quarantining for a new bird?

[happycat]

Hi! So we've had our kakariki for about 3 years now, and I think we're ready for another birdie! Probably a cockatiel, but we're open to any smallish bird that we end up liking. We've got almost everything figured out. (Kirby used to have a smaller cage before we got his big one, and I think it's a good size for a tiel, he has plenty of toys he ended up not liking, and they would eat the same food, so we would barely have to buy anything) but I have some questions about quarantining.
First off, I don't trust my cats around my birds at night, and the only room we close off to them is the bird room. Would a bird be okay in a bathroom for a month or does it need natural sunlight?
Was also wondering if the bird needs to be quarantined from my non birdy pets and if I would need to worry about any bird to dog or cat diseases? Thanks!

 

[Dinosrawr]

I wouldn't be so worried about quarantine from your dogs or cats - the chances of zoonosis is quite unlikely. As for keeping the bird in the bathroom, I'm not sure how I'd feel about it personally. It's not exactly the best place to permanently keep a bird... but if it's the only option you can try it out.

I wasn't able to do a perfect quarantine myself, so I had Shiko tested at the avian vet for contagious diseases. He came back negative for everything, so based on the fact that he came from a breeder with an isolated breeding facility and tested negative I just let my birds interact.

As for the natural sunlight thing, my birds live with me in our basement suite. We have hardly any natural light and I don't have full spectrum lighting. I do take them out in the car with me for sunlight (car widows don't block UVA/UVB like general house windows do). But they've never once come back with low vitamin D or any deficiencies. So take that how you will. I do think they deserve to get natural sunlight as often as possible, however, so window placement is always ideal.

But most importantly, congrats on deciding on a new addition!

 

[Aquila]

Bathroom is probably a bad idea, too many hazards.

Pick the least traveled room in the house, preferably one that's closed off because many diseases can be airborne or carried around by you or anyone else.

 

[happycat]

I wouldn't be so worried about quarantine from your dogs or cats - the chances of zoonosis is quite unlikely. As for keeping the bird in the bathroom, I'm not sure how I'd feel about it personally. It's not exactly the best place to permanently keep a bird... but if it's the only option you can try it out.

I wasn't able to do a perfect quarantine myself, so I had Shiko tested at the avian vet for contagious diseases. He came back negative for everything, so based on the fact that he came from a breeder with an isolated breeding facility and tested negative I just let my birds interact.

As for the natural sunlight thing, my birds live with me in our basement suite. We have hardly any natural light and I don't have full spectrum lighting. I do take them out in the car with me for sunlight (car widows don't block UVA/UVB like general house windows do). But they've never once come back with low vitamin D or any deficiencies. So take that how you will. I do think they deserve to get natural sunlight as often as possible, however, so window placement is always ideal.

But most importantly, congrats on deciding on a new addition!

Thank you! And no, I wasn't planning on keeping a bird in my bathroom permanently. Just for the length of the quarantine.

So quarantine isn't needed if the bird tests negative? Because if that's true that would pretty nice because washing your clothes every time you touch a new bird for a month is pretty bothersome.

 

[Dinosrawr]

Sorry, I understood what you meant. By permanent I suppose I meant that the bird would only ever see the bathroom for a whole month and I'm not so sure it's an ideal place.

And don't let me misguide you about it not being necessary. There are diseases that won't shed during the time of testing and you can get a false negative, so quarantining is still an important practice. But it can be very difficult to execute properly. In my case I had nowhere to put Shiko other than in our walk-in closet, and that felt cruel to me. Plus if that were the case, any airborne disease would end up on our clothes and we'd infect Avery anyways. So I made a calculated risk. Shiko's breeder never let the public handle him and he was raised in a quarantined breeding facility so like I mentioned I had him tested and it all came back negative. I had my birds physically separated across the room for a few weeks, but about two or three weeks in Shiko went after Avery and my very meagre quarantine was over, haha.

If it's possible to do a functional quarantine, I always recommend it. But it sounds like you may be putting your new addition in harms way by keeping them in a bathroom for a month or anywhere else in the house... if you can get the bird from a place other than a pet store where disease can run rampant and can have the bird tested for disease before it comes home, that would be ideal and you can take the risk of letting them be in the same airspace from the get go. That's my recommendation at least. It's still a risk, but if you can control or know the environment they've been in prior the likelihood of them passing on an infectious disease is a lot lower.

You can also request where you get the birds to show you documentation of their health checks done on parents if you choose a breeder, or from the rescue if you choose a rescue. The health checks from pet stores mean nada. Doesn't matter if the bird is healthy coming to the store because any individual can bring a disease in and any bird can easily infect another bird. Seen it happen before and it did result in the death of a bird at the pet store - but the store didn't let the public know. So just be cautious if you can [emoji4]