Questions and Answers....

Here we can answer many questions about any subject related to birds, Breeding, Handfeeding, Husbandry,Incubation, Etc. We will try to respond to the e-mails directly and we will post many here for 60 days.. We not be able to answer all questions in a given time frame.

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Hello Royal Bird Company

My name is Elbert S. I have purchased 2 birds from you in or around 1995-96.

We live in Houston, TX and we had them shipped to us from you.

They both were Yellow Nape Amazons. They are amazing, We never had not one problem with them , they arrived healthy and e took them to the VET and she said that they were beautiful and they had no problems, infact she said these 2 birds were some of the healthiest birds she has seen come in her office, as they had no fungal infections, bacterial problems,etc. She said that most all birds especially babies that have been handfed will have a some type of minor problems that may need to be addressed, BUT not my guys, they came home with a clean bill of health. Our vet was also impressed with that each bird came with a Starter kit with foods, treats and instructions and certificates of the DNA work, the sexing and the disease testing, which she said was very professional. 

So, here is my questions to you, We purchased 2 more birds recently in 2008 from a breeder (regrets-regrets) that was somewhat local to us, they are in Texas, south Texas actually, McAllen, Texas. We went there to pick up our babies. The nursery was dirty, or may i say, just not clean. It smells. They showed us some breeder birds on the property, which you said you would never do, I noticed that most of here birds was amazons, scarlet macaws and military macaws, which sells very cheap there (yellow napes $500-red heads $300). She also has few pair of other birds, African greys, blue gold macaws, and caiques. These species birds she seems to sell for much more than many other breeders. We never saw any babies of greys or any other birds but amazons, lots of yellow napes,yellow heads,red head,etc..

Now, After we reluctantly took our birds home, they was red head amazon and double yellow head amazon, these bird seem not to do well from the first day, they seem very shy and did not have a good personality, both bird got a runny nose by the next morning, we called the so called breeder and she said that thats normal and they would be fine, to spray a nasal spray in their nose. We did not do that. We called our vet and took them over to the clinic, she was alarmed at the birds weights being so low. She took throat swabs and took blood, She told us that she would more info in a day or two, but she also saw now a large number of gram negative bacteria in the throat swab, so she gave us some medicine to take home, we had problems with giving to them as they was not up for that. Our vet calls us in couple days and tells us to get back over there , we arrived in a hour and she told us some very bad news, she said that our birds had Chlamydia also known as Psititicocsosis and we should quarintine them and she would give us more medicine, Now we have already exposed these birds to our other birds and my family as well. After a week of dealing with this my wife gets the flu and she gets it bad, she goes to the doctor and tells that she has birds at home with this problem and the doctor test her and she has Chlamydia and she must take medicine. We have a real mess, the health Dept came over and put a note on our doors stating that anyone coming into our home can be exposed to this diease. Our vet tells us that the birds we may have purchased from this Texas breeder may have been smuggled, they have no bands on and we never saw any bands on any birds there. I do know that the babies we purchased from you had bands and numbers, why? 

We have lost one of our new sick birds as of today this morning...We took it over to the vet  few days ago and she began tube feeding as it would no longer eat and take the medicines. The bird had lost so much weight. She called today and gave us the bad news.

Our vet tells that we should have purchased any other birds from the same person we purchased our first guys from(YOU) and we would have any problems, but we thought we were saving money and we could go and pick them up and see them before buying. But now we have spent any money we may have saved plus much much much more, put our other birds in danger and our family is scared and my wife is sick as well. What is up with people selling those birds that may be sick and do you think that the breeders birds are smuggled illegal birds?

Thanks again

Elbert S.

ANSWER

Hello Elbert

Well, it seems you have a problem indeed. I hope all is going well with the other bird. Yes, I do believe the birds you purchased may be illegally imported birds or smuggled birds. The factors that brings me to this are

1. The vicinity to the mexican border of the breeder, 

2. That the breeder had large numbers of mostly mexican species.

3. The prices of the mexican species was too cheap compared to the prices of the species that are not normally smuggled into the USA from mexico i.e. greys,blue golds,etc. 

4. All the babies was of mexican species.

Of course the above alone does not make anyone guilty, but is odd.

One thing that struck me was that you said you was reluctant to bring home a bird from there due to smells and other unclean problems you observed, Why did you?

NEVER purchase birds if the place is dirty or smells. I know its hard to keep things clean when dealing with large volume of babies, but we make that the top most priority.

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