It is all too easy to ignore a small warning, a dropped feather in a nursery; relax your management practices, and because it often goes unnoticed in lories, not act soon enough to prevent a major problem. And that's what happened to me.
As some of you know, the last three years have been very difficult ones for me. My Mother and Godmother both passed away last year. I was able to keep them in their own homes the entire time and am still trying to untangle my Mother's finances since I was unaware that she had Alzheimer' disease & hadn't even paid her taxes for 3 years.
Just as I was getting back on my feet, my father, who will be 99 this month, fell & cracked 3 vertebrae in his back & now probably has cancer. I am currently keeping him in his own home & running his business for him.
I am telling you this so you can understand why my usual management practices were not followed. Taking care of family and running the ranch where I raise birds, cats, goats and miniature horses, as well as judging rabbits & goats doesn't leave much time for anything else.
After my father fell, I decided that I couldn't continue running the ranch and helping him, so I sold the sheep, the cats & decided to sell all the lories since they took so much of my time.
I had a big zoo contract, and I was going to fulfill that and then sell the rest of the birds. Fortunately I tested all the birds before they left & to my great surprise some tested positive for PBFD. I called the zoo & told them I would be unable to fulfill the contract & told them why & then called my vet. Brian Speer, who is a certified avian vet & past president of the AAVA. He is not only an excellent bird vet, but also a wonderful person who has managed to keep my spirits up and give me strength to fight the disease, as you will see, more than one time. He said we could probably clean it up but I told him I had already decided to get rid of all the lories.
Where did the disease come from initially? I have no idea, but when you hear the history of my lory collection, you will understand how easily it could have come in.
I started collecting lories about 15 years ago and this spring had about 250-300 lories. Some of the first birds were bought directly form quarantine stations. I now know that lories were housed with cockatoos, which showed signs of PBFD, and some died from it. We know lories can be exposed to the disease and may never show any sign of it and may test either negative or positive for the virus. We also know it usually affects young birds, often when they are first getting their adult feathers. We also know that older birds that have never shown any sign of it may break out with it later in their life. There is a good possibility that a lory may harbor the virus internally, May even test negative and later when stressed, may show visible signs or the disease & even die from it.
Over the years, I bought lories from many people. I carefully quarantined the birds and some, whose feathers did not look perfect, were tested for pbfd. Some lories never did grow perfect feathers and were retested, but there never was a positive bird so the birds were eventually added to the collection. I now know the lab we were using then was usually unable to reliably detect the virus in the lory. I remember that in the last few years a baby in the nursery would occasionally lose just one feather and I paid no attention to it. I was selling birds to zoos then, & they were usually tested for PBFD as well as other diseases, and I never had a bird test positive for anything.
Then in the spring of 1998 Sharon Casmier contacted me about shipping
her
some lories for an exhibit they were going to have at the PT. Defiance
Zoo.
They wanted unweaned babies so they would adapt to people better.
Although I
didn't usually ship unweaned babies, I knew Sharon was a very
experienced
lory breeder, so I shipped her a group of unweaned babies. One baby
hadn't
been eating as well as I would have like but he looked all right, so he
went
with the group.
I have the distinction of giving Sharon her first
group of
PBFD lories.
I am sure many of you are familiar with all the problems she has had
in
getting lories for the zoo, and the incredible steps that had to be
taken to
get rid of the virus.
Dr. Holly's article in this newsletter does go
into the
procedures used, but cannot possibly describe the emotional stress and
heartbreak that Sharon suffered. I have the greatest admiration for
Sharon in
spite of inadvertently creating a disaster for her, she & I have become
good
friends and she was the only person I could turn to and really
understood
what I was going through as I too fought the disease.
She never made me feel guilty and she carefully protected my identity
with
the problem and I hope if any of you know of someone who has the
disease,
you, too, will try to support them in fighting the virus. I really
admire her
strength and courage to still continue to supply lories to the zoo,
knowing
all that she knows about PBFD.
Since I had never had a bird test positive before for the virus, I was shocked that some of these birds had done so. They were shipped back to me and I called Dr. Speer practically in tears. It was recommended that the birds be carefully quarantined and it was believed that most of the lories would recover, test negative and could be later sold or returned to the breeding facility. This was done and a couple of birds who then did have abnormal feathers were euthanized, but after 2 negative tests, the birds were considered recovered.
Since the only birds that had had a problem had come from the nursery, and that was a small bathroom in the house, I scrubbed and rescrubbed the room. Since there is no cure for the disease, and nothing kills the virus, the only way you can get rid of it is by scrupulously cleaning. I then took swabs and went in all the nooks and crannies with them and they tested negative, I gave a great sigh of relief and felt I had licked the problem.
I brought lots of new babies into the nursery since I hand fed every
baby
and went along about a year with no further problems. Periodically
birds were
tested either by zoos or me and there were no positive birds.
Then last
spring I had a zoo order and didn't have quite enough birds to fill it.
They
agreed I could by a couple of birds from another breeder, which I did.
They
were barely weaned so I put them in the house in a separate room until
I was
sure they were eating on their own. I later found out that when I was
on
vacation and wasn't here, they were hand-fed in the nursery with my
babies.
