Disease Testing Parrots
You may be wondering why disease testing your parrot is so important. Your bird is not showing clinical signs of illness. Your bird was captive bred possibly. Maybe you have had your bird for over 40 years, never been sick or had to take it to a vet. Why is disease testing so important? Who would benefit from disease testing? What even is it? Though Fluff and Feather’s is not an avian veterinarian, nor do we claim to be, here is some generic information on disease testing so you can talk to your vet further about the necessity to disease test, as well as how to do it.
To start, our parrots can carry diseases! Diseases that can be transmitted to other birds, and diseases that can be transmitted to people even, called zoonosis. Birds are natural disease spreaders. Just because they were possibly born in captivity, even by the best breeding facilities in the world, does not mean they are free from the possibility of getting a disease, being a carrier for it, and spreading it to us or other birds.
Parrots are be clinical and show symptoms of a disease or be a carrier of the disease and show no symptoms. This means your parrot can be symptomatic, making it quite obvious that something is not right. Or they can be asymptomatic and carry the disease. What does it mean to be a carrier? That means the bird is not currently, or in some cases, ever affected by the disease they have, but can still shed it. Others that are exposed to the shed disease could get it and then become clinical.
Diseases are spread differently depending on the disease. Usually it is from droppings, feather dust, sharing food and water, and indirect contact, like if a bird touches us and then we handle the next bird immediately. Fluff and Feather’s residents are all disease tested for four diseases. These diseases are PBFD, Psittacosis, Bornavirus, and Pacheco’s. Here is a review of each disease:
Psittacosis
Its scientific name is avian Chlamydophilosis. It can be described as an acute or chronic infectious diseases that is shed during stressful situations for the birds by inhalation through fecal dust in close contact conditions. It is most commonly seen in parakeets, cockatiels, and pigeons, but that does not mean that any other species has less of a chance of becoming infected or is immune. Clinical signs of this illness include mild respiratory signs and diarrhea, sometimes noted to be a yellowish-green color. Other signs include depression, weakness, loss of weight, nasal discharge. Lesions can also be found, which can also lead to other tissue responses like pneumonia, airsacculitis, hepatitis, and much more. There is no vaccine against psittacosis, which means that prevention is key. This means that not bringing a diseased bird into your home to spread to the other birds (AAAP, 2013). Birds can carry this disease and not be symptomatic, but still spread it through contact of droppings or through the air from dropping dust.
Personally, I have experience with Psittacosis, thankfully not in my flock though. A rescue I used to work at had an outbreak that was apart of the reason they lost their 501c3 nonprofit status in Maryland. I was told that 6 cockatiels tested positive with the disease, though were not symptomatic, and one cockatoo went to a home and ended up dying, infecting the two other cockatoos, and the caretakers. Size psittacosis is a zoonosis disease, that means people can get it. Symptoms are extremely similar to the common cold, but when left untreated, it can develop to chlamydia pneumonia in humans and become very serious. We had to report it to the state, since it is the law to with zoonosis, and the government had to come to the facility regularly to do environmental swabs and test the birds.
Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease (PBFD)
PBFD is a DNA virus that affects mainly cockatoos, Eclectus, budgies, lories, African greys, lovebirds, and lorikeets. Other species can also have it, though it is less common, with reports of a small number of macaws and amazons, and pionus. It is a chronic progressive disease in birds older than 8-10 months with the first lesions developed between 6 months and 3 years of age. This disease attacks the beak and feathers primarily, hence its name. It affects all feathers, including down feathers, contour feathers, flight feathers, and tail feathers. The affected and damaged feathers become painful and uncomfortable. The bird will lose all of its plumage and the feathers will be more fragile to breaking and bleeding. The beak and nails will misshapen, which will need consistent grooming and corrective trims in order to have success. It may also affect the bird’s ability to eat a normal diet, which caregivers will need to modify the diet, or give a soft diet (Harrison, 2006).
This disease brings a high mortality rate. This means that birds usually do not live long with this disease, average less than 5-10 years. With supportive care, many can live far past this diagnosis. Birds can test positive for this disease without showing symptoms. Therefore, if a positive test comes up and there are no symptoms, it is advised to quarantine the bird and retest in 90 days. Even though the bird is not showing symptoms, all positives mean the bird is actively shedding the virus. In order to control this, it is extremely simple. Before the bird comes into your care, or is being quarantined, have the bird disease tested to avoid future catastrophic loses. Most bird stores and large-scale breeders will not test every single bird, especially with “low cost” parrots like budgies and lovebirds. They will do an environmental swab instead, which is not always the best indicator. This disease is incredibly resilient to disinfectants, which means aggressive cleaning is necessary to decontaminate an environment (Harrison, 2006).
