This is my story, a tale of Itty Bitty the lone survivor in a clutch of four Parrotlets.

On May 31, 1998 while checking nests of baby Parrotlets I noticed that the clutch did not appear as active as the day before. I picked up three of the babies. I checked their crops and they were full. I checked them over they seemed a bit thinner than normal and as I held them they died one by one in my hand.

These chicks were between eight and ten days of age. I was shocked and could not understand what happened. There was one other baby in the nest, a few days younger than the oldest chick that was now dead, that was Itty Bitty. Itty Bitty was dehydrated and I took her and put her in one of my brooders. I put the dead chicks in a zip lock bag in the refrigerator and began hydrating Itty Bitty.

The first photo was taken three days after I rescued her from the nest, alive but very ill.

I had suspected that my flock was infected with megabacteria for some time because of where I had bought my original stock from and the fact that other breeders were having the problem. I could not really believe that I had escaped this problem and had been checking with my Veterinarian for this bug. I was consistently getting negative readings on the slides that were being examined. This is not unusual it happens regularly.

Having been in contact with Dr. Brian Speer DVM, because Cerise Duran was kind enough to put me in touch with Dr Speer, a California Avian Veterinarian that was very familiar with megabacteria, I shipped him the tiny neonates to arrive at his office the next morning.

He necropsied the one baby and found it very heavy with megabacteria. He preserved one of the babies and sent the third baby off to have a complete histopath done. He was concerned that the babies had died of an underlying virus or from some other cause than mega. The reason being, to his knowledge, there had never been any birds this young found with megabacteria.

Dr Speer called me and told me to begin medicating the surviving chick. The drug of choice was Fungizone an oral suspension of Amphotericin B.

The medication was by prescription through my Veterinarian. I began to medicate the chick twice daily. In 48 hours I noticed a significant difference in Itty Bitty. By the time the medication was completed she began to look normal. What a relief. She looked at me with those bright eyes and won my heart. She fought so hard to live. Since that episode all of my flock was treated and after examination all were found to be free of the bacteria. We now regularly check our flock for the bacteria so as to never have it return. We Guarantee all our birds to be free of megabacteria when sold.

Itty Bitty is now a fat and healthy Parrotlet. The picture below was taken September, 1998.

Genetically she is a split to Yellow bird and I have paired her with a yellow male her age. They will grow up together and someday I hope we will have their kids pictures here. This was a story with a sad beginning and it has had a happy ending. I want to encourage anyone who has this problem to do the prescribed treatment and free your Aviary of this unseen killer. I also lost four adult birds in this episode and since that day I have not lost any others. I have decided when ever I do loose a Parrotlet I will send it to Dr Speer as he is very familiar with this problem and I trust his findings.

They now have a clutch of two females one a visual Yellow and one a split female

To be continued....

Megabacteria a review of the literature by Claire Talltree MSW

Treatment of Megabacteria in Budgerigars

In-Water Medication with Soluble Amphotericin B