They went to the zoo and were all put in their quarantine facility
and
tested. All of my birds were negative but the 2 purchased birds were
both
positive for PBFD.
Again I called Brian Speer, almost hysterically. He
said to
pick up all the lories, ship the 2 purchased birds back to their former
owner
& quarantine the rest for 8 weeks.
At that time they were retested and
all
were negative and so they were returned to the zoo. They were retested
again
before adding them to the existing exhibit, were all negative and to
this day
all the lories are doing well.
The only odd thing that did happen was
one
bird lost a few flight feathers and although he tested negative, I did
not
return him to the zoo. He was eventually added to the rest of the
collection
and although he tested negative twice more, never had a positive test,
but
always had a couple of odd feathers he was donated this year to the lab
for
further study
Again I cleaned the nursery carefully, but didn't swab it because at that time I felt there never had been a positive bird in there.
That fall I got a large order for lories to be shipped in the spring. Winters here are cold enough so that if birds don't go outside in the fall, they have to be kept inside until spring. Instead of selling most of the babies, I kept them for the zoo, and by spring I had birds in 3 rooms in the house.
Because of past problems, I had recommended to the zoo that the birds should be tested here just before they were to be sent, and they agreed to pay for the testing.
All of the birds looked great and there had been
no
indication of any problems, so I was totally unprepared to get back
some
positive results.
The odd thing about the results was one bird in a
cage
might test positive and the rest would be negative and all of them
looked
normal.
I called Dr Speer again and told him I just wanted to somehow
get rid
of all the lories since I had decided I could no longer manage them
before
this ever happened. He then recommended that we test all the lories to
see
what the condition of the collection was.
Dr. Scott McDonald was going to be in the area sexing birds & usually
stopped
here, so I called him, told him about my problem, and he agreed to test
the
birds. Scott drew blood from the jugular, and to save money, we put the
blood
from birds that shared a cage and sometimes a single bird into one
vial. We
had already gotten the kits from the Ohio lab. Each vial was labeled
numerically and we kept a list of the cage number of the birds that
made up
each vial. The lab was given only the numerical number for each test.
Not one
bird showed any sign of a problem so it was quite a shock to both Scott
and
me when about a quarter of the samples tested positive. Later when the
birds
were tested individually, only one bird in 2 or 3 was actually
positive.
Brian then contacted Dr Dahlhausen from the Ohio lab and suggested
there
was a unique opportunity to really learn about PBFD in a large lory
collection and recommended that he test all the birds individually for
free.
Dr. Dahlhausen generously agreed to do so and even returned my check
for the
tests Scott had done.
Brian, a vet student & I started out early one
morning
and individually drew blood from every parrot on the property and we
didn't
finish until almost nightfall. Again we numbered each vial and kept the
identity of the birds to ourselves, so both tests were blind ones.
Later we
gave all the information to the lab so they could try to come up with
some
answers.
Surprisingly the results often changed. With one exception,
only a
couple of birds were positve both times and most of the birds were
negative,
but there were some pairs that I had had for many years that were split
negative and positives.
Because I hadn't believed that there was a problem with the birds that had been returned the year before & then went back to the zoo 8 weeks later, I had put most of the birds going to the new zoo in those cages. Those were the first birds this year that had been tested positive and many of those continued to test positive 2 more times.
The only explanation the lab could give me for these changes was they
felt
there was a "cloud of virus" throughout my entire facility. Everyone
(many
vets all over the country) seemed to think that if the birds that had
tested
positive twice were removed, all the other birds would be fine if they
were
put into a clean environment away from here.
I sent the twice-positive
birds
and a few that had an odd feather or two to the Ohio lab for further
research.
I now had to find a home for the rest of the collection. I had to be
sure
the new owners appreciated the collection but were aware of the risks
involved, could properly quarantine the birds and wouldn't immediately
dispose of the birds, possibly infecting other collections.
Several
people
took a few of the birds and signed a paper acknowledging the situation
here
and agreeing not to hold me responsible should a problem occur with the
birds
they got or any they came into contact with. After carefully evaluating
the
situation, a couple of old friends of mine agreed to take the entire
collection. They have a beautiful isolated facility for the birds where
they
are misted regularly and can bathe anytime, and so any virus they might
have
on their body would disappear. They seem very happy there and they have
had
no problems with them.
My only reason for telling this long saga is to show how easy it is to have a major problem with PBFD. We know it is found in lories in the wild & could come in with imported birds. We know it is prevalent in many collections in Europe. I know that if we are not careful, it will become common in the lories in the US.
What can you do to keep this from happening? First of all, maintain a closed aviary if possible or at least for your breeders. Then test every new bird you get for PBFD; I highly recommend the Ohio lab. Brian Speer has had an excellent recommendation for those of you selling to zoos. Since the virus occurs mostly in young birds, don't sell unweaned babies. If possible, keep the birds until they are 5-6 months old and, if possible, house them together in big flights. Then just before shipping, test all the birds for Pbfd and anything else the zoo may want. He feels that if you do this, you may be able to get a premium price for the birds; that the zoos would be willing to pay to get healthy, acclimated birds that have been living and flying together.
Good luck with all your birds and may you have, keep and raise many happy, healthy lories.
Bobbi