Quarantining New Arrivals

Whenever I plan on bringing a new bird into our household I spend time organizing a quarantine area. With this room prepared in advance, the moment I walk through the front door with the travel carrier, the new arrival goes directly into quarantine. Even healthy looking birds can be a non-symptomatic carrier of contagious pathogens - parasites, bacteria or viruses.

The benefits of putting all newcomers into this type of isolation are three-fold. First, you protect your other birds from being exposed to any infectious or contagious diseases. Even though, when using a holistic healthcare model, we acknowledge that a weakened immune system allows infections to occur, we also use a commonsense approach by preventing possible exposure to a serious disease or illness.

The second benefit is that quarantine gives you the opportunity to get to know the bird and to show it, you can be trusted. Thirdly, the isolation of quarantine can provide an environment that may cause one of two things to arise. If the new arrival is a non-symptomatic disease carrier the minimal stress from being quarantined may cause disease symptoms to arise. If this occurs the individual can begin receiving appropriate holistic medical care.

Read more in the magazine…