Comments | parrot_lovers: Article on PBFD and cleaning

zhai in parrot_lovers

Article on PBFD and cleaning

Jul 26, 2005 17:12

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 ( Read more... )

pbfd

Comments 23

bloolark July 27 2005, 00:18:56 UTC

Whoa. Thank you for sharing that. Good grief. That's scary, scary stuff.

zhai July 27 2005, 00:25:15 UTC

Yeah... no problem. It's pretty fingernail-curling. =/ But also heartening to know that she did manage to beat it back, at least for now.

bloolark July 27 2005, 00:30:13 UTC

Did she bring home an adult bird or a baby? I know that babies are more susceptible to PBFD and some species are more susceptible even as adults, but I haven't done that much research on it.

zhai July 27 2005, 00:37:09 UTC

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 ( ... )

Thread 10

brachypelmic July 27 2005, 00:33:06 UTC

Thanks for posting that. It adds a lot of perspective that I might not have had.

zhai July 27 2005, 00:51:43 UTC

No problem. It's really scary, but I think important to be aware of.

eterri July 27 2005, 00:45:40 UTC

I knew it was bad but I had no clue it was THAT bad in terms of getting it out of your home. :( To think some people casually take such an enormous, deadly, risk with their pets...

zhai July 27 2005, 00:51:03 UTC

I think, before Kim, I didn't know anyone who had even tried to eradicate PBFD. Kim works in a lab, so she had a bit of a leg up on knowing what she could do to bootstrap the process, but still... I think a lot of people just give up on owning parrots, or, like you say, just take the risk that their new bird(s) won't contract the disease. But it is such a Russian roulette... and you never know when it can strike, it could take years and then BAM. Horrifying. It's going to be a point of enormous tension for parrot owners until they develop a vaccine for it, if they ever do.

seirra81 July 27 2005, 02:00:46 UTC

I read on another message board that there is a vaccine being developed in another country, however it won't be available in the US for quite some time :(

shadowrabbit July 27 2005, 01:21:58 UTC

I'd want to just move at that point.
wow.

seirra81 July 27 2005, 01:55:39 UTC

Holy cow, I think it would be easier to move, throw away all of my stuff, and just buy new things. I'm going to have to print this out for a friend. She had a 'too with PBFD that lived with her for 10 years (with PBFD the whole 10 years). She wants another bird now, and it's been about 6 years since her bird died, but she still doesn't want to risk exposure. UF has agreed to do all of her home testing for free, they also treated her bird for free. I don't know if I'd have the patience to keep repeating such detailed cleaning like that.

zhai July 27 2005, 07:58:13 UTC

I thought about that (the moving thing), but then you get something more sinister... what if you moved into a place (like an apartment) and someone had done just that? So there is PBFD lingering in the place even though you've done nothing wrong. It's pretty chilling.

That's very cool that UF (what is UF?) has offered to do all of her home testing for free. I think a lot of people don't have the patience... and just skip out on owning birds after going through something like that.

seirra81 July 27 2005, 22:18:47 UTC

UF= University of Florida. The cool thing is that the vet school will do certain things for free provided they can use the cultures and such for teaching. Before e-collars were available for parrots, my mom had a nanday conure who got treated there (he got bit by an ant and tried to chew his entire leg off in 2 hours, it was awful) and everything was done for free. Then one of the students fell in love with him and since my mom had only had him for about a month, she let the student keep him. It sucks to have to deal with students at the vet school and the local hospital (which is where my husband works and why I didn't have our baby there), but if the bird has something odd or expensive and out of the ordinary wrong with it, it's totally worth it to use the vet school.