Swollen budgies?

AlexK

New member
Jun 24, 2010
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Kentuckiana
Parrots
Zoey (ZoZo), Timneh African Grey
First of all, I haven't personally seen this problem, but rather it was asked to me by a customer at my workplace and I had never heard of it.


I work in a petstore, and i'm pretty much the only person there with any kind of extensive bird experience. The other day I had a customer ask me a very peculiar question. She claimed that she had previously had 2 budgies which had been fine for several months, she had been feeding them zupreem pellets with daily fresh fruits and occasionally (once weekly) seeds, as well as millet a few times a week. She had not noticed any smelly or runny mutes, odd behavior, lethargy, etc. One day when she came home from work both birds were very "swollen" looking, as she put it, and about 20 minutes later both of them were on the bottom of the cage dead.

I asked her to elaborate on the swollen comment and she said that they just looked very fat all over, and if you looked closely you could see the skin in a few places between the feathers. I asked if she had fed them any out of the ordinary food such as avacado or chocolate and she said she hadn't. I also asked about any non-stick cookware as well as any gases or fumes and to her knowledge there weren't any.

What could this be? I've been doing part time work in a bird of prey rehab for about 2 years, and have been fostering parrots for almost a year, yet i've never heard of a disease making something look swollen outside of bumblefoot and that's not what she described, although I admit my knowledge of fid disease is not very extensive.
 

Von1983

Banned
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Sep 3, 2010
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I can't imagine what would cause this at all.......

Very very strange.......

Sorry we can't be of more help!!
 

nofearengineer

New member
Sep 8, 2010
575
1
Parrots
Gandalf - CAG (1997-2010) R.I.P. my baby boy.
Bitty - CAG (2 yrs old? and working on spoiling her rotten)
A total guess here....mere supposition. Histamine reactions are usually characterized by swelling, hence the "anti-histamine" medicine to treat it. Perhaps they had some sort of allergic reaction to something in the air.
 

Ratzy

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Apr 7, 2010
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Hamilton, Victoria, Australia
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See siggie :)
The organs could have swollen up. French moult does have this effect to nest survivors, but it wouldn't have such a visual effect and cause them both to die at the same time. They could have ingested high soses of lactose, they can't digest that. Marigold, one of my budgies, had a swollen foot and couldn't use it for about 3 months ( I believe it was broken and there was no vet working when we went ), and Boofer ( RIP my beautiful girl ) had an extremely swollen leg, caused by a too-small leg ring.
PS. Bumblefoot is an infected sore caused by rough and not enough variety in perching.
 

Pedro

New member
Dec 15, 2010
1,583
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Australia
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2 Budgies, 3 Cockatiels, 6 GCC'S, 2 Crimson Bellie Conures, 9 Sun Conures, 2 Major Mitchells, 12 Eclectus parrots of various ages, 2 BF Amazons, 2 Hahn's Macaw's, 1 Red Tail Black Too
Sorry Alex i have read through my medical books & can not find anything that even comes close. Certain dieases will show swelling of the organs as mentioned. But i am wondering if your friend has mistaken the birds being all fluffed up & not actually swollen. It seems to me that both birds have come down with the same sickness & had that typical sick bird look. Sitting on the borrom of the cage all fluffed up. At a guess some sort of bac infection.
 

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