We have been feeding the wild birds for a while out near the tree in the driveway and usually get a lot of young Galahs coming down before they are chased away by the larger and more aggressive Sulphur Crested Cockatoos. For a while there is one Cockatoo that seems to just hang around in various trees and it is missing a lot of feathers. It had been walking from tree to tree and appears to be going through a bad moult. We were a bit concerned so took a few photos, it looks like a virus called Psittacine beak and feather disease (PBFD) which is endemic here and is almost always fatal for the bird. It spreads by close contact, so us feeding them is putting more of them at risk.
We decided to catch it to keep it apart from the others, look after it in case there was a small chance it would recover. We even bought a nice second hand cage so it would have a bit more room. It seemed it was actually getting some new feather growth after a few weeks, but sadly it died after about a month. Hopefully we made it’s last few weeks a little better, and maybe prevented the virus spreading. If we had taken it to an animal shelter they would have automatically put it down as a mater of policy. I have thoroughly disinfected the cage with bleach and we will probably sell it eventually.
We decided to catch it to keep it apart from the others, look after it in case there was a small chance it would recover. We even bought a nice second hand cage so it would have a bit more room. It seemed it was actually getting some new feather growth after a few weeks, but sadly it died after about a month. Hopefully we made it’s last few weeks a little better, and maybe prevented the virus spreading. If we had taken it to an animal shelter they would have automatically put it down as a mater of policy. I have thoroughly disinfected the cage with bleach and we will probably sell it eventually.
