Camelot Macaw

I wrote an article a while back on the devastating parrot disease PDD (Proventricular Dilation Disease).  Since that time there have been great strides made in the testing process for this disease and some new discoveries about PDD in the environment.  This is great news for parrots owners, since testing for the disease in the past has been very invasive, dangerous, and costly.  More recently, researchers developed a test that didn’t require a biopsy of the crop, but these test result were proving to be unreliable.  This is ...

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Rose Breasted Cockatoos

To me, the loss of a pet is like the loss of a family member.  It takes a long time to fill the void they leave behind.  I lost my aged cat just shortly before I moved here to Orlando.  He was a snuggly little thing and my constant companion.  My ex-husband used to tell me that I preferred cuddling with my cat at night to him.  He was correct.  My cat never hogged the covers or elbowed me in the face by accident in the middle of ...

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Blue throated macaw

PDD is a disease that causes a failure in the parrot’s digestive system. While it is also called “Macaw Wasting Syndrome”, it is absolutely not exclusive to the macaw.  In fact, it has been seen in many species of our companion birds and their wild counterparts.

So that you can better understand the impact of this disease, first let me describe the parrot’s digestive system:  The bird breaks down food with its beak and passes it down to the crop.  The crop slowly delivers food to a two ...

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Congo African Grey Parrot

I was listening to the Ask The Bird Experts weekly webcast the other night.  Liz Wilson was speaking about how little we actually know about parrots.  After so much research has been done about parrots in the wild, there are very few questions that can be answered with absolute certainty.

I have complained in past posts about the fact that there isn’t a formulated diet that can duplicate a parrot’s natural one. This is because we really don’t know what they eat.  A field researcher can spend ...

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Yellow Budgie

Alright, so this isn’t prettiest topic, but it is one you should know your way around as a parrot owner.  Since birds so completely mask their illnesses, there are really only two ways we have to monitor their health at home.  One is by weighing them frequently, and the other is by watching the quality of their poop. Your parrot’s poop will remain fairly consistent as long as it is healthy.  It only takes me a couple seconds, several times a day to take a look at the ...

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