Breeder Ethics on Health

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.

Home, Sweet Home

Finally!  A finished bird "room".  They get their own wall behind me here in the parlor.

The cockatiels live in Kings stainless steel cages.  Out of the thousands of dollars worth of cages that I have used over the years (Hagen, an off brand powder coated, Prevue, Cages by Design and Visionary Cages), I love these the best and have kept them the longest.  I did retrofit the slide out trays so that they rest right under the grate rather than the lower area they are meant to slide into.  I don't use the seed catchers, I find them too bulky.  I also removed the large cup rings from the swinging doors and buffed the stainless smooth where they were detached.  I like my smaller 5cc cups that are attached with stainless wing nuts.

The perches are a mix of ribbonwood, Sandy Perches, Eucalyptus and the single wide dowel rod that came with them.  Each cage has an Ott light in a bell shaped fixture that sits on the cage top.  Toys are natural made from parts found at Birdsafe Store.
 
There is a 5x8 bamboo "rug" underneath for easy cleaning.  The rug is really a bamboo wood mat, not one made of bamboo fibers.  The best that I have used are the Anji Mountain rugs.  You can also find them on Overstock.com for a low enough price to take the abuse of flying food and poop.  The ones that I have seen in chain stores are not as well made from what I have seen.  All you need to do is scrape it off with an old kitchen knife and vacuum.  If you are using the bamboo on top of a pile carpet, you must put down something solid like a thin board, to stabilize it or the bamboo slats can break when weight is applied (I made this mistake with my Anji rug a few years ago).

The quilting fabric is an In the Beginning pattern called Adelaide.  It hangs on a 5/8" curtain rod held to the wall with smaller cafe rod hangers.  This way, it stays close to the wall like a tapestry without the expense of a specialized rod and hangers.  It is backed with a full sized sheet and can be taken down and thrown in the wash.

The canaries to the right are kept in a Kings powder coated cage (bottom) and Prevue basic small cage (top).  I have one more of the Kings cages out of the photo off to the right with my young American Singer male in it.

The Importance of an Avian Veterinarian

I am beginning my chronicle with a subject that most either don't know about or choose to ignore, the Avian Veterinarian.
All vets are not created equally.  An avian vet, especially a certified avian vet is a specialist.  Birds are notorious at hiding illness.  It is hardwired into them for survival.  As a cockatiel owner, you should get to know your bird and take note of ANY change in their behavior or appearance.  Molts and changes like moving are a big stress on your bird, as are hormonal changes.  It is usually during this time that a problem likes to pop up.  Looking back, I wish that I had initial testing on my very first tiels just for the record.  It also may (or may not) have detected some of the problems that I had later on.  After dealing with the megabacteria and other issues, I learned to take each new bird (there have been only 4 to date) for an initial work up.
On my page I have put links for viewers to find an avian veterinarian for the welfare of their cockatiel.  I tend to use more than one as some have veterinarians listed that others do not.  In my own experience, there are a  couple of hard and fast rules that have become acceptable to me since I live rural.

1.  The vet will be a minimum of one hour away.
2.  Plan to spend 60+ for your visit.

Let's talk about the drive time.  I am a person who does not like to drive distances, so I do understand the complaint about an avian veterinarian being a haul.  However, do not choose your vet based on distance alone.  I have moved several times in the past few years and one of the main reasons that I would consider an area was access to an avian veterinarian.
Base your choice on what services they offer and what the level of experience is.  A good avian vet will refer you to a specialist if they are not comfortable with treating a particular condition.  This is how I ended up going from about an hours drive to just over 2 1/2 hours.
The difference?  The closer vet is great on routine care and tests, but anything outside of a grams stain must be sent out.  The specialist does most of the testing in house, so results are immediate.  This can be a matter of life or death to a little bird.

The next biggest complaint is the cost.  Unfortunately, our little tiels are considered "throw away" birds.  They are relatively easy to keep and breed.  Not many people will spend any amount of money on a bird that cost less to purchase than to doctor.  The sad thing is that some breeders also have this mindset.  I will further discuss this matter in a later post, so for now, we will just stick to discussing having your bird checked out.
I have a "bird health insurance account" where I stash a little cash every so often to use on veterinary care if I cannot swing it from my monthly income.  Most of the time, the costs are doable, so I rarely have to take from the stash.
I do not keep more birds than I can afford veterinary care for.  This is my rule of thumb for the pony and dog, too.  If you have one or two cockatiels, then there is really no reason not to at least have a baseline check up for them.  Why?  Because there are a lot of diseases that tiels can be carriers of and the new one, there are antibiotic resistant bugs out there.  Since I live the Murphy's law of animal ownership, What Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong, I have had the experience with some of these diseases even though I don't remember signing up for them.
I have dealt with more than enough diseases in my almost 2 decades of tiel ownership.  Whether some were problems never diagnosed early enough or problems that came on after we all became ill from exposure to sewage sludge, I will never know.
Kidney failure
Megabacteria (avian gastric yeast)
Aspirgillosis
Melanoma and a subsequent partial wing amputation
Elevated liver enzymes
Unknown fungal infections under the skin
Unknown gastric illness causing death
Egg binding, a serious condition rather than a disease
I always have a necropsy done on my tiels if I lose one.  I always ask for a cosmetic and then have them cremated.

Avian Veterinarian or Certified Avian Veterinarian?
Both, really.  The avian vets that I used in Iowa and Missouri were both excellent doctors.  Neither had certification, but they were diligent in their care and I would not hesitate to recommend them.
Call around.  See who treats what and ask any questions.  I have kept all of my past records so when I did move, all of the history came with me and my tiels.  Some veterinarians will give you a printout of costs that may be incurred should you have to hospitalize or medicate your bird.  Some give multi-bird households a discount.  The important thing is to find an avian vet who you can feel comfortable with in having a relationship with you and your bird.



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