Bird fancier's lung - should we be worried?

[Grey_Moon]

I think, with proper cleaning and prevention protocols, don't worry about it.

I've had allergy/asthma-ish symptoms for years now---I went in for testing (finally) and turns out I'm mildly allergic to cats! But I've lived with two out of the three powder down birds (including Sully, my tiel who was so dusty he'd leave a dust-print on your shirt if you hugged him!) and yeah occasionally if I get a big dose of birdie dust I'll sneeze, and yeah if the room is particularly dusty from birdie stuff that it gets a little tough to breathe. But i don't think that necessarily means oh god I'm going to get bird keeper's lung.

The only cases i've seen where people developed bird keeper's lung were people with many, many birds, especially those who weren't kept clean and the air wasn't filtered---or if you had a lung disease already/were immunodeficient/sensitive.

I come from an allergy/ezcema/asthma prone family, I don't take nearly the precautions you do (and admittedly, I have mental health issues so there was one summer when I was fifteen where the mirrors were fuzzy with bird dust), and I haven't always lived in the cleanest house and yet, here I am six...seven years down the road and not a hint of bird allergies or bird keepers lung.

So I'd say, if you can, keep up your cleaning routine, but don't stress over birdie dust

[RedDragon1288]

I really should be one of those to people to worry about this because I have asthma but ironically I only get asthma attacks when I'm around cats not birds.

[Shelby]

So here are my questions

1. I think newspaper you're using now is better than loose bedding. With newspaper, you can monitor the bird's droppings - which are the first indicator of health decline. That's hard to do with loose bedding. If you'd rather not use newspaper because of the ink, you can try paper towels or buy white paper cage liners online.

2. Some people like to dilute a little plain aloe vera juice into the spray bottle once in a while, but it isn't necessary.

5. You could see if one of the kids in your neighborhood is willing to earn a few bucks by power-washing the cages. You'd be amazed at what kids do for money. One of my friends used to shovel manure out of the barn for a local sheep farmer just for $5 an hour!