Local club raises more than $9,000 to support OVC research on puzzling parrot affliction
BY BARRY GUNN, OVC
“Happy Hour” at Nathalie Lemieux's house can be a boisterous affair. But it's parrots, not imbibers, that are making all the racket.
Lemieux, a teaching lab technician in the Department of Pathobiology and programs co- ordinator for the Wild Bird Clinic, is the proud owner of an African grey parrot, an Alexandrine parrot and a Quaker parakeet. The birds are particularly chatty at feeding time in the morning and when settling down in the evening.
She loves them all, but it's the African grey, a three-year-old named Kito, that holds a special place in her heart.
“She's such a little talker and a singer,” says Lemieux. “She's starting to imitate all the kids in the house. You get to the point where you don't respond to the kids right away because you don't know whether it's the parrot calling.”
Kito — Swahili for “precious” — is a bit shy and not as trusting as some parrots when it comes to being picked up or handled. This may be due to a folding fracture suffered in the nest. This type of fracture, often related to a calcium deficiency, occurs when pressure on the bone causes it to fold over and deform rather than break. African greys, particularly chicks, are prone to these problems.
In May 2002, avian specialists at the Ontario Veterinary College worked on Kito, cutting the injured bone in the fracture zone and pinning it back together so it would heal properly.
“Her left leg is slightly weaker now, but the average person cannot tell,” says Lemieux. “She's done absolutely amazingly since that surgery.”
Lemieux recently found a way to show her thanks. As president of the Golden Triangle Parrot Club, she helped organize an event called “All About Birds” this spring. It raised more than $9,000 to support research on proventricular dilatation disease (PDD) at OVC.
PDD is a wasting disease that affects members of the parrot family. The cause isn't known, and there's no effective treatment. This makes it especially difficult to cope with because parrot owners become deeply attached to their birds.
And no wonder. Some research suggests African greys have the intelligence of a four- or five-year-old child. And parrots can live 30 to 60 or even 80 years depending on the type.
“They talk, they interact with you, they're affectionate,” says Lemieux. “They give kisses; some like to cuddle. It's like having another little person around the house.”
The funds from the parrot club will enable a team of investigators — including Profs. Dale Smith and Eva Nagy, Pathobiology, Michael Taylor of OVC's Veterinary Teaching Hospital and Davor Ojkic of Laboratory Services — to refocus their efforts and build on a Pet Trust-supported research project conducted in 2002 by then-graduate student Yohannes Berhane.
“It's really great to see the bird owners step up and organize this fundraising effort,” says Taylor. “It's certainly the first big one of its type in Canada. It will go a long way towards helping us do what we're trying to do.”
One of the biggest challenges facing researchers is the cryptic nature of PDD, says Smith. It presents itself in so many ways that it's difficult to diagnose, and you can't develop a diagnostic test until you know what to test for.
“Our belief is that the disease spreads through an infectious agent in the feces,” she says. “We're trying to determine whether these virus- like particles we see in the feces are, in fact, the agent.”
Although it's easy to find birds that die showing the classic symptoms — the Animal Health Laboratory sees perhaps dozens of cases of PDD per year — they probably represent only a small portion of the infected population, say the researchers. “Typhoid Pollys” can be bought, sold and traded among pet owners and aviaries, spreading PDD from place to place without the source of the infection ever being known.
“We have a good feel for the numbers of cases of birds that are dying of the disease,” says Taylor, “but birds are living, shedding virus and not dying. They're the ones that are very difficult to detect until we can identify the agent.”
The investigators have a suspect: an enveloped virus that to date has been impossible to grow in the lab. The challenge this summer was to obtain enough samples for microbiologists to do their work trying to link the suspect virus to the disease.
“It's been a tough, tough case to crack,” says Taylor. “And yet the answers have to come, and I'm sure they will come.”
Information about the Golden Triangle Parrot Club is available on the web at www.gtpc.ca. For details about the upcoming Canadian Parrot Conference in Hamilton, visit www.canadianparrotconference.ca/.
