I have had this in drafts for a few months while I have been deciding how to properly write on this subject. The subject falls under breeder ethics. If you don't want to read the whole story, just skip down to the bold question a few paragraphs below.
Short background. After losing my two oldest tiels, 16 and 17, I mustered up the courage to add one of the two that I am hoping to bring into my small flock. I joined the NCS after several years of non-membership in order to find breeders who I hoped were as careful as I had been when breeding.
Back in the 90s when I began keeping birds, I found a couple of local breeders who had taken me under their wing for a sort of apprenticeship. I learned proper food prep and disinfection, chick "bio-security" and how to hand feed. On top of that, I learned how to bring up a chick with plenty of love, patience and human handling in order to build their confidence and security.
When I began raising my own chicks, I had the hardest time parting with them. It was not about money, it was about the love of these little cockatiels.
The history of the illness I went through and the subsequent problems in my flock is more covered on my website, so I won't drone on about it here. Needless to say, I stopped breeding, closed my flock and just never got into breeding again. I lost my number one hen, MommyBird, to megabacteria/avian gastric yeast. I had contacted Dr. Phalen via email to talk with my vet, Dr. Fiskett about treatments. This was at a time when avian vets were still baffled by it and the treatments needed to save birds and Dr. Phalen was heading up the research. I still to this day wonder if that little bird could have been saved had we treated her with Amphotericin-B. It was my urging and suggestion to try it on MommyBird's daughter, MiniToo after emails back and forth with one of the researching veterinarians on the condition that saved her life.
Veterinary care was one of the things not taught to me by these breeders. Being new to the bird world, I had no clue. Lack of internet meant finding things out by word of mouth. Certified Avian Veterinarian was foreign to me. It was the illnesses and losses over the years that taught me that a veterinarian that sees birds and treats them for certain things is not the same as an Avian vet. I also learned that an Avian vet can be almost as good as a Certified Avian vet (in Iowa and Missouri I had only Avian vets and they were excellent in caring for my birds).
I now know better and my rule is to get my tiels random check ups and if any new tiels were ever to be added, they would get a full health work up.
Sorry to ramble, but I feel that a bit of history is best to lead up to my question.
Here it is -- If you sell a cockatiel to a buyer who takes it to a Certified Avian Veterinarian and the little tiel comes back as having a treatable, but come to find out antibiotic resistant condition, what would you do? Would you want to know? Would you in any way take action?
I purchased one little tiel from a breeder in NW PA. This breeder is NCS banded and linked from the NCS site. She has different mutations including the whiteface that I am wanting. When I inquired about any birds, she stated that she had none at the time. A few days later, I received an email that she did have a little hen, 6 months old, that she would part with. She said that she was going to keep her as a breeder, but there was a little bald spot that did not go away on her head. She also stated that this was a very sweet bird who liked to interact with people. I agreed to purchase the little girl because I wanted a companion. We met at a half-way point on the weekend. My new little bird came with a tiny carrier, food, a bottle of her water with a non-tip dish and a few homemade toys (which I ended up not using due to galvanized parts).
Her cage is set up in the living room with a separate IQ Air cleaner from my main bird area, which is here in the parlor with the computer.
It took a week for me to get an appointment with my new veterinarian here in PA. Dr. Riggs is actually up near Akron, OH, a 3 hour trip one way. He is like my vet back in VA, Dr. Fiskett. I feel lucky to have a specialist like him within driving distance. We ran all of the health tests that he felt were best for a new member. He found only one problem, Spirochetes. They were pharyngeal and were found on a throat swab. He was a bit disappointed and told me that this was a problem found mostly in pet store birds. Ugh, ok, we can deal, but I avoid pet stores for the very reason of disease. Dr. Riggs told me that this was passed bird to bird by parent feeding or water. Home I went, Baytril for one week in hand.
I notified the breeder via email and she thanked me. She told me that she was not breeding anytime soon so that would give her a chance to clear things up in the flock.
I also offered to take my little tiels parents up to my vet for testing if she did not want to make the drive (I was going anyways!).
Recheck in a weeks time and still a trace. Heavy sigh from my vet saying that he was afraid of this.
Home I went with metronidazole for two weeks.
Recheck after a week off the medication.
Still a trace of the bugs, but less than last time.
My option at that point came down to needing injections every day for a week. I am not comfortable giving injections to a bird. I can only do my pony and dogs. So, I left this little bird with my vet for one week. It was hard to leave her there because we had bonded so much over the few weeks of medications. She had begun to talk to me a bit, too, saying "what are you doing?". She caught on to this because I would frequently peek in on her in the living room and ask her that.
All of this time, I kept the breeder informed with test results, diagnosis and treatments. I offered my vets name and told her his opinion on what she might do for her own flock.
The response that I got was that she had never seen any symptoms, could not afford to get her birds checked and that she already had several pairs on eggs. She did fess up and tell me that someone had given her four cockatiels that they were not able to keep. Knowing my own flock history, you don't always know where things come from. If you cannot eliminate the cause, treat what you do have and decide where to go from there.
I picked up my tiel seven days after the injections. We got a clear swab so she could come home. We will be going up for another recheck this summer. Also, my "she" may be a "he". She has quite the vocabulary, though does not whistle or sing. She also does not show any strutting male behavior. Her mutation is whiteface pearl pied pastel and both parents have red eyes (something I was told NOT to do).
I never contacted her again because I feel my efforts are going unwanted. I made sure in the beginning to tell the breeder that I did not want anything from her, but that I wanted to let her know so that she could treat her own flock. I am afraid for the babies she produces and even more afraid for the homes they will go into with owners who will not see the subtle symptoms that my own little tiel had shown. Plus, they can be asymptomatic. On top of all that, the spirochetes are antibiotic resistant, so oral meds did not do the job of clearing them up. This, to me, is the biggest concern of all.
Also, being an NCS breeder of banded, rare mutation birds, what if some other NCS member purchases a bird and adds to their own flock for breeding?
I welcome constructive opinions on this. I am still looking for another whiteface hen, hopefully the regular grey in pied or pearl. I am just a bit paranoid and think that I will stick with the breeders who I see active on Facebook from now on.
