Conure dying

[gerri]

Hallo Everyone

I have a couple of conures in outside aviaries. This morning I noticed my Pearly conure female just sitting on her perch , feathers puffed up , eyes half closed and sneezing . It was obvious that she was sick. I then phoned a parrot breeder I know well and described the symptoms .He asked if she had laid eggs recently and I confirmed that she had ( The eggs were not fertile ). He suggested that she was egg bound and that I needed to buy Doxybiotic , an antibiotic available here in South Africa that combats bacterial infections. He said I should add that to their drinking water , adding that since sick birds often doesn't drink water , I should catch her and feed her some water with the antibiotic added to it. I did this and and while I was trying to administer the treated water , she started screeching , went into convulsions and died in my hands. I am terribly upset about this , she was my favorite bird . Does anybody think I did something wrong ? I have to add that when I arrived back home after having purchased the medicine she did look a little better .Also , last year after laying her eggs , she also looked sick but shrugged it off after a day .Any opinions ?

[liz]

Welcome to the forum. I am so sorry that you joined because of a loss.
Someone with more knowledge will answer you. I just wanted to tell you that I was sorry for your loss.

[Wolf]

I am not a breeder and do not feel that I know enough to even attempt breeding birds, even if I wanted to, which I don't. But is seems to me that although your bird may have needed some antibiotic, that the first thing to do is to get the egg out of her, if she is egg bound. Removing the egg that won't pass is really the only chance that you have to save their life.
As for your question of whether you did anything wrong or not, I refuse to answer because you know the answer to that even before posting here. I am sorry that you lost you bird and in such a manner. I do not want to make you feel any worse than you already do, but please try and find a better breeder than the one that you talked to and get some hands on knowledge before you risk your birds again.
This is something that all of us, especially those of us that have birds with mates need to know about so that we do know the symptoms and what to do about it.

[Pajarita]

If she had already had a hard time with her laying last year, you should not have attempted to breed her this year. Also, outdoor birds don't get eggbound unless they have a terrible diet (like all seeds, for example). And antibiotics don't take care of eggbinding either (it's not a bacterial infection so why would they help?) and this is something that anybody who keeps birds should know. So, although I am sorry for your loss, in answer to your question, yes, it was something you did and/or something you did not do.

[madge]

so sorry for your loss. you did what you believed was in your birds best interest. knowledge is important and i am still learning after keeping budgies for more than 40 years. take care