenD

New member
Aug 20, 2016
3,979
65
State College, PA
Parrots
Senegal Parrot named "Kane"; Yellow-Sided Green Cheek Conure named "Bowie"; Blue Quaker Parrot named "Lita Ford"; Cockatiel named "Duff"; 8 American/English Budgie Hybrids; Ringneck Dove named "Dylan"
My mom and stepfather breed/own poultry/gamebirds, and also parrots. And I myself have an indoor duck, I'm thinking about a baby Serama (they are so adorable) that my mother has, but I'm not sure, as I just took-in a Ringneck Dove that has taken-over my house, lol. Anyway, we use the same CAV and they also have a livestock Vet...However, I also worked for a year at the Animal Diagnostics Lab/Avian Influenza Lab at Penn State University doing virological, bacterial, and fungal testing, diagnosis, research, etc...So I can only speak from my own experience and education on this topic...

Now as far as Marek's goes, that's a Herpes Virus that is specific to chickens-species only, and one that your parrots have already been exposed to for sure, but that won't effect them. That's a very unique disease in that your entire flock of chickens has it and is carrying it, but it usually only causes actual illness in new birds to the flock, or birds under stress. It's just like Herpes in people, we all carry the common Herpes viruses around with us, but they only come out or express themselves when we are under stress or weakened by another illness, etc. This definitely will not effect parrots.

As far as other poultry or gamebird diseases, it's basically dependent on each individual disease that you're talking about, and while most poultry and gamebird specific diseases are not contagious to parrots, at least they won't express themselves in parrots (they can be carriers of a certain few though), there are some disease which effect all birds in-general, but this is not the norm. So my best advice is to simply look-up each, individual disease you are concerned about, as that's the only way to get the correct answer, as there is no general blanket-statement on this one, except to say that "most" of the time your parrots will not be effected...
 

SailBoat

Supporting Member
Jul 10, 2015
17,666
10,054
Western, Michigan
Parrots
DYH Amazon
Michigan State Extension (Farm and Livestock Vet School). The State of Michigan will likely forward to them as they act as the States 'experts' regarding this subject. Clearly, the current big one, is Bird Flu.

I hope this helps.
 

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