TheTameParrot.com - Say “BYE” To Your Parrot Problems

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Doves can make an excellent pet. But many people have not discovered this breed of bird yet. Why? Doves are supposed to fly around outside and poop on cars. Why would you want to keep them as pets? Well, lots of reasons.

Size – They are medium sized bird from 4-8 inches long. Smaller doves can easily be kept in cages in the home. Larger doves are commonly kept in flight cages, or many times in outside aviaries. Don’t confuse these with pigeons! That is a totally different class of birds!

Maintenance – Not much different then larger birds. Their diet is a good finch seed/pellet mix, supplemented with dark greens and chopped up fruit and vegetables. The doves we raised didn’t seem to care for those, forcing us to supplement their diet with vitamins. Doves are on of the few birds that require grit in their diet. Look for some high calcium forms of grit that are made of digestible ingredients like cuttlebone, oyster shell. Our birds were fed a special dove seed mix that was largely millet and chip peas. We supplement it with greens and vitamins.

Our “special” white doves were fed a special diet because when we took them to “events” we didn’t want them pooping all over the place! More on that later.

Noisy? Not at all. Doves have a wonderful “cooing” sound that adds a great atmosphere to the home, opposed to the loud screeching sound of parrots.

Cost? Most common doves are very inexpensive. There are some special breeds of “show” doves that can be very pricy. But the average ringneck or white dove sells for around $20. They are very easy to breed, and very hardy.

Doves love human contact. They are easy to finger train, and they do not bite. This makes them a great starter bird for small kids. After handling these birds, they will easily move on to larger birds, and have a good understand on how to care for them.

The most common doves are Ringneck and Diamond Doves. Ringneck Doves come in over 40 color variations.

Diamond doves have become a very popular pet. They are one of the smallest of the dove species, have a gray body with off-white chest and stomach. Many have a few blue and chestnut colored wing feathers. They are hardy, and rarely get sick unless they are poorly cared for. They can be caged with other birds, such as finches. Many people keep a pair of these birds, as they mate for life. They are known to live for at least 15 year in captivity.

We raised a lot of white doves. We had a side business with our aviary. We rented our doves and decorated cages to be used at weddings, funerals, and other special events. It was quite an experience to see a church full of wedding guests listening to the cooing of a dozen doves while the wedding ceremonies were in progress. At funerals, the cooing helped to sooth the sadness, and the doves significance in religious ceremonies is an important factors to many groups.

The problem is that many people want to perform “dove releases”. Unfortunately, the birds used in those ceremonies are not doves, but white racing pigeons. If you release a normal dove, it does not fly back to its coup the way pigeons do, as they do not have the homing instincts. By releasing white doves you are only sending them off to their death, unless they can manage to adjust to living in the wild, and can avoid predators.

If I have you interested in keeping a few doves, just keep in mind that they will require a cage big enough to flap their wings and exercise. Doves must be able to fly, so you normally do not clip their wings. Doves can not climb the way other birds and parrots do, and can not get away from danger unless they fly away. Losing that ability can have some psychological effects on the bird.

They do produce a fair amount of dander. You can mist them off, but some people will just take them into the sink and spray them there. I’ve talked to a few dove owners that would literally bathe their birds in a mild dish soap. This was the only decent way to completely clean a White Dove.

Do not leave doves in a drafty area. While they can tolerate cool weather, they can’t handle the drafts. They are also very sensitive to smoke and odors, so it’s best to keep them away from kitchen areas.

A wise person once told me that if you wanted to know how to get out of debt, don’t talk to a credit counselor. They have never gone through it, so how could they help you? Instead, talk to someone who has filed bankruptcy, and find out how they recovered from it.

If you want to know how to prevent, or clean up, a Psittacosis outbreak, who would you go to? A veterinarian or someone who had it happen to them? That would be me! But the good part of this story is it we were very lucky… it was an incorrect test result. But at the time we did not know that, and had one of the worst three months of our lives!

“CHLOE IS DEAD!”

Our nightmare began several years ago. Our aviary was in full production, and we had over 100 birds. Sapphyre, went out to check on our birds and discovered one of our best African Grays dead on the bottom of her cage.

Now understand, it’s terrible to lose any bird. But it’s totally unacceptable to lose a bird without learning something from the loss. Why did Chloe die? Sapphyre has an incredible habit of being able to sense when a bird is sick, but Chloe never showed a sign. So she was thinking it was a nutritional problem. Since I have specialized in feeding and nutrition, I was anxious to understand what I had done wrong. So we sent the body to Michigan State University’s Small Animal Clinic for a necropsy.

PSITTACOSIS

A few days later we got the results. There was a positive test for Psittacosis. This is also know as “Parrot Disease”. It is extremely contagious, not only to birds but to humans. It can be transmitted to other animals, including chickens, turkeys and ducks. That makes this not only an agriculture concern, but also a public health concern. Once word got out that we were “infected” the nightmare began!

We were immediately ordered to place our birds into quarantine. Anyone going in or out needed to practice extreme good hygiene practices, and we started wearing lab coats over our clothes. Everyone in the family was put on antibiotics.

Cages had to be 100% cleaned and disinfected every day. Walls, floors, you name it! All birds needed to be treated with the antibiotic tetracycline. We were extremely lucky that one of the few companies in the country that manufactures food with this drug already added is just an hour’s drive away! It was expensive, and many of our birds wouldn’t eat it. We were therefore forced to hand feed tetracycline to those birds.

Every few days we had to collect stool samples to be sent to the lab for testing. Unless we got a clean bill of health for three straight weeks, our birds would remain in quarantine. If not cured, we could end up having all our birds confiscated.

FALSE POSITIVE

Not one single test that we sent in contained Psittacosis! We found out after this nightmare was over that the current tests for this disease result in a lot of false readings. Recent advances in blood testing have drastically improved these results, but several years ago they were not yet approved. So, in an effort to err on the side of caution, the government would declare any positive test as the truth, and take aggressive action to prevent an outbreak.

And if that means the breeder must endure the expense of their error…in our case several thousand dollars of medications and testing… so be it! Is there any wonder why bird breeders are so careful about ordering such testing? A positive test will put them totally out of business. The government does not replace confiscated birds. This is poor prevention, and the government needs to change their policies.

CONCLUSION…

In the end, we never did find out what killed Chloe. But we learned an awful lot about Psittacosis. This disease is spread through the air. Generally, it’s passed through bird droppings and nasal discharges. When the droppings dry, they turn to power and blow around into the air, eventually finding their way to other birds (and humans) who inhale it.

In humans, the cure is easily controlled with antibiotics. This disease is still prevalent, and since many birds are “carriers” and don’t show any signs of the disease, it can be difficult to control. There are no vaccinations for this disease at this time. So the only real practical prevention is to make sure you practice good avian hygiene, and be aware that if you visit a pet store or bird aviary you may walk away with this disease on your clothes, and end up carrying it back to your own birds. New birds should always go through a 30 day quarantine before placing them near your other birds.

Learn the warning signs! If the bird shows trouble breathing, poor appetite, lethargy, discharges from the eye or excessive nasal discharge, or diarrhea, these are the early signs. Yellow or lime-green droppings is another sign. This is one of the disadvantage of feeding colored pellets to birds…it can make it difficult to monitor the birds droppings. In later stages, the bird may show weakness, tremors, shaking for convulsions. At this point immediate action needs to be taken to save the bird.

Hopefully this problem will never happen to you. It’s sad to lose a bird, but to see your entire aviary die is devastating! Not only emotionally, but by seeing a business you have attempted to build be instantly destroyed!