Abstract
I should have known things were going too smoothly. Due to the rather warm fall and winter season here in south Florida, most of my birds were busy pairing off, preparing nests, and laying eggs just prior to Christmas. My husband and I were busy building new nest boxes and tearing down old flight cages to replace them with newer models, and then disaster struck.
We were warned that our very hot temperature of 85 to 90 degrees was dropping to the lower 40s on December 10th. We got busy securing cage tops and checking nest boxes, adding shavings were needed to help insulate eggs and females heavy with eggs. Feeling confident that our birds had survived even lower temperatures, we went to bed secure in the belief that things would weather through this cold snap.
Early the next morning, while feeding nectar to the lories, I saw my prize male Meyer's Lorikeet sitting with his beak hooked at the opening of his nest box with his mate chattering excitedly just outside. I placed tubes of nectar on the cage and when the male Meyer's did not come out of the box I knew something was wrong. I removed him from the cage to discover he was ice cold to the touch with his feet drawn up with no strength to even attempt to bite. I held him next to my body to warm him while I set up a heated hospital cage. I fed him a small amount of very warm nectar and then placed him in the hospital cage while I resumed feeding the other lories outside.
When I returned outdoors, I noticed the female Meyer's looked a little distressed. The male and female had been actively feeding each other for several days so I thought she may be producing an egg and the cold was affecting her. I took her indoors to another hospital cage. I took another look at the other lories and lorikeets just to be sure no one else was in trouble and all appeared to be okay. In fact, my oldest pair of Meyer's Lorikeets were sitting tight on two eggs.
I could not understand why the two Meyer's Lorikeets I just pulled were in trouble because they were in with five other young Meyer's Lorikeets and they were not showing any signs of distress. All seven of the Meyer's Lorikeets were captive-bred birds ranging from two to three years of age.
I checked on the two stressed Meyer's Lorikeets hourly and the male was rapidly going down hill. Two hours after pulling him, he started having convulsions, throwing his head back, quivering his wings and clamping his feet. I knew he would not live but kept praying by some miracle he would pull through. However, he was found dead four hours later. The distressed female Meyer's would not eat so I tried feeding her from a spoon. She took a few small laps of nectar but then retreated to the back of the cage and huddled in the corner. Later that night, I physically examined the female lorikeet to discover that her crop was full of clear mucus. Upon checking her food dish, I could not tell if she had eaten any of the nectar.
The female lorikeet's crop emptied during the night but I could not. entice her to eat anything on her own. She would just sit in the corner, staring off into space. On Tuesday morning, I found the female Meyer's dead. My husband and I discussed taking the bird to the veterinarian for a necropsy but figured the hen death during the night in the heated environment would negatively affect the report. The same circumstances applied to the male which had died the previous Sunday morning. We figured that whatever the male had he must have passed it to the female while feeding her.
On Wednesday, we found our naked female Edward's Lorikeet dead in the box and assumed she died from the cold and possibly old age. We again checked the lory collection closely to see if we could spot any problems and everyone appeared to be acting normally. However, on Thursday morning we found one of our oldest male Green-naped Lorikeets dead in the cage with no apparent injuries. On Monday, the 19th of December, we found our last Musschenbroek's Lorikeet dead with no prior symptoms of being ill.
We started thinking the worst.
Could it have been food related or weather related since we had such tremendous weather fluctuations? We could not get the birds' bodies to the veterinarian quickly as he is located an hour's drive away. We started reviewing everything we were doing in preparing food and feeding the birds when it dawned on me that we were probably giving our birds salmonella.
We rehabilitate native wildlife and had recently received injured redtail hawks which we fed raw chicken parts. I had just recently seen a television program where they showed someone preparing a complete dinner and talked about which items would be carrying salmonella. The chicken prepared for the dinner was the original culprit, however, it was stated the salmonella bacteria could be killed by cooking the chicken, but the salmonella was also rapidly spreading through the tossed green salad which included hard boiled eggs. The show stated the reason the salad had the bacteria was that the person preparing the dinner used a wooden cutting board while cutting up the chicken. The board was rinsed under running water prior to chopping up the lettuce and other vegetables, thereby allowing the salmonella bacteria to come in contact with the salad items. Sterilizing wooden cutting boards is almost impossible due to the wood's porous structure. The show recommended using plastictype cutting boards for cutting up meats. This related to our particular procedure in preparing food because we have a large, wooden table top on which we prepare all of the food, especially the fruits and vegetables fed to all of our birds.
We decided that if any other birds died we would have them checked. Needless to say, on December 28th we lost a female Red-flanked Lorikeet which has been housed inside, unlike the other birds which were housed outside. I called the veterinarian and talked with him expressing my concern about the bird deaths, explaining why I thought salmonella was the culprit. He stated this could very well be the case but that if I lost any more birds to bring them in for necropsy.
On Friday evening, I found a female Stella's and a male Foresten's Lory dead. I placed the birds in the refrigerator, hoping to catch the veterinarian in his office on Saturday morning. Saturday morning arrived with another death, this time a male Fairy Lorikeet. Since it was New Year's weekend, I was unable to get birds to the veterinarian's office; however, on January 2nd I made an appointment to take some birds in for fecal workup to see if they were carrying salmonella bacteria.
While waiting for the test results, things seemed to slow down without any bird deaths for several days. But hope turned to despair on January 14th when I found a male Stella's dead. (Have you ever noticed that birds either die during the night or on the weekends when it is difficult to get veterinary help?