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Re: sudden death
Posted by GreyLady on 1/30/09

On 1/30/09, Jan wrote:
> My cockatiel died yesterday. He was found in the bottom of
> his cage. He had no symptoms and was active. Any ideas?

Oh no, I'm so sorry for your loss. The unfortunate thing is,
none of us could do anything other than make wild guesses and
that's not what you need. The only way you might be able to
ever know is to have a necropsy done. That means you would
have to refrigerate, not freeze, his body, and get it to a
good avian vet asap.
The only other thing you can do would be to go through the
many lists of all the toxic things we have in our homes, but
must always keep far from our birds, at all costs. I don't
know how much experience you have with birds or how much
research you may have done on household dangers. But, there
may be far more than you could imagine. Many you would never
give a thought to, yet some can literally drop a bird in it's
tracks. Others are more cumulative and do their damage over
time. What makes that difficult is the bird's natural
instinct to hide all symptoms from you for as long as
possible. Many times, when we see a symptom, it may be too
late. The bird has become so ill it can no longer keep up
the pretense. Some of the causes of bird deaths are non stick
cookware, cooking fumes, candles, incense, any product that
sprays into the air, any kind of air freshener no matter the
type, carpet sprinkles. fumes from fireplaces and any product
with a strong odor like perfumes, hair sprays, etc. That
just barely scratches the surface of what comes to mind at
the moment. If there is any chance your bird was female and
if her diet was not just right, she could have been egg
bound. Was this you only bird and if not, did you recently
acquire any additional birds? What is the source of your
bird food supplies? Tell us about the bird's diet.
If any of this gives you any ideas, maybe you can research
further. If any of it brings up more questions, by all
means, let us know and we will see if we can help any further.

Posts on this thread, including this one

• sudden death, 1/30/09, by Jan .
• Re: sudden death, 1/30/09, by GreyLady.
• Re: sudden death, 1/31/09, by jill.
• Re: sudden death, 2/02/09, by Jan .