Hi all,
I just wanted to let you all know that Archie passed away on December 28th. He had no external signs of illness. When I last weighed him two weeks prior, he had actually gained 8 grams. He was eating well, playing, chatting, bouncing, cuddling--acting like his normal self. I was housesitting at the time, but when my boyfriend fed the birds breakfast that morning, he said that Archie had eaten all of it as usual, and then went straight up to his favorite playgym and went to town on a foraging toy. Three hours later, when Chuck went in to check on the birds, he was dead on the bottom of his cage. I got the histopathology report back yesterday. From a closer inspection of his leg band, the necropsy, and the histo report, we learned that he had been wild caught in 1979, so was likely quite a bit older than I had originally been told when I adopted him. He apparently had contracted some kind of flukeworm infection when he was still living in the wild, because he had several calcified ova in the great vessels of his heart. He also had a tumor in his kidneys that was large enough to distort their shape. The pathologist doesn't know whether the tumor or the calcified ova obstructing the vessels were the cause of death, but either one would have been fatal. As sad as I am about his death, initial findings on his necropsy suggested that PDD was a possibility, so I am relieved to know now that it was nothing that was contagious to my other birds. I may have only had the privilege of sharing my life with him for one year, but I am grateful for every second of it. He was such a special guy and I will love and miss him forever.
I just wanted to let you all know that Archie passed away on December 28th. He had no external signs of illness. When I last weighed him two weeks prior, he had actually gained 8 grams. He was eating well, playing, chatting, bouncing, cuddling--acting like his normal self. I was housesitting at the time, but when my boyfriend fed the birds breakfast that morning, he said that Archie had eaten all of it as usual, and then went straight up to his favorite playgym and went to town on a foraging toy. Three hours later, when Chuck went in to check on the birds, he was dead on the bottom of his cage. I got the histopathology report back yesterday. From a closer inspection of his leg band, the necropsy, and the histo report, we learned that he had been wild caught in 1979, so was likely quite a bit older than I had originally been told when I adopted him. He apparently had contracted some kind of flukeworm infection when he was still living in the wild, because he had several calcified ova in the great vessels of his heart. He also had a tumor in his kidneys that was large enough to distort their shape. The pathologist doesn't know whether the tumor or the calcified ova obstructing the vessels were the cause of death, but either one would have been fatal. As sad as I am about his death, initial findings on his necropsy suggested that PDD was a possibility, so I am relieved to know now that it was nothing that was contagious to my other birds. I may have only had the privilege of sharing my life with him for one year, but I am grateful for every second of it. He was such a special guy and I will love and miss him forever.
