Bird Flu in Pet Birds

Bird flu in pet birds and poultry birds is one of the most well-known diseases and is also known as Avian flu. It is caused by a form of influenza virus, orthomyxovirus, that usually only infects birds and sometimes infects pigs. Bird flu in pet birds is one of the contageious diseases and is readily transmitted by waterfowl. The highly pathogenic avian influenza A (H5N1) epizootic (animal outbreak) in Asia, Europe, the Near East, and Africa is unexpectedly very high. These continents are highly prone to avian influenza in the world. It is likely that H5N1 virus infections among domestic poultry have become endemic in certain areas and that sporadic human infections resulting from direct contact with infected poultry and/or wild birds will continue to occur.

There are more than 100,000 species of birds on the planet, but only a few of them can live with human beings as good companions. Certain species of birds include finches, pigeons, doves, parrots, African Grey parrot, Amazon parrot, caiques, canary, cockatiels, cockatoo, conures, macaws, parrotlet, parakeet, pionus, and rosella. They all are too social, friendly, and intelligent.

There are many chances that bird flu might attack your pet birds. However, there is no influenza A (H5N1) in the United States, there is no risk of bird flu in pet birds. The virus circulating in Asia, Europe and Africa has not yet entered the United States as described by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But this does not mean that Americans should be care free about their pet birds can never be infected with avian influenza ever. You should be aware of all precautionary measures to prevent Bird flu in pet birds.

Signs And Symptoms Of Bird Flu In Pet Birds:

The symptoms for avian influenza include:

• Lack of appetite
• Breathing problems
• Swelling of the head
• Discharge from the eyes
• Diarrhea
• Depression

Remember, sometimes symptoms does not appear in the birds infected with avian influenza and birds have sudden death. It may cause death in birds within about 48 hours. However, when symptoms begin to appear, treatment should start for emergency basis because fatality rate for bird flu in pet birds is alarmingly high.

Parrots Are The Most Wanted Talking Pets

Communication is an amazing way to transfer your thoughts and feelings. It includes facial expressions, gestures, and most importantly sounds. Like human beings, animals also use more or less same ways of communication that define that animals have also important components of childhood development that are cognition, perception, and reasoning. Although they communicate through different sounds, but some of them are blessed with special abilities and they can talk in similar language in which they are trained. Talking Pets are famous all around the world. People love to have such pets that have extra ordinary quality of talking like human beings and parrots are one among them.

How to train a talking parrot:

If you have a talking parrot, you must get him talking. Here are the few tips that will help you train your talking pet language at home.

• Start your parrot’s talking training after it is six months old. Start the training immediately because young pets learn faster as compared to older pets.
• Develop some rapport with your talking pet first. It should be familiar with you and make it feel that you love it, care for it, and have affection for it. Rapport can be developed through spending some time on daily basis with your talking parrot and give treats.
• Always keep the parrot’s cage in a place where it can easily see people moving around at home. For example, living room, and so on.  It will help to improve the socialization process of the parrot.
• Begin with short words and give reward at each effort of mimicry. Actually parrots do mimic.
• Associate a word with an action to teach your parrot. Parrots like movements and actions therefore, they learn both things together. If you make action of shaking the hand while teaching it to say hello, it will always say hello whenever you will show this type of action.
• Turn-off the TV when you are giving the talking lessons to your lovely parrot.
• Parrots can learn to call out a specific phrase when you show a specific object. This can be easily done through practice and attributing a phrase with an object.

It is an old saying: “learning through fun and playing is easier”. This happens similar with talking pets. It will take some time to teach a parrot to talk. Although it is slow process, but should continue.  I hope, you will enjoy and have fun with your talking pet all the time.