Common Diseases of Parrots

Common Diseases of Parrots if you have read As Sick as a Parrot, it should be obvious that a large proportion of disease problems in parrots result from dietary and environmental influences. Infectious conditions are important, and will be cover in this section, together with important steps to take in the prevention, control and elimination of disease from your birds. This is no veterinary text book, so will not catalogue every disease encountered. It will just summarise some of those most likely to be met by the average parrot-keeper.

DIET

Common Diseases of Parrots this is cover in more detail here Parrot Nutrition. Most disease problems are the result of long-term dietary imbalance. Minor irregularities may show as long-term poor growth and development, poor quality plumage or breeding performance. More marked changes will manifest as specific disease entities.Deficiencies

By far the most common important food items lacking in parrots’ diets are vitamin A and Calcium. Both these substances are found in low quantity in the standard seed-based ‘parrot-mix’, so birds that select this diet – or are given nothing else – will inevitably develop problems in time. Hypovitaminosis-A will have damaging effects on the lining membranes of mouth, nose and throat, as well as the kidneys. Gradually these membranes become thicken and secondarily infected, showing as enlarge block nostrils, ‘abscesses’ in the tongue or facial sinuses, or kidney failure. The caseous (cheesy) accumulations will need to be remove, and the parrot’s diet improved and supplemented with vitamin A. For more details, see Hypovitaminosis-A