Avian Borna Virus (ABV)
This is the newest disease to be found and research for avian species. It was first discovered in 2008. It was found in the tissue of parrots with a disease called proventricular dilatation disease (PDD). It is estimated that at least 30% of the current parrot population has borna virus with the change of it being as high as 70%. This can affect various parts of the bird’s nervous system causing inflammation and the loss of the myelin sheath protection. This means that there could be an array of clinical signs. Signs of gastrointestinal involvement can include regurgitations, anorexia, delayed food processing, weight loss, and undigested food in their droppings. It is also seen to cause central nervous system involvement with ataxia (lack of balance), tremors, incoordination, reduced cognitive ability, and seizures. Birds with feather destructive behaviors can also be because of borna inflammation of peripheral nerves. Wrapping this back to the mention earlier about PDD, this disease can progress to your bird getting PDD, which is deadly and highly contagious (Jaskulski, 2016).
We are unsure of exactly how the disease is spread. It can be intermittently in the droppings through oral-fecal rout, as well as dropping dust. It can be from mother to chick. It is also seen in an aviary setting that some birds test positive living with negative birds, and the negatives never test positive or become clinical, sharing all the same things as the positive birds. Some vets even think the chance of it spreading from cage to cage is slim when good cleaning practices are being used. We have a blog about good cleaning practices found here. The disease does not live long outside of the host and is easily killed by general disinfectants (Jaskulski, 2016).
Testing for this disease is difficult because there is no one test that will accurately give results. This is because we do not know much about it yet compared to others. A positive test generally shows a viral infection, but not always diseased, and a negative test does not always mean no infection. There are a series of tests to give the most accurate representations. It is more common for a false negative than a false positive with this disease (Jaskulski, 2016).
Bird’s generally carry this disease their entire lives and never become symptomatic, but will still spread it. This disease is designed to go unnoticed to the host. The virus can lay dormant in the ganglion nerve. It is not necessary to euthanize Bornavirus birds. Stress is the usual cue to cause a dormant bird to become symptomatic, so keeping birds healthy and stress free is important. Increase in hormones and an overly hormonal bird can also cause this virus to come forward. It is important to train your bird to not be stressed in stressful situations like restraint, nail and beak trims, transportation, new environments, and socializing heavily to decrease stress. We offer behavioral aid through our online and in-person means to help you teach this to your bird to decrease stress. About 10% or less of parrots with borna virus will develop into PDD. It is important to know if your bird has borna virus to be on the lookout for PDD symptoms to apply supportive care to prolong life and improve quality of life, though most birds pass within 5 years or less with PDD (Jaskulski, 2016).
Pacheco’s
Psittacid herpesviruses (PsHVs) is the alpha herpesviruses that are the causative agent of Pacheco’s disease. This disease has been described to me as “throwing a dart on a dart board to determine which birds die.” Its clinical symptoms are a bird that has died with little or no advanced evidence that it was ill. Other signs include lethargy, depression, and anorexia. Profuse sulfur-colored urates can also be a sign. Regurgitation, bloody diarrhea, and terminal central nervous system signs can also be reported. Durations of clinical signs can last a few hours to a few days before death follows. Only very few birds are known to survive once clinical signs develop. It is spread through oral secretions, droppings, or vomitus of a persistently infected bird. Birds who test positive but do not have symptoms are still treated for it and will become persistently infected and will remain that way for life. All psittacine can be affected by this, as well as keel-billed toucans (Harrison, 2006).
This disease could infect one single bird or hundreds in a flock. This disease Is through means of contact and not through the air. Therefore, if your cages are separated and your keep up with hygiene, the chances of it spreading to other birds are far reduced. There is a single vaccine that is being introduced in the USA that is still being researched for its effectiveness for this disease. The best way is to test all parrots that come in during quarantine to be sure they are negative of it (32).
All of these diseases are easy to manage in your flock. Before you bring a bird into your home, it should be quarantined for at least 30 days from all other birds. This means a separate room with separate air-flow systems, separate cleaning supplies (even sponges for dishes) and all cleaning and interaction is done last, and when you exit, you immediately remove all clothing, take a shower to disinfect, and put new on. While you bird is being quarantined, disease test them for these diseases. You can do this through your vet. Once your flock is disease tested, then it is important to not expose them to other birds that are not tested. With each exposure, the disease testing prior is ineffective. This means do not take your birds to pet stores or bird stores, make sure you do not sit near other birds at the vet’s office, do not bring your birds to bird fairs and marts, and do not bring them around your friends’ birds unless they do the same. Disease testing is industry standard. It is important for one bird as it is for small and large flocks. It is important for the health and wellness of your parrots.
Harrison, Greg J. (2006). Clinical Avian Medicine - Volume II (Harrison, Greg J. and Lightfoot T.L). Volume II. Spix Publishing.
Jaskulski, Louisa (2016). Avian Borna Virus/PDD: Good News and Bad News—New Research Findings. The Mickaboo Bird Rescue Companion.
The American Association of Avian Pathologists (AAAP). (2013). Avian Disease Manual Seventh Edition (Martine Boulianne). Seventh Edition. American Association of Avian Pathologists, INC.