FEATURE The lights I use are called Sylvania
Reptistar. These need replacing every six months to maintain UVB output.
I feed the following: - Seed - 95% Hungarian millet and 5% plain canary
- Other – fresh corn on the cob, silverbeet and carrot daily
- Shellgrit and cuttlebone - Nothing else.
Summary
It now seems that the budgerigar diseases that have crippled our breeding for years have been caused by badly-designed aviaries that exclude UVB light which in turn causes a deficiency in Vitamin D3. This compromises the birds’ immune systems which leads to severe and constant disease problems. Viral feather diseases go unchecked, avian gastric yeast (normal in birds’ tummies) goes feral and slowly kills birds and most other common diseases get out of hand. Fertility plummets and general budgerigar vigour collapses. When significant increases in Vitamin D3 are introduced, the problems begin to recede. Improvements are slow, but perhaps in one or two generations the younger generations will be fully healthy again. Even infected eyes have largely cleared up and no babies have this problem like they used to. I have no new cases of feather loss of any sort. A few old flightless birds can fly again (but not many). Obviously budgerigar aviaries or bird rooms which are open to direct
sunlight will produce far healthier birds.
It also seems apparent that the older vitamin supplements fed to birds simply don’t contain anywhere near enough Vitamin D3. Hopefully, the new one is far better. For those wishing to read further on
Vitamin D3, check out the November, 2007 issue of Scientific American pages 36 – 44. To read the entire article go to
www.sciam.com & search for cell defences and the sunshine vitamin.
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