Monday, February 7, 2011

Parrotlst's Sudden Death

Hi,
I can't believe what happened tonight. I just found my two parrotlets dead on the bottom of their cages! I have, sorry had two female parrotlets. They were about 3.5 yrs old. I kept them in separate cages next to each other.

My question is... can a parrotlet die from loud noises? We had the Superbowl game on, and during half time we raised the volume, however the guest we had over said it wasn't extremely too loud. (We just got a 73" TV with surround sound.) It was loud, however, we could still hear each other talking.

I have three parakeets, one love bird and a blue and gold macaw, all in the same area as the parrolets. They are kept in our living room with the TV. All the other birds are fine.

When I went to cover them all for the night, I found each of the parrolets on the bottom of their cages dead. There are no signs of a struggle or any noticeable marks that would indicate cause of death. Having them both die at pretty much the same time is weird. I cleaned their cages this afternoon the normal way I always did. They were fine, and everything looked good, and was the same.

I haven't been able to find anything on line regarding loud noise being deadly for birds. I feel terrible about possibly being the cause of these two beautiful innocent little birds death. Please let me know if the TV being too loud could have caused their deaths. I don't want anything to happen to the other birds in the house.

Thank you for you time and help with this matter.
Extremely regretfully,
Alana

Dear Alana:

I am so sorry to hear about the loss of your birds. While I am not a vet and certainly no one can definitively tell you what killed those birds without a necropsy, I can tell you I’ve kept and bred parrotlets for almost 30 years and I have never heard of a bird dying from loud noises. They are not the delicate wallflowers many people think they are and they originate from very harsh conditions in the wild so they are very strong, resourceful and definitely not easily stressed or otherwise compromised because of environmental conditions especially something as nebulous as noise. After all, they are true parrots and in the wild they would be surrounded by loud noises including other birds so I can’t imagine that one thing had anything to do with the other. I know as humans it is our nature to attribute cause and effect – like bringing your car in to have the oil changed and then your radio doesn’t work. We often draw parallels but really one thing had absolutely nothing to do with the other.

As I said, the only way you could possibly know what really happened is to have the birds necropsied. Something I would do btw since you have other birds in the house and it is extremely unusual for two birds to drop dead at the same time. It can mean anything from their food was contaminated (mycotoxin is mold found in bird seed and its colorless and odorless and not detectable visually) or there was something the birds breathed or, if they were housed together, it could be a viral, bacterial or other kind of fungal infection. No way of knowing without veterinary intervention.

Again, I’m sorry to hear about the loss of your birds but I highly doubt noise had anything to do with it.

Sincerely yours,

Sandee L. Molenda, C.A.S.

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