Your cockatiel might show breathing difficulties for a number of causes. If the weather outside is as well hot or your cockatiel is inside a room that is as well warm your cockatiel will show signs of breathing difficulties or short breathing. Leaving a cockatiel with unprotected sun exposure and no shade can be deadly. Also if your cockatiel gets scared or is extremely afraid you will also see fast breathing cockatiel breathing problems.
First, let's go into the precautions you have to take to avoid this respiratory disease.
Precautions to avoid cockatiel breathing problem
- Now if you're using Teflon scented or regular candles, air fresheners, nail polish fumes, perfume fumes. Those can all be the things that can make a negative impact on the bird's health. So, make sure that you don't use them or at least just avoid using them around your pet.
- Another thing is you should stop smoking. It can be extremely detrimental to your bird's health or at least if you can't give up smoking or don't want to then you can just smoke in another room and make sure that the bed has no contact with the cigarette smoke.
- Definitely make sure that the food you're giving your bed is nice and fresh and clean. Definitely clean your cockatiel food bowl and water bowl. So high-quality food is always the way to go. I would say be careful about plastic bowls. I find that they can have quite a lot of bacteria build so you have to be extremely careful about it.
- Another thing that can really make a positive impact on the bird they can treat and prevent the disease is a good immune system. If you want your bird to be healthy and have a strong immune system, they have to have a balanced diet. I'm not just talking about seeds or pellets because this is just an absolute mus obviously. I'm talking about vegetables and fruit. now put in mind that fruits are way sweeter than vegetables and they are also higher in calories. So vegetables are not sweet and they also don't have that many calories in them and they have a better nutritional value and as a bonus, it's easier to make chopped with vegetables rather than with fruit. Because vegetables don't have that much juice in them. But it doesn't mean that you shouldn't feed your bird fruits. It just means that vegetables should be offered to your bird in much higher quantities. So make sure to feed your bird vegetables and not just dry food.
In order to make the cockatiel immune system stronger, you have to use a good bird vitamins and supplements.
Symptoms of cockatiel breathing problem
However, things can happen and sometimes cockatiels hide their symptoms. In the wild cockatiels hide their symptoms because they are afraid they won't be part of them again and in captivity cockatiels also seem to hide their symptoms. But what we can do is I recommend watching the bird when you know that the bird can't see you so that if you notice any symptoms then you can go to the vet ASAP. You also have to consider the fact that most of the time when you actually see your bed suffering. It means that it's too late because they can't hide their symptoms anymore.
Every bird is individual but mostly this is how it is and if you're lucky enough your cockatiel can show you symptoms early enough so that the disease can be treated. The symptoms include the
- noise coming from their nostrils
- tail popping sneezing too frequently
- coughing
Although I would say sneezing is okay if it happens frequently then you should probably go to the vet. Another symptom you have to be careful about is
- discharge either from the nose or from the eyes
So these are the symptoms of respiratory infection and should be treated right away.
Treatment of cockatiel breathing problem
That's to treat respiratory infections with antibiotics. I was giving my cockatiel antibiotics as well. so to wrap it all up the best things it can do is to look for symptoms, prevent the disease as much as you can by giving your pet the best diet you can. Keep them clean, make their immune system stronger. and lastly, If your cockatiel is truly having a problem in breathing. There could be possibly a severe obstruction inside the chest or lungs. Also, it could be an enlarged tumor inside the chest which can lead to cockatiel breathing problems and death. Go to the vet checkups, this is a great way to avoid the disease because you'll be able to troubleshoot the problem and treat your cockatiel.
