Article on PBFD and cleaning

[zhai]

Hi all -- this article came across one of my mailing lists recently (TEC) and I thought it was really interesting -- an Eclectus owner talks about the process of cleaning PBFD from her house:
I adopted Pandora (SI Eclectus) soon after she'd arrived at a pet store in San Diego, having been stuck in a little cardboard box without food or water for 3

Comments

[zhai]

Pandora was a baby -- and definitely more susceptible, yeah. Eclectus are high risk for PBFD but moreso when they're babies. They actually also tend to show signs of it when they're older -- the incubation period for Eclectus can be (and often is) longer than it is for other parrots. So for her to have come down with it and died so young indicates that this was probably a particularly virulent case, though maybe she succumbed to it young because of the high stress of being in the box for three days because of 9/11 and the UPS grounding... hard to say.

It's scary that it all happened in San Diego, too. I emailed her to ask her which store she went to, since there are only a few in the area... so I can avoid it. =/

You want to talk about a quarantine lesson, though. Jeez. Nate from EBR was telling me awhile ago that most of the cage donations they get come from people who lose entire flocks to PBFD, Polyoma, or Teflon and just can't take it anymore, and never own parrots again. (They don't take the cages from contaminated homes, though, of course...)

[bloolark]

I meant the second parrot she brought home. :) I was curious to know if this person decided to adopt an adult or bring home a second baby. :)

[zhai]

Ohhh, sorry. Doing too many things at once. =P She adopted an adult -- Q is a 11 year old female, raised by wild-caught parents and raised to be a breeder, which she 'failed' in and was then adopted out in March 2004.

[bloolark]

Yeah, in that position, I'd adopt an adult too. I'd worry too much about bringing home another baby, regardless of how clean the results were.

[zhai]

Yeah, especially with a high-risk species. =/

Bringing home a baby is scary enough as it is... hawkheads are supposedly low risk for the disease, but I wonder how much of that is just due to them being rare in general. Though, I think they're supposed to be related to Amazons, who also have low incidence... I'm rambling. =P

[bloolark]

Do you have any links on studies on species more or less likely to contract the disease?

[zhai]

Hmm... I read something awhile ago on it, it was this big site about PBFD, but I'm having trouble finding it again and am an idiot, apparently, because I didn't bookmark it...

Here's something, though -- an article on genotypes of PBFD, with a section on continents:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=506959

Then this page, which is apparently an image (really annoying):
http://www.avianplains.com/Avian%20Information.html

from the middle of it:
We have previously reported on the analysis of approximately 10,000 PBFD tests at this laboratory. Approximately 5% of birds tested positive for PBFD. The majority of these birsd were not exhibiting feather abnormalities or other outward signs of PBFD disease. Most of these birds were sub-clinically and transiently infected with the PBFD virus. With a mature, functioning immune system, most birds are capable of mounting an effective and protective immune response, which results in the elimination of the PBFD virus. Retesting of these individuals 90 days later is recommended, at which time most will show a negative result. These transiently infected birds represent a large portion of positively identified birds at our laboratory...

Old World psittaformes show the highest incidence of positive tests. Eclectus species had an overalsl positive rate of 10% followed by 8.7% for cockatoos and 8% for Afircan Grey parrots. New World psittaformes had shown a much lower positive test incidence. The rate for macaw and amazon parrot species was approximately 4%. Of interest is the apparently high rate of positive tests in lovebird species, which exceeds 30%. The positive test rate most probably results from selectively using the test for diagnostic purposes (suspected clinical cases) as compared to testing as a screening tool to document a bird's health status (as is common with the larger pet bird species).

And here's something really disturbing about incidence of the 'big three' at bird marts:
http://www.avianweb.com/BirdMartDangers.htm