Health Problems in Parakeets

Video Transcript

"One of the fantastic things about parakeets, and particularly budgies, is that they've been kept in captivity for about 200 years now. But one of the bad things about it as well is that it means that these guys have also been inbred a great deal. There's lots of color varieties; you can get them in greens and blues, and as you know with domestic animals such as dogs, you know, rottweilers and golden retrievers have problems with hip dysplasia, and some of the bug-eyed dogs have dental problems, and you know, eye problems, because of inbreeding, and these birds do as well. What has come out from these birds is they're much more prone to cancers than many other species of birds. They are both prone to reproductive cancers and fatty tumor cancers. And the type of fatty tumor cancers that these birds get can be stimulated by a high fat diet, so if you're feeding your parakeet a bunch of commercial bird seed you can almost guarantee that that bird, at some point in its life, is going to end up with a fatty tumor, you know, somewhere. It could show up underneath their wings, it could show up in their neck, it can show up on their face, it can show up on their beaks. It can show up inside of their body cavity, where you can't even see it and it causes organ damage and pushes on their body organs and eventually causes death in these birds. So even if they outwardly look fine, it can make them very sick. So you want to keep, make sure that you feed these guys a proper diet. The other thing that these guys are very prone to is mites. Why a species is more prone to mites than other species; the only thing I can think of is that most of these guys are bred in very high-density facilities, there's just so many birds coming in and out that they're bringing in mites with them. You don't see it a lot in many of the bigger Psittacine species, like African greys and amazons, although it's not unheard of. And a lot of times these birds will have them at, when you get them from the pet store or the breeder, and they won't manifest themselves as babies because it takes the mites some time to do some damage to these birds. So it will be two, three, four years down the line when you start noticing they have a lot of scaliness on the beak, scaliness on their legs, their nails are overgrown, they basically just start looking very dingy. And you might just think that the bird's getting old, but a lot of times it's just a hyper-growth of the skin, you know, trying to deal with the irritation that these mites are causing. If you suspect that your bird has mites, I recommend taking him to a veterinarian to get evaluated for it, where they can get proper medication. Most of the over-the-counter medication for these birds for mites are, if not toxic, then useless. So, if it's toxic enough to kill the mites it's likely to kill the bird; if it's not toxic enough to kill the mites then it's generally not going to do anything at all. So most vets can do proper dosing for your bird and make sure that it actually takes care of the problem. And if it's not mites, a veterinarian can also, you know, tell if it's not mites and make sure that he treats for why your bird is starting to look sickly and dingy around, you know, its beak and legs. As far as the reproductive problems that these birds get, they're very, very high reproductive birds, the females are constantly trying to lay eggs, sometimes even without a partner. They can get egg bound, so if you notice that your bird is sitting on the perch bobbing its tail, straining, looks fat, there's something protruding, from, you know, the vent region of your bird, please take it to a vet; it could have an egg stuck inside, especially if you know that you have a female parakeet, so it's something to watch out for. It's not very preventable, the biggest thing that you can help do to prevent reproductive problems in these birds is make sure that they get 10 to 12 hours of sleep at night, so you want to reproduce a constantly winter environment. If these guys get, you know, 15, 16 hours of daylight - and that can include artificial lights, you coming home and leaving your lights on until you go to sleep, you know, at 10 o'clock at night, those extended hours make the birds think that it's summertime all the time and can make them reproductively active, more so. So if you think that, you know, you want to, you know, avoid these sorts of things, you know, either keep them uncovered until 10 o'clock in the day and then uncover them, or after, you know, it gets dark outside at six or seven o'clock at night you've got to put your birds to sleep."