A bit of a nightmare

[Wide-O]

I had imagined my first post here to be quite different. I have been reading here for the last couple of weeks, as we had bought 2 Senegal parrots 14 days ago.

I wanted a parrot since I was 20 - now 31 years ago. We own two labradors, three cats, 50 fish, 3 turtles, so you could say we quite like animals, and know how to care for them. For my 51st birthday, my wife bought me these two beautiful creatures.

Ollie and Nadi - it didn't take long to build up a bond and become fascinated by these two clowns. They had been in the shop for 3 months, together in a cage, and while I know it is a bit much to buy two birds as a beginner, I didn't have the heart to separate them.

I read 3 books and a lot of posts on this forum. I took great care to follow all the advice to give them a safe & enjoyable home. I studied on the food they need. We made sure the cage was both large enough and parrot-safe. We stopped smoking (yeah, I know) inside the house. We housed them in a large room (8 x 5 x 2.5 meters) where we also have our meals and watch TV. I was planning to build them an aviary.

All of this to say that yesterday evening, they both died within an hour of each other. We tried emergency vets, to no avail. We finally found one and drove there around midnight, but Nadi was already dead, and while Ollie was still moving, he was very weak, in a lot of pain, and the vet proposed to euthanize him. Which we allowed.

We were in shock, and I'm still in shock. I feel massively guilty, as this happened under my watch. This is NOT about the money; this is about 2 seemingly healthy animals who now no longer have a future.

The vet did an autopsy on one bird (Nadi) and found that she had massive internal bleedings, and her bowels were delaminating. However, he could not find any strange bacteria. His first diagnose was that we did not feed the birds for 2 weeks, and that they died of anemia. This added insult to injury, as we took great care to both provide them with top quality pellets, augmented with fresh fruits and nuts. We tried carrots, grapes, cucumber, pistaccio nuts, macademia nuts, strawberries from our own garden, etc. They loved it all. It was fun to watch them eat it all. We took great care to wash everything before giving it to the birds. We cleaned their cage every evening, and gave them fresh water 2 times a day.

There were no fumes (we first thought about poisoning) in the well ventilated area. They were not allowed out of their cage without supervision. There were no poisonous plants in the area. We knew all about non-stick material, avocado, etc. They were not cold, there was no draft.

Quite frankly, we have picked each others brains for hours now, and we can not find a cause. We had noticed Ollie eating a lot (hence the name...), but apart from that they were healthy, alert, clear eyes, beautiful feathers, sleeping on one leg, begging for attention.

We made sure they had 12 hours sleep each night. We covered the cage. No other animals had access to the birds. We had no visitors in those 14 days. They were active until Saturday 3 PM. 3 hours later, they were dying. We were and are baffled and stunned.

We will now have to wait for the autopsy and blood test results which will be done by a university. I do hope that maybe some of you could suggest easy mistakes we might have made. Please believe me when I say that undernourishment is simply out of the question.

The shop where we got them was known by us for 8 years. They furnished us the special dog food that originates from the US. They are absolutely trustworthy, and I'm sure they took great care for the birds.

Anyway...

Gutted, and feeling massively guilty, and infinitely sad. I so wanted this first post to be different.

[pennyandrocky]

so sorry for your loss I suddenly lost my almost 3 years ago I had him 17 years and we grew up together since he was my grandmother's bird until she died. I thought we would grow old together. I hope you get your answer.

[marie83]

So sorry to hear what you have been through. I hope the tests give you some answers.

I would just like to point out something though, malnourishment doesn't necessarily mean they were being starved. Its more than possible to eat so much your severely overweight yet still have nutritional deficiencies and excesses, some of these may have a lasting effect on a bird so if it was that it might not be something caused by you but at their previous caretakers.
That said I don't think it is likely to be a dietry thing from what you have said.
Also if you smoke and intend on keeping another bird in the future you need to change your clothes and wash your hands before handling the birds again, nicotine and the other poisons in cigarettes sticks to pretty much everything and as you know birds are sensitive to it.

Please come back and let us know what the test results are when you have them.

[Pajarita]

Sounds like they ate something like mouse poison... is this possible?