I can hear my parrot breathing, should i be concerned?

[Courtney]

Hello everyone today I purchased two eclectus parrots that i found on craigslist. One beautiful healthy sweet female and one male. I am kind of concerned about the male. He is also very sweet but he has a broken wing that has been broken for 2 years (according to the man i bought them from) so that is set and theres nothing i can do about that. His beak is also very overgrown. I am able to trim that but I am mentioning it because i know it can be signs of health issues in some birds. He has those 2 deformities but i didn't care because he is a sweetheart and i will love him anyways. Today i took him home and when it was very quiet in the room and i walked past the cage i noticed that i can hear him breathing. not very loud but enough that i noticed by walking by. I can't hear it from the other side of the room. If I try to pick him up from the cage and he gets nervous/scared he begins breathing slightly heavier. He is still eating (I've seen him) and i assume he is still drinking because his poop is wet and looks perfectly normal. He is not aggressive or acting strange but he is oddly quiet and calm compared to the female. He is not sitting at the bottom of the cage or giving any other signs of sickness. Should i be worried about his breathing or do you think this will be ok once his beak is trimmed? I am also worried that if he is sick the female might get sick too. Please let me know what the possibilities are or if i should even be concerned at all. Thank you so much.

[Wolf]

Actually, I would consider taking them both in to see an avian vet as it is possible that the male is sick and if he is sick it may have already been passed on to the female, even if she is showing no symptoms and if this is so then the sooner treatment is started the better and less damage will be done to them.

[Pajarita]

Yes, you should most definitely be concerned and take both of them to an avian vet asap so he/she can run tests on them (please ask for a CBC, chem panel, bile acids and an XRay of the abdomen, at the very least, if not a full body set). The heavy breathing can be caused by different things (bacterial or fungal infection, rhinolith, etc) but all the possible causes need medical attention. The overgrown beak is ALWAYS caused by liver problems unless there is a malformation. Eclectus are the most difficult parrots to feed correctly in captivity. You not only cannot free-feed any source of protein (pellets, seeds, nuts, nutriberries, avicakes, etc) but you also have to be extremely careful of the actual protein content in the food you offer (which pretty much eliminates pellets as the protein content is never known) because they have an extremely specialized diet - a diet, I might add, that nobody has been able to perfect as of yet and that is the reason why they die young and usually start having liver problems while still young.

[Courtney]

Update: I still have not taken them to the vet. nothing has changed from what I mentioned above. However today while he was sitting on my chest he was very calm and almost falling asleep the noise stopped! he was right by my face i didn't hear anything. Is it possible He my just be a nervous bird and wheezes slightly when he's awake because he's scared/nervous?

[Wolf]

I do not have this species of parrot, and while anything is possibility, I really doubt it. I have never heard of anything like this being other than a medical issue. He could have an obstructive mass that affects his breathing blocking off some of his airway and perhaps when his head is in certain positions that it opens the airway enough to eliminate the sound of the blockage. You have to decide if it is worth taking a chance with his life with this. My experience suggests that the sooner you find out what is going on, the better his chances are. Your choice.

[Courtney]

Thanks a lot i will take them I hope they're ok

[Pajarita]

Well, I can tell you with 100% certainty that labored breathing and overgrown beak means the bird is NOT OK. Without seeing the bird and no blood work, it's hard to make a guess but I would say that there is a very strong possibility that, if the labored breathing does not mean a respiratory, it's due to the accumulation of ascites in the abdominal cavity due to severe liver malfunction (the liquid where it's not supposed to be would prevent the bird's air sacs from 'inflating' properly - thus, the labored breathing)

[EllenD]

I would beg you to please not waste anymore time and take them both immediately to an avian vet for exams, x-rays, and blood work. Every single time I have seen a post over years and years where someone asks whether or not a behavior is normal, or they ask if their bird should go to the vet and they hesitate and don't take it because they think it's better, the bird has died. Seriously.

We all know that by the time a bird exhibits symptoms it is already very sick and you're far behind the 8 ball. Labored breathing in any form or fashion when the bird is at rest is NOT NORMAL and is a sign of infection, congenital problem, or a disease process resulting from a bad diet or lack of care. As you have just gotten the bird's from a person that allowed it to have a broken wing for 2 years, I am seriously worried that these birds were neglected and may have been sick for a long time.

When you say the bird's wing "has been broken for 2 years" and that it's now "set", do you mean it has been actively, noticeably broken and not treated for 2 years, or that it healed badly? I would worry about internal infection and sepsis from the wing in addition to the bird being in constant pain, which is causing huge stress.

You took on 2 parrots that were not well taken care of and that are notoriously a breed with issues in captivity, mainly due to diet. What are these birds eating? What have they eaten their entire lives? If it's a diet of simply seed then you probably know the answer to why he's sick...liver disease.

You need to live up to the responsibility you just took on by adopting these two birds, and get them both to an avian vet immediately. I have a very bad feeling that this isn't going to end well if you don't act now.

[galeriagila]

No word in a week?

This just makes me want to cry.

There are some threads whose titles frighten me away from even reading. I kind of wish I hadn't read this one. I know: I'm soft.

Kudos to you brave regulars who field these issues here.

[Pajarita]

Yes, I also worry terribly when people come here, post about a bird that is obviously VERY sick and then never come back with what the vet found ( I can't help but feel that they never did take the bird to the vet). And that's why I am so grateful when people do come back to tell us what happened!