What is Quarantine?
Quarantine is the practice of keeping any new flock members in a separate cage, in a separate room preferably with different airspace from any existing flock members for a minimum of 30 days, but preferably 45 to 60.
How to Quarantine:
It is difficult to do a true quarantine in most homes, but usually keep any new birds at the opposite end of the house or floor, from the rest of the flock. It is advised to always wash hands between handling any of the quarantine birds to protect the health and safety of your flock.
Why Quarantine?
If your new flock member comes to you ill, you could lose the entire rest of your flock because many diseases are airborne and highly contagious. THEREFORE, keeping them in the same room in a separate cage is not enough.
Many people think that if the bird looks healthy, it must be healthy-- this is completely untrue. If birds were so easy to diagnose as healthy or not, vet trips would be far less expensive and we wouldn't need border control or national regulations on avian quarantines. Birds are excellent at hiding their diseases, and often a disease will become very serious before the bird shows any outward symptoms.
It is also so difficult to tell with a new bird what is normal or not since you have not established a pattern of behavior. In addition, many avian diseases have extremely long incubation periods or latency periods and may not surface for a few weeks, why we recommend a long quarantine.
The stress of moving to a new home, new cage, new environment, is often enough to make previously dormant diseases that are activated by stress flare up. Even if you get your bird from a very responsible breeder with a 100% clean record, quarantine is still considered essential. But especially if you get your bird from a pet shop, where he or she will have been exposed to an entire gang of diseases and other birds.
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Author Monika Sangar
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