Laura's Story
In March of 2000, I had my first experience with PBFD. It was shortly after our beloved red lory, Callie died. We decided that her mate, Berry needed another mate. It broke our hearts to hear him cry for Callie. We purchased another red lory female, as a potential mate for Berry. We named her Stella. Above are some of the pictures of Stella, the bird that we brought into our home.
We were like many other bird buyers in that we never thought we'd have to worry about a disease called PBFD. For all we knew, it was just one of those exotic diseases that only major bird breeders/brokers ever came in contact with. We never imagined that such a disease could ever effect us. Of course, we had heard stories of PBFD in the past, but we'd also heard that nobody had seen the disease in birds in over 10 to 12 years, and that it was limited only to cockatoos.
As soon as I aqcuired this new red lory, I suspected that something was wrong. This bird's feathers were growing in abnormal, twisted, and with powdery, flaky feather sheaths. I searched the back of my memory banks for any disease I might of heard of that involves distrophy/abnormalities of the feathers. I remembered hearing something about a disease called psittacine beak & feather disease (PBFD). I took her to the local avian veterinarian. He thought that the possibility of the bird having PBFD was probably very remote, so he & his associate told me to keep her in quarantine, and after 60 more days, it would be ok to take her out of quarantine.
I still felt like something wasn't right. I followed my gut & asked my friend Sharon Casmier about how to go about testing. Sharon had a previous experience w/ PBFD, and was very helpful & caring. (Her story is listed in the "stories" section.) So, I decided to go ahead and test her.
We had to wait a while before testing her (as we had a few other expenses to take care of first), so she sat in her quarantine room for about a month.
When we finally had the money to test her, we clipped her toenail, and dropped the blood into a small vial, which we mailed off to an avian laboratory. We waited approximately two weeks for the results. During that time, I read all I could find about the disease.
This made it especially shocking for us when we found out the news that our new bird had tested positive for PBFD.
We thought, "How could this happen to us?" Even though we quarantined her, we later learned that the disease is so contagious, she could've passed it to our other birds, even though they were in other rooms, because we weren't careful enough. Even though we fed her last, and washed our hands afterwards, we learned among other methods of contamination, that we could've tracked the disease all through our house by wearing our shoes out of her room.
"Stella" is gone now, but she's left her mark, and her legacy with us for the rest of our lives.
We tested our other birds, and they were negative.
We have moved into a new house since then, and our pet birds are safe from infection, due to our scrutinizing cleanliness in regards to any possible PBFD contaminents, and ongoing effort. Our birds are tested on a tri-monthy basis, & they have so far maintained their "negative" status. We were lucky that they were not infected. The quarantine method proved succesful.
My friend Sharon had to deal with this deadly disease on an enormous scale. I turned to her when I got the shocking news that I actually had a bird with PBFD. She helped me so much, and was the first person who didn't make me feel guilty about having come in contact with this disease.
She is very helpful in educating people about this deadly disease.
If you have PBFD in your aviary, I urge you to contact Sharon. She will give you all the support that she gave me. You can also feel free to contact me. After all, it's a very emotional thing when you learn that your bird(s) are going to die.
I hope this story and the others will serve to inform others about the importance of testing, and prevention.
Copyright © 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 - Laura Wagner. E-mail to obtain permission to use